Jerry Martin

Several months ago a friendly fellow, Dr. Jeremiah Martin, asked if he could stop by to see the organ.  I knew he was a cardiothoracic surgeon completing a fellowship at Duke University, but I had no idea he was an accomplished organ recitalist.

Jerry explored the instrument thoroughly and found a lot to like, later saying he could close his eyes and hear the pipes.  That’s high praise for what amounts to a very early incarnation of the 80-stop Willis from Silver Octopus.  He also endorsed some planned additions, such as a soft 32′ in the pedal and a fatter tuba.  And we agreed my immediate goal should be the previously mentioned crescendo pedal.  Originally from Ireland, Jerry is well acquainted with Willis instruments, and he had such a good time playing that he offered to return this summer to perform a recital.

The recital, our first, took place on 24 June 2012.  About 50 listeners were lucky or wise enough to attend, the organ (and Jerry) performed admirably, and the ladies set out a very nice reception.  Feedback from the attendees was hugely appreciative and uniformly positive.

Here we present some of the live, unfiltered recordings from the recital, taken using the recording apparatus I’ve detailed here previously.  Please keep in mind this is an unfinished instrument for which a detailed voicing has not been done.  Some stops will be added, others will be replaced with better ones, each virtual pipe will be adjusted to account for room response, and a trifle more intentional detuning may add a greater element of realism.  Still, it sounds pretty good already, prompting my wife to note she didn’t know the organ could sound like that (ouch!).

Dubois: Toccata in G

Thalben-Ball: Elegy

Bach:  Toccata and Fugue in D minor, BWV 565

Couperin: “Elevation” from Messe pour les Couvents  (Ordinaire temperament)

David N. Johnson: Trumpet Tune in D

Elgar: “Nimrod” from Enigma Variations Op. 36  (arr. William H. Harris)

Karg-Elert: “Lobe den Herren, o meine Seele” Op. 65, No. 28

Karg-Elert: “Schmucke dich, o liebe Seele” Op. 65, No. 51

Karg-Elert: “Nun Danket alle Gott” Op. 65, No. 59

Vierne: “Finale” from Symphony No. 1

We hope this is the first of many such events.  Once the organ is truly finished, we’ll offer it as a recital venue to the local AGO chapter, and as always, visitors are welcome to see and play it for themselves.

Ambassador Organ

It’s been nearly two years since we put the organ into service, and while developments have been slow, we’ve been enjoying the organ immensely.  There have been a few teething issues, such as a failed amp (1 of 18, replaced under warranty), a rattle in one of the 21″ subs (not yet fixed), and the occasional sticky key, but the organ has generally performed very well.  I still make vain attempts to exorcise the remaining ceiling rattles, but those are not as noticeable as they once were.

I’m still running an early version of the 80-stop Romantic sample set from Silver Octopus.  This set includes the wonderful 10-rank string section plus many other goodies.  All those strings, plus the strings and celestes from Swell and Choir, spread across a 40-foot sound stage make a superb sound indeed!  Hopefully this is the year that the finalized 100-stop set is released.

I upgraded to HW4 shortly after it became available, and I immediately began experiencing crashes that I hadn’t seen before.  It turns out there is a thread limitation of sorts, either in OS X or in the QT library, that one encounters with a large number of CPUs and audio channels.  As usual, HW developer Martin Dyde worked closely with me for a number of weeks to provide an effective diagnosis and workaround.  Since then, HW4 has been rock solid and the new features are especially welcome.

Once the final samples are installed, I’d like to be able to record the organ properly.  I picked up some decent Rode cardioid mics and a tube preamp with A/D that lets me feed an optical signal back into the organ’s Mac Pro.  I experimented with various microphone arrangements (X-Y, ORTF) and placements but wasn’t satisfied with the results, which lacked deep bass and didn’t capture the reverb in the sanctuary.  These deficiencies are consistent with cardioid mics, so I needed something else that didn’t force me to start over.

After further research, I decided I had to try a Jecklin Disk, which uses two omnidirectional microphones with a baffle between them.  Omni mics can offer better bass response and should capture the room reverb.  The baffle restores a natural stereo image, since without it a pair of omni mics in close proximity would record virtually the same signal.  Thankfully the Rode mics can be converted to omnis without a major investment, so I ordered a set of omni capsules for them and built a Jecklin Disk.

This arrangement is a vast improvement, with good bass and room response.  So we should be set to post recordings sometime after the instrument is finished and voiced.

We’re pleased to have been joined by a delightful lady, Barbara, who has much music experience and can play the organ as needed.  It was just a couple Sundays ago that I was sitting in the back, not expecting to play or hear the organ at all that day, when I was totally surprised to hear the organ crank up for the closing hymn.  It was then I realized we had arrived: we have an organ, and I don’t have to be present for it to be enjoyed by everyone else.

Due to the move from MobileMe to iCloud by Apple, I’ve been forced to change hosters for this blog.  I still hear from readers, so in the hopes that it continues to benefit other HW users I’ve chosen to migrate everything (a very manual process).  Furthermore, notwithstanding the fact that the organ was and remains a memorial gift in honor of my dad, I’m referring henceforth to this project as the Ambassador Organ.  A double entendre of sorts, the organ resides at Ambassador Presbyterian Church in Apex, North Carolina, so named for the well known sentiment in 2 Corinthians 5:20.  And the organ is itself an ambassador for what is possible today through the wonders of Hauptwerk.

Case in point: here we have two kids (my nieces) playing the organ or eagerly awaiting a turn.  That’s what I’m talkin’ about!

Next steps are to attempt to fix the 21″ sub and to tweak the console firmware to allow use of HW4’s crescendo pedal support.

Full court press

One of the local newspapers, the Raleigh News & Observer, graciously interviewed us and published a story on the organ. Thankfully they didn’t post too much of my questionable playing, but the church is extremely grateful for the exposure. And I’ve already heard from a couple area organists, with whom I look forward to following up.

As I recently posted on the HW forums, I’ve had a specific set of samples in mind for some time now. I’m using the dry English Romantic samples from Charles Braund’s Silver Octopus Studios. Charles has samples from some of Father Willis’ finest instruments, and he has spent the last few years perfecting his dry sample editing techniques. The samples are the best dry ones I’ve heard to date, and no other single, coherent and comprehensive set—wet or dry—is large enough to meet the needs of my instrument. I have the 64-stop version running now, and I will upgrade to the 80/100 versions as they are finished. The demos on the Romantic samples page are well worth a listen.

My biggest issue now is what I feared years ago: ceiling rattles. Organs and grid ceilings don’t mix well! The drywall tiles seem OK, but several of the 16′ and 32′ pedal stops excite resonances in air registers, lights, etc., and it seems to have gotten worse over time. We’ll have to see about borrowing a lift and getting the worst of those nailed down while waiting for the remaining complement of samples.

Debut

Much has transpired in the short time since my last update.

We finally got the full complement of screens in place (thanks, Mike!), fully hiding the speakers, though some color adjustment in the center section may be required of us. In all, it is 13 sections covered by about 24 yards of grille cloth. I measured a prototype panel back in the garage, and there was no detectable coloring of the sound caused by the cloth.

All of the speaker cabinets are connected to the organ rack, which is connected by a single 50′ umbilical to the console. This long, narrow, securely-locked closet behind the stage effectively masks all noise from the PA and organ amplifiers. At the bottom of the rack is the amp I settled on for driving the largest subs; it’s a Peavey CS4080HZ, which runs cool and quiet, delivers 2040 watts per channel, and has not disappointed me at all. (Yes, it’s a bit overkill, but we’ve covered that already. ☺ )

I got the keyboard/mouse drawer mounted under the console, which has worked out beautifully (thanks, Shawn!). With help (Mike again), I also addressed a few other nagging issues, including sticking keys (probably due to the difference in humidity between garage and church), a weak solenoid driver chip that would move one and only one drawknob at a time, misadjusted rocker motor springs, uneven pedal spring tension, and cobwebs interfering with the pedal contacts (another artifact of the garage).

I upgraded the Mac Pro to Snow Leopard, installing that on an 80GB SSD, which greatly speeds both boot and organ loading times. I have about half of the full complement of bone-dry samples that I need, which itself yielded a 7000-line CODM file. And it took a full day to adjust all the speaker output levels and configure all of the input & output switches in Hauptwerk. The well-diffused acoustics helped here, as all 36 of my small bipolars were within a couple dB of each other before I started adjusting anything. Next I shuffled the drawknobs around and affixed a few round adhesive labels that I printed; I’ll have proper engraving done down the road after things have settled a bit.

In a minor departure from the AGO norm, I swapped the labels on the Great and Choir drawknob sections. That was necessary to accommodate my expected complement of 24 stops on the Great. The Choir is a smaller division, which is no handicap given that I have a separate Aetherial/Solo division.

Finally, after all that, I could hear the organ in a proper acoustic, and I confess to feeling a little giddy during my first playing session. I haven’t done any fine-grained voicing / regulation since I don’t have everything yet, but I’m thrilled with how the instrument is shaping up. The reeds sound very much in the room, the Choir/Swell strings make for a wonderfully warm and fuzzy accompaniment, and others have told me that the 32′ notes literally shake the entire building. (I think we may compress 20 years of normal building settling into just a few.) An organ of any size requires a certain gravitas, which IHMO is in evidence here.

The organ still isn’t finished, but it’s still larger than many complete instruments (or sample sets), so that hasn’t stopped us from using it in services. The first time out was Palm Sunday, when I just played a simple prelude and postlude. I ended with Manz’ “God of Grace” (courtesy Rob Stefanussen), soloing on the Tuba, and the congregation was kind enough to cheer and applaud after that. Easter Sunday is the excuse for many an organist to hit the Tutti piston, and I used a fairly large registration at the end of a couple of Easter hymns. My wife, who dislikes all loud things and especially frowns upon loud organ music, loved it and remarked that this congregation had never sung so loudly. Another big postlude yielded more spontaneous applause (and one complaint about the higher-volume passages from an all-too-predictable source (no relation to me!)), so I reckon we’re off to a fine start.

I can’t help but think some of the youth in attendance have rarely or never sung with an organ, a tragedy the rectification of which is one of the most rewarding parts of this project. In the fullness of time, I hope that seeing some of those same youth with musical talents develop an interest in playing the organ will be another.

And finally, though the organ isn’t finished, it would never be done without this:

Next steps are to incorporate the next infusion of samples and do some further cosmetic work, such as refinishing the parquet platform and touching up a few of the scrapes one finds on a 22-year-old piece of furniture.

The wood began to move

No, not Macbeth. The console! Eight sturdy guys showed up last week and made short work of moving the console to its new home. It was a nail-biter watching the console roll down the steep truck ramps, but the whole move took only about 90 minutes.

We got a dusting of snow on moving day, but it could have been worse. The weather has often been uncooperative for the organ project, be it blistering sun while cutting speaker panels, rain showers while painting, or hordes of small insects landing in wet paint.

I didn’t enjoy this part at all. I’m actually hiding in this picture, ready to mount a futile attempt to catch the console if it rolled over to one side.

Newly in place. This was about the largest item some of these guys had moved, and they didn’t hesitate to snap a few pictures with their cell phones.

Band practice on the new stage, with the obligatory profusion of fake plants. It’ll be interesting to try some band/organ combos. There was some consternation on others’ parts earlier in the project about the sheer size of the console, but IMHO it really looks terrific and not at all outsized sitting in its new home. And several other furniture pieces, such as the lectern, are being custom-built to match the console.

That’s Link of the Rhett & Link comedy team. He found the organ to be a convenient arm rest, if nothing else.

All the various organ controls have proven irresistible to small fingers. The console doesn’t have the typical locking roll-top, so my talented wife made this spiffy snap-on cover for it. The console still needs a key to operate, but the cover should dissuade the kids a little.

Today was the first service in the new building. The building project has been underway for over five years, and the church has met in public school buildings for all of its 12-year life, so the excitement was palpable. It was never my intention to have the organ running on opening day, as I have to sleep sometime, but it was gratifying to have lots of folks ask when it would be ready.

We’ve re-racked all the electronics in the closet, so the current task is running wire to all of the speakers. I was too cheap to buy new speaker wire, so I had hours of fun splicing together all the wire I had used in the garage. We’re still building the screen panels, and the first installment of samples should arrive any day now. Next steps are to set up Snow Leopard on an SSD, start writing the new CODM file, and design the memorial plaque.

Organ transplant

After four and a half years of blood, sweat and tears, the organ move has begun. All 47 speaker cabinets are now in their new home. The planned layout has changed a little based on input from others:

That sure is a lot of speakers! Anyone who hadn’t visited the garage recently didn’t quite know what to make of this display.

It really helps to have committed helpers who believe in the project, not to mention a scissor lift and subwoofer cabinets that scoff at the weight of three adults.

Here is one of the upper chambers, each with 14 cabinets, spaced out to let the 12 bipolars’ rear wave emerge. Even twelve feet off the floor, the 21″ woofers look huge. The entire grouping was later shifted inwards to match the above rendering. The smallest panel will be removable for access.

The center section above the wiring closet, with 19 cabinets. The bottom row fit with less than an inch to spare, although we had alternate layouts ready in case they didn’t. This reminds me of singing in a choir just inches in front of a pipe organ. It was loud, but tolerable, around 90 dB. I suspect it’ll be similar for folks on this stage.

And the full view, with speakers all the way across. The single white hanging speaker is for PA and band music; peak power: 1500 watts. Organ peak power: 8560 watts. Of course, typical use will be a tenth of that, but a large pipe organ is an object of immense power, and this uncompromising virtual pipe organ will be no different.

Several folks pointed out that the speakers look so good that it’s a shame to hide them. Of course, they were all guys. But the plan for months has been to build grille cloth screens that double as projection surfaces. For that to work, absolutely everything behind the screens must be flat black.

Here are a couple of the first frames, ready for cloth:

And here are a few finished ones. It’s amazing how the frames and everything behind them almost completely disappear.

Here’s a projected image, somewhat washed out by the adjacent overhead light. The image quality is surprisingly good on the grille cloth, considering that some light is lost through the screen. The front row of overhead lights won’t be on during screen use.

I built a 50-foot umbilical to connect console to closet, and I installed the organ keyboard drawer. Next steps are to continue building screen panels, move the console, and break down all the electronics for transport.

Ready to rumble

Since my last update, I’ve been focused on reproducing the 16 Hz fundamentals produced by 32-foot ranks. A typical home subwoofer doesn’t have to go nearly so low, as room gain can enhance the lowest frequencies. I can’t rely on that phenomenon in a 350-seat room.

Bass is all about moving air, so I bought a couple of 21″ subwoofer drivers that boast a 2.5″ stroke and handle 1500 watts. Then I built a pair of 20 cu. ft. boxes tuned to 16 Hz. The port is 8″ PVC flared to about 10″ on both ends.

Here are a few pics of the two new subs:

Driver and port:

Rear port flare:

Unlike my other subs, these have no integrated driver for the higher frequencies, but all channels of a digital organ must be full-range. So I got a rack-mount active crossover and will use smaller cabinets for the upper harmonics. It’s difficult to measure speakers like this even with proper equipment, but I still need to test them, if only to adjust the crossover. Here’s how they did:

As shown, this cabinet is extremely strong at 16 Hz. From the garage, using an amplifier capable of only 800 watts, it can be felt throughout the house at that frequency. The upper ranges aren’t all that flat, but I’m using the two-way horn-loaded prototypes I built 18 months ago. This is perfectly suitable for big pedal stops and should do justice to the Contra Bombarde 32′, the Double Open Wood 32′, and everything in between. I’m still looking for the optimum amplifier to drive these two cabinets. It must be capable of extremely high power but have very little fan noise when not driven hard; that’s an unusual combination in large pro amps.

The building continues progressing nicely. Here we see the completed front wall, with the upper chambers painted black so that the speakers don’t show through the grille cloth panels:

The acoustics of this auditorium have been carefully engineered. The ceiling tiles are drywall. The steel studs in all of the walls have wood inserts to prevent ringing. The room is ringed with floor-to-ceiling outrounds to eliminate echoes and create a diffuse sound field. The round window was enlarged to function as a bass trap. A normal conversation at one corner of the room is easily heard in the opposite corner, around 90′ away. The reverb of the space is around 3 seconds now, but that will fall below 2 seconds with the addition of carpet, chairs and people.

Here are some of the wall diffusers:

Next steps are to build the grille cloth panels, assemble the console umbilical cable, install the console keyboard drawer, and write a Hauptwerk CODM file.

Accommodations

The new church building that will host this organ is coming along well. We’ve gone the extra mile to ensure good acoustics–a live space with 1.5 to 2 seconds of reverberation but no distinct echoes–and we’ve also reached final agreements on the details of the organ installation.

The room is rectangular with a high, sloping ceiling. There are multiple windows on the front wall, and some folks were adamant that sight lines to these windows could not be obstructed at all. There are also steel beams and columns on the wall that extend into the space. And finally, there must also be accommodation for one or two projection screens that do not interfere with the organ sound. After many, many revisions, discussions, and on-site experiments, here is the final layout for speakers and electronics:

The small turquoise speakers are the 8′ bipolars and will be generally arranged into divisions (Great center, Swell upper left, Choir upper right). We took care to ensure adequate depth and space around the bipolars for the rear wave to easily emanate into the room. The green boxes are the 16′ full-range pedal division cabinets. All of these are ready today.

Beneath the center array is a 20′ x 4′ closet that will house all of the organ electronics, house PA gear, and other miscellaneous items. This closet should be sufficient to mask any fan noise from the electronics, but if anyone can hear that, I’ll call it “organ blower noise”. In-wall conduits allow us to route the speaker cables onto the upper platforms.

The blue boxes, each with a single companion turquoise box, are the planned 32′ subs capable of high output at 16 Hz. Placing them on the edges effectively locates them in a corner, which should boost output somewhat. I’ve ordered the drivers for these cabinets and am finalizing the design details now. Note that one cannot find a driver capable of these frequencies that can match the efficiency of the small full-range cabinets, so these two channels will necessarily use a bi-amp arrangement with active crossovers. Having a pair of these enables a proper 64′ resultant in the pedal.

All speakers will be hidden from view by white grille cloth panels, and those coverings on the upper sections will serve double-duty as the projection screens. We looked into commercially available perforated projection screens, but those are very expensive and color the sound unacceptably; venues that use them must use signal processors to compensate for that coloration, but that’s prohibitive with our 48 channels. Our experiments have shown that the grille cloth’s performance as a screen is satisfactory for our needs.

The support structures and closet are nearing completion:

Front of closet:

Inside closet, with lots of electrical capacity:

Upper platform:

View from top of closet. This room will seat 350. The welcoming double doors at the back are seven feet wide to admit the rolling console platform. The ceiling grid will be just below the pictured ducts. We are NOT using acoustic ceiling tiles, which would represent a huge sound-absorbing surface. Instead, the grid will contain sound-reflective drywall squares.

Obviously this part of the project wasn’t done in a vacuum, and I’m immensely grateful for the input and support from everyone involved. I’m extremely pleased with the accommodations that have been afforded the organ, and we’re all looking forward to seeing the project completed in the first half of 2010.

I learned after the fact that the project was recently noticed by HackADay, where an interesting discussion ensued. Most folks ultimately seemed to grasp that this project started with an orphaned organ console that required significant rehabilitation to restore it to working order. I’m not sure I’d call it a hack, though 😉

Organ Power

Organ progress continues to be swift. In the last six weeks I have…

• Bought a 2009 eight-core Mac Pro, at long last expelling Windows from the organ forever. It’s worth it. Really.
• Added a MOTU micro lite MIDI interface and two MOTU 24I/O audio interfaces.
• Evaluated a few small amplifiers, made a final selection (Samson Servo 120a), and purchased 18 of them.
• Racked everything, which itself takes far more time than one expects.
• Solved the problem of power control.

So with 42 channels active so far, the organ makes a huge, grand, pervasive sound. And that’s just with a CODM version of the free St. Anne’s, Moseley organ in the garage. I can’t wait to hear ~100 dry stops in a large, organ-friendly space. I ran into a performance issue related to the Mac Pro’s hyperthreaded Nehalem CPUs, but Hauptwerk’s legendary customer service provided a workaround within 24 hours.

All of the audio connections are balanced, so I shouldn’t have to deal with hum/noise issues. The small amps are convection cooled, so they’re noiseless, and they’re the coolest-running of all the amps I tried. Still, that’s a fair amount of heat crammed into a small space; a box fan running slowly keeps everything cool to the touch. All of the amps, plus the 24I/O units, have signal meters, and it’s fun to watch all of those LEDs dancing while the music plays. All the amps and D/A hardware fit into a single rack:

After installation, the hardware will be securely locked away. So the biggest issue is how to turn everything on and off conveniently from the console. It’d be nice to build a turnkey system, so that the console keyswitch controls everything. But that’s rather challenging, as the only way I know to turn on the Mac Pro remotely is by using a Wake-On-Lan magic packet, and I haven’t found a simple purpose-built module for doing that and I don’t have time to build one. So my plan instead is to leave the Mac Pro sleeping most of the time, allowing the organist to wake it with a simple keystroke.

But all the audio hardware is a different problem. With the Mac awake, I can access a network, so I acquired a few APC 790x network-controlled power strips and wrote a native Mac OS X application to control them. The Organ Power app starts when the computer boots, and a single button click (‘Start Organ’) is all that is needed to power up all the audio hardware in the proper sequence and start Hauptwerk. Clicking ‘Stop Organ’ shuts down Hauptwerk, powers the rack gear down in the opposite order, and puts the Mac to sleep. Controlling the power up/down sequences is critical to avoiding loud pops and other unpleasant noises. And amplifiers typically consume a large inrush current for a second or two after being switched on, so setting them to power on one at a time prevents any circuit breaker trips.

I’m actually rather pleased with these APC units, as they’re very configurable and feature-rich. It’s almost comical what they support. I really don’t care to receive emails from my power strips, thanks, but they’ll do it. Here are the power distribution units:

The non-intelligent power strips in between the smart ones are a fail-safe measure. In case one of the APC units fails, I can move the cords to an adjacent strip and keep the organ in service.

Here’s a screenshot of the power control program, sporting two ridiculously large buttons:

It’s really cool to hear all the amplifiers clicking on and watch all the corresponding on-screen indicators transition from red to green. The application is data-driven using an XML file, so I don’t have to recompile it to make changes to the power control hardware.

I’m having a keyboard/mouse drawer made to match the console finish. So this instrument won’t look at all like a science experiment or be too intimidating to a non-technical organist. However, the goal is not to hide the fact that a computer is part of the solution. The computer itself adds too much value for that, such as the unlimited storage of combination files.

The next steps are to address the 16 Hz problem for reproducing 32-foot stops and finalize the installation details with the various building committees. The former already seems a lot easier than the latter! On a personal note, I turn 40 today. I still have to go to my day job, but I think I’ll take the day off from organ building. Maybe.

42

What is 42?  Why, it’s The Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything.  But what is the question?

For me, it’s the minimum number of speakers needed for my Hauptwerk-based virtual organ.  After much experimentation last year, I began building speakers in earnest around the beginning of 2009, and I’ve just finished the planned set of 42 cabinets.  Six are my large two-way, full-range boxes that are flat to 25 Hz and form most of the pedal division.  The remaining thirty-six are the bipolar, full-range boxes that I’ve detailed previously.  I chose that number to give me maximum flexibility in how I set up HW’s multi-channel output groups; I intend to use six-speaker groups initially.

I admit I paid a friend to help me cut the lumber, as well as to put together some of the boxes. But I cut all the holes and biscuit slots, did all the painting, and performed all the final assembly. The large boxes are 3/4″ plywood; the small ones are 3/4″ MDF. Except for the top panel, all joints are screwed and glued, so these cabinets are very strong. The smaller boxes alone required around 2300 biscuit slots, 1100 wood screws, 384 machine screws, and 72 ten-inch full-range drivers. I’m very ready to do something else for a change!

Here are the last four pedal cabinets undergoing final assembly:

The initial 24 smaller boxes:

The last dozen being painted:

And all 42:

The pedal boxes are driven by Crown XLS-802 amplifiers. I’m currently evaluating several smaller amps before choosing one or two models to drive the manual divisions. So I have yet to hear the entire chorus of speakers at once, but given how just ten sound, I can’t wait.

I will have 48 outputs available, so I have some remaining flexibility. If I need more power for that Tuba Mirabilis, I can add in the horn-loaded prototypes I built last year. And once I acquire the remaining amplifiers, I’ll know how much budget remains to implement a solution to the 16 Hz problem.

And finally, after years of planning, the intended home for this organ is finally under construction: