The Upcoming VI Organ

[ericbrooking]

I am curious about the new VI organ that will be shipping soon.
Can you tell me a little about how it was sampled?
It's only my opinion but I hope it was miked very close to the chests. Most organ samples contain far too much room from the mics being placed so far away. This really becomes a problem when you want to put the organ into the same room with the orchestra via GP or (hopefully soon) the upcoming MIR. Doubling up on reverb (convolving an IR with the IR that is already on the recorded samples) makes a mess of it. Plus if it's dry enough I can use some of the stops for a chamber organ.

Just my opinion, can you tell me what it will be like?

[Nick Batzdorf]

I want to know how you fit it inside the Silent Stage!

[ericbrooking]

I guess they did use the silent stage because they must still be stuck in there. Hello, can anyone hear me? [[;)]]

[Dietz]

Actually I recorded the famous Rieger-Organ of the Great Hall in the Vienna Konzerthaus solely to be part of the MIR (as the instrument is actually a physical part of the hall). This means the microphones and the whole recording-path were set up like for the impulse response-capturing.

IOW - we have each and every pipe (and bells and whistles) from four mic-positions, which means that there are more than 7000 * 4 samples available. Of course, they have the unique sonic signature of the Great Hall, not the one of the Silent Stage. - If you look at [URL=http://vsl.co.at/en-us/65/71/170.vsl]these pictures[/URL], you will get an impression about the dimensions of the instrument and understand that there is no way to get it "dry": The complete wall behind the stage is the width of the organ - more than 20 meters from left to right.



When I presented the first results, Herb was so enthusiastic that he had the idea to make a special edition from selected organ-stops. This will be the one you get _without_ the MIR. There will be clever methods to control the amount of preceived reverb, but of course we can't (and won't!) get rid of the Great Hall itself.



... for more nice pictures go to this site: http://konzerthaus.at/konzerthaus/virtueller_rundgang/ , select the link "Die große Rieger-Orgel im Wiener Konzerthaus" on the right, and go to the "Bildergallerie" from there.



HTH,

[Christian Marcussen]

Holy blody hell - that organ is amazing!

So is the Hall...

DIEEEEEEEETTTZZZ!!!! MIIIIIIRRRRRRRR!!! NOOOOOOOWWWW [:D]

[jamriding]

I'm equally interested in the section of the Vienna Konzerthaus site entitled "Gastronomie" [[[:P]]] [[[:P]]] [[[:P]]]

[ericbrooking]

I guess the question is really "do the samples sound like you're standing in the back, middle or front of the hall?" Can you control where you are in the space? How close of a mic position can be obtained?

It seems kind of odd to me that if MIR is an impulse response convolution program, that you would not be able to isolate the source (organ) from the impulse response. Perhaps I'm missing something? I realize that it would be imposible to remove the room from this instrument but I would think that one very close miked position would be helpful.

[Dietz]

A close-miked concert-organ of this size wouldn't make any sense. It would mean that you move microphones in the nearest vicinity of each of the 7000+ pipes, bells and so on. Apart form the fact that this sounds pretty strange, it wouldn't be possible due to simple spacial restrictions; just look at the pictures. One has to realize that the _complete hall_ is the instrument (... there are even pipes in the rear behind the upper balcony --- true surround!).

The concept right now is like follows: The VI-Organ will be a collection of carefully selected "snapshots" from the vast possibilities of this instrument.*) The MIR-Organ (at least as _I_ planned it! [;)] ...) will rely on a modified player, tightly integrated in our virtual representation of the Konzerthaus' Great Hall. It will offer the same flexible multi-channel audio-format and multiple mic-positions as the MIR itself.

For completly free settings of all 150 stops there will most likely be an offline-tool, rendering the preset of your choice for each key from the single pipes (otherwise you would be playing several dozens of voices pressing just one key), and mapping them automatically.

As you can imagine, this is yet another enormous undertaking in the already huge MIR-project, so the organ is not the top-priority feature at the moment. But Herb didn't want to have our customers starving from sample-undersupply and had the idea for this special VI-edition.

Oh - and of course it wouldn't make much sense to put _additional_ reverb of the same hall on it. [:)]


*) ... so - if you think that a certain registration _has_ to be included, let us know.

[Nick Batzdorf]

@Another User said:

One has to realize that the _complete hall_ is the instrument

I hope you understand that I was only joking about bringing a pipe organ into the Silent Stage!

But I have a question: do the stops simply add to one another? In other words, do you just record each stop "solo," or do you pick and choose popular combinations? Obviously you can't record 1x2x3...150 combinations in the amount of time left before the sun burns itself out and turns into a black hole. [[;)]]

[Dietz]

We had our doubts in the beginning, too. During a first session last year I made some elaborate tests, with convincing results: The sound of the organ is really created additive, stop by stop. The digital mixture of single flutes sounds more or less identical to the complete registration recorded in the hall; just the hiss gets louder - and this poses no real problem for the Vienna Symphonic Library. [H] .

The only thing that can't be simply mixed numerous times is the initial noise of the opening valves and the bellows (... is this the word ...?), as this is in many cases just one for _different_ stops playing at the same time; but I have a solution for that already.

.... and don't make fun about the idea to bring an organ into the SilentStage - Herb and Michi had (have?) plans to do that! [6]

[DG]

I'm sorry, I just had to post in a thread about an upcoming organ [[:|]]

DG

[Christian Marcussen]

Please tell me MIR will be released before you have the organ complete? The organ alone sounds like a years work! And i'm starving for a little MIR [;)]

So is it correct that the Early bird organ is a lite vresion of a to be released big-ass wall organ? [:D]

[Dietz]

@Another User said:

So is it correct that the Early bird organ is a lite vresion of a to be released big-ass wall organ?

Personally I would avoid the term "lite", but in principle you're right - you won't get the 1.5 TeraByte raw data right now.

[ericbrooking]

Thanks Dietz, I can't wait.

As for doubling up on samples to get the same sound as multiple ranks, don't you notice that the slight differences in the tunings create a different sound, as in a Celeste?

As for registrations, I would of course like the standard ranks of open pipes (diapason, harmonic flute and string like pipes such as Salicionals and perhaps something in between like a Gemshorn or Spitzflote), stopped pipes (stopped flutes, Gedeckts), reed pipes (oboes, vox humana, Trommet), seperate pedal stops including open, stopped, and reed. Standard registers could include the usual combinations such as Principle (Diapason) with the octave and quint and other harmonic ranks. Also the ability to add a mixture IV or whatever for the top. Same thing with the flutes, Salicionals (or viola de gamba, other string like pipe) a Celeste would be nice on the Salicionals (not just the same samples again but getting the true chorus of different pipes).

Nothing really anything wild here but I have seen some organ samples that are too broad, just a tutti, and then I have seen some with individual ranks (nice, but maybe overkill). I just want to be able to build and modulate the sound in a E. Power Biggs kind of way [:)] And I don't think for example that I would very often play just an octave, it would always be a harmonic series (although a single flute sounds nice).

I bet this was obvious, but hey, I'm getting excited [:O]

[Dietz]

Thanks for your input, Eric. At the moment, the time is right for a whishlist, so you will most likely see some of yours being fullfilled. [:)]

Anybody else ...?

[hermitage59]

Dietz,

An authentic concert pipe organ tone, suitable for use with orchestra in a concert setting. Eric's covered most of the rest, with my added desire for a full chorus effect as he suggested.


There's enough cathedral samples out there.

Regards,

Alex.

[Dietz]

The Rieger-Orgel is a concert-organ, and I won't make a church-organ out of it - I promise. [:)]

[hermitage59]

@Dietz said:

The Rieger-Orgel is a concert-organ, and I won't make a church-organ out of it - I promise. [:)]

Very decent of you Dietz! [:)]

Thank you.

Regards,

Alex.

[ericbrooking]

Hi Dietz,
This is probably obvious too but I'll mention it anyway. I think it's important on the harmonic series type registrations that the octave, quint, ninth, etc. be sampled with those actual ranks playing not just playing the octave of the 8 foot principle diapason because the pipe scale difference changes more than just volume level of the pipe. Slight tuning differences and the timbre of the different scales makes for a subtle but important difference in the sound of the organ.

Can we see a stop list for the instrument so that we can give better input into the choices made? BTW, thanks for taking input on this, it's just another example of how cool VSL is.

I know it may be too late but when miking closer to the playing ranks it doesn't sound weird, it sounds awesome. When you are in the hall, listening to the organ, walk up closer to the playing ranks. You'll hear more detail, dynamics, and the little things that make up the instruments sound like the chuff of the pipe as they come up and just start speaking. I know that you have a lot of mics in the hall, perhaps we can have the option to choose a closer mic position to the speaking rank? (This would also help when I play the VI organ in a hall, less reverb on reverb) Am I beating a dead horse with this? Forgive me if I'm going on too much with this, it's just a passion of mine. Post Instruments actually has seperate samples for the clicks and clacks that the chests make but this misses out totally on the more important chuffs and other wind noise that make a real organ.

Thanks again, I appreiciate what you're doing Dietz.

[Dietz]

Eric, the closest microphone-position is the point on stage where the conductor usually stands. This is written in stone, because all recordings are done since autumn [:)]

As far as this sentence is concerned -

@Another User said:

(This would also help when I play the VI organ in a hall, less reverb on reverb)

A good point - but you will see that it has been taken care for this issue.

All the best,