The ONLY instrument with NO LIMITS
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 4 พ.ค. 2024
- Produced by Nahre Sol and Julius Meltzer
Edited by Nahre Sol
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I thought the loudest instrument was the coughing between movements...
Coughing in piano and pianissimo parts is an art😇😲. That's why there are so many «artists» performing in so many recordings.😤🤬
I thought Donald Trump was the loudest tool 😂😂
@@nicodesmidt4034do you mean by Donald trumpet
@@A.a.s.t.o.r.the.radio.demon. yeah, sorry 😃👍
Yeah, that true, and since the typical classical audience is about 5000 years old, going to 6000 soon, it won't get quieter any time soon.
If you were an organ builder in Bach's day you didnt just build an organ in the room, you built a room around the organ
Bit of an overstatement, but it has some truth. I still think a lot of bickering went on between the organbuilder whose purpose was sound and the cathedral architect whose purpose was impressing the masses with imposing structures.
It’s still somewhat true today - renovating or replacing an organ is a serious architectural undertaking, and frequently it will only be done when the rest of the building is being renovated or rebuilt. And any building with a pipe organ generally has to be designed with the organ incorporated from the outset.
@@user-tn4nr5hm6u You and him are both kind of wrong. Because the organ isn´t just the pipes and keyboard. The whole building is the organ. The "room" it is in being it´s resonance body. Which is why organs in cathedrals have a sound to them that cannot be matched by organs situated in buildings not build for sound.
You mean Bach in the day?
@@user-tn4nr5hm6uThe other users are right man, while most churches didn't have an organ, the ones that did took that into the design very seriously, so much so that chambers where sound went had special features and resonance chambers. Look up Helmholtz Resonator they used ceramic pots placed in the roof and rooms where the sound bounced.
What I love about organs:
* You sit inside a building, and the building houses, and becomes the instrument.
* You are surrounded by, and shaken physically by, pipes several times taller than you are.
* You are listening to a space, filled with sound, not just sound.
I love all that, too, as an organist!
This is why my metal band uses 200 watt amps in a little tiny basement. It's not to flex, it's fun to make the building dance a little too!
Yes it feels amazing!
@@TheTurtleneck64 gotta love some tinnitus for flavor
With a pipe organ, the instrument IS the building.
That is such an outrageous idea, and I love it so much!!! 🥹
very well said ... i also like the fact that i happened to be the two hundred twenty second (222) person to like this comment! ^_^
If the piano is a typewriter for harmony, the organ is a conductor for an army of mischievous elves with whistles
My dad is an organist. At home he has a two manual reed organ. I'm not sure what kind of organ he plays at church now. But he's frequently played pipe organs and when I was a kid he had a pipe organ in pieces in our large garage. While true that pipe organs are integrated into the building, smaller pipe organs exist which are able to be taken apart and moved from one location to another, but not on a regular basis because they're still big and you wouldn't want to do it more than once.
I live in Christchurch, New Zealand, and of the 78 or so pipe organs in the greater Christchurch area, only something like 16 or 18 were playable, and only 4 were fully intact following the Feb 22 2011 earthquake. Many were destroyed. It was heartbreaking for organ lovers in the area.
Condoléances.
One of the best music channels for beginners is Music Matters. Gareth is an organist. The only harsh criticism is that they hardly ever have a view of his hands on the keyboard.
man that was a crazy mass shooting a few years back, huh?
@@shgdshectic
@@shgds This has absolutely nothing to do with organs.
@@gab_gallard a lot of organs were damaged there for sure
As a listener rather than a musician, the unique thing about pipe organs is that they are not just an instrument the size of a building. In a certain sense the building IS the instrument, and you are sitting inside the soundbox. No other instrument in the world can envelop you in it's sound quite like a pipe organ.
You can say that again, Nahre! - Greetings from a retired concert organist, but still active as a pipe organ technician in sunny Florida :) For anybody interested I recommend checking out Anna Lapwood and Thomas Mellan; both are contemporary organists who succeed attracting younger audiences to the King of Instruments.
Hey, thanks for your suggestion! Will check them out ❤
To be sure about Anna Lapwood, but Ben Maton (The Salisbury Organist) helped me understand--with the use of much smaller and older organs--the interplay between stops and multiple keyboards. It's all wonderful how Nahre is growing as a musician!
I think that Anna Lapwood in particular is someone you would get on well with.
What is Anna Lapwood up to these days? She hasnt posted in a couple of months. Anyone heard Cameron Carpenter? Check out his covers of Carmen Variations and Chopin op 10 no 12. He plays Chopin's arpeggios on the pedals! Its insane
@@shackamaxon512 She is more active on Instagram and Facebook; just on her first USA tour.- I didn't mention Cameron Carpenter because I am not sure if he is still active as concert organist... I haven't heard from him in quite a while.
The thing where organists use special shoes with soft soles and special heels so that they can feel the pedals and play them alternating between heel and toe IS AMAZING. I'm always impressed by a great organist's ability to switch between all of the manuals, sometimes playing two at a time with ONE hand, and play chords on the pedals, and pull stops IN THE MIDDLE OF A SONG without stopping. Just amazing. A great organist is truly a musician's musician. One aspect of playing the organ to which Nahre barely alluded, is that depending on the stop and the types of pipes being played, the organist will change their playing style to better emulate the instrument being emulated by the pipes. For instance, playing the forward facing trumpet pipes like trumpets rather than strings.
Call me ayrton senna cos I’m rev matching the organ
More impressive is those who do it without shows at all.. Special shoes are not necessary and are really for show. Paul Fey plaz amazingly well with socks.
You may be interested in the videos LOOK MUM NO COMPUTER did, where he disassembled a pipe organ that was built into an organist's house, and rebuilt it and MIDI-fied it in his museum. You get to see all the details of the mechanism as he slowly gets it working again.
Really enjoyed that series
I thought of this too. And wondered does it still count as 'the same instrument' in a different environment? - you might have to relearn it even if it didn't have any new parts, but I guess that gets a bit hazy with acoustics and amplified music
I've played it 🙂 It's a bit ropey for actual human playing but the things he has done with midi and computer control are brilliant!
@@lilyl5492 Ship of Theseus question, but yes, interesting thought
Professional organist here - so glad for this video! That you for bringing this wonderful instrument to a new audience! So fun to get your fresh perspective on things too.
Please make a video talking about hearing damage among people playing the organ, a topic with not nearly enough attention...
I love that as good as she is, she still gets excited about learning new things.
The pipe organ is an amazing sound.
Organ: when the instrument is the room
It's like old-school computers
@foxjcket - Exactly (for better, or worse ...). I would much rather hear a modest organ in a good acoustic than an exceptional organ in a poor acoustic.
I've been an organist for nearly 50 years, and recently I have spent a lot of time learning difficult piano literature. This has improved my organ technique immensely, so apparently cross-training works both ways! I'm also a pipe organ builder, so I really appreciate this video!
Seated cross-legged on a bench in an airport many years ago, with the small 3-octave keyboard nestled in your lap and headphones on, you transported us to a realm of 'nie erhörte Klänge'-unheard-of sounds, as Schoenberg would say. It wasn't a traditional concert setting, but the intimacy and creativity of the moment made it all the more special. Your exploration of new perspectives in music, from the grand halls of the Hamburg Philharmonie to the more intimate setting of your own space, is truly inspiring.
I love the way Nahre looked up as if she could see the waves of sound bouncing around the hall.
What i love about the organ is that every organ is a unique instrument. How its build, how it sounds, how it fits the room. No organ is the same. I've been an intern at Johannus Orgelbouw in the Netherlands and its amazing how (even though digital) those organs are build. They even have hybrid organs, digital and real pipe sounds.
Love that animation @ 9:22 to describe the difference of feeling with the sound emitting elsewhere. It would be like playing through a massive PA.
That is a very well-done and representative graphic. An organist must truly learn to play the room as well as the instrument
A very idiosyncratic PA whose acoustics you control through one or more pedals, yes. 😁
I think of it more like the player and audience are inside the speaker cabinet
I may be both a metalhead and an electronic music fan, but the full pipe organ is my favorite instrument of all time. I'm not a spiritual or religious person but the sound of the pipe organ is so powerful that calling it the "voice of the divine" is honestly a very accurate statement. When played in a major key, no instrument is more triumphant. When played in a minor key, no instrument is more menacing.
The organ was designed to be the instrument to rule them all. Brass, strings, woodwinds, chorus, an ENTIRE ORCHESTRA all at the hands of one person. It’s truly a grand wonder of engineering, and I think it plays its role pretty damn well.
The organ and the piano are completely different instruments that happen to have the same input method. From the point of view of a pianist, the organ is a striking change which lays bare your finger-legato and articulation without that sustain pedal. But the organ also sustains a simple SATB harmony better than a piano could, and has the ability to play a solo melody with a bugle or flute stop. Expression is different because you can’t make pinky-notes loud or thumb-notes soft, but you also have the ability to make the whole individual keyboard softer or louder. It’s a completely unique instrument that happens to use a keyboard.
Where have you seen a bugle stop??
@@organist1982 I just mean the trompette chamade. One of my teachers called it a bugle. Am I the only one that thinks of it as a bugle now?
@@JohnNathanShopper Hmm, ok! 😅
Only part of the finger motion is similar input. The stops and footwork along with HOW you play the keys are different. The organ and piano do NOT have the same input method.
@@paulmartin2348 This is true, but it’s something a pianist doesn’t instinctively realize, and it’s something Nahre doesn’t realize in this video. Pianists tend to see the organ as a broken piano. They need to realize how different it is going in. The organ is similar to the piano in the way that playing volleyball is similar to ping pong.
Around 8 years ago I had the privilege of frequently playing a fantastic historical organ. Playing Interstellar was a true experience.
It also profoundely shifted how I approached the piano, just like Nahre described!
It’s a lot like additive synthesis, with all the different overtones getting added together.
Though what you described with the compressors is electromechanical, not electronic.
I’ve always found organs fascinating. Some early bass synthesisers had feet controls because of how synthesisers co-evolved with smaller electric (tonewheel), then electronic (divide-down) organs.
Adding reverb to my instruments changes how I play too, you integrate the space of the reverb into the playing more in a way you just don’t get when you hear a dry sound.
The organ is literally an acoustic synthesizer!
Organs have become more and more electronic over recent decades - the linkages from the keyboard to the pipes went from mechanical to electromechanical to electronic - and now entirely digital "pipe" organs are a thing, using sampling, physical modeling, and other techniques to emulate pipe organ sounds, while still enabling the free-flow combination of organ stops. Adoption of digital organs is a bitter subject of debate - I think places like the Elbphilharmonie would rightfully go nowhere near them - but the economics are hard to ignore in a lot of places.
Not like additive synthesis, but literal additive synthesis. If you add sine waves corresponding to pipe stops in a synth, you'll get an organ sound. A sharp attack will make it sound like an electric organ, but an attack slower than 0 milisec will make it sound like a pipe organ.
@@crisoliveira2644 That's one way to emulate a pipe organ, yes, but not the only way, and not an especially efficient way.
@@ods94065It can be if you use an additive synth
7:37 I hear Keith Emerson there! So good.
I had the same thought.
I immediately had to listen to Parallels…
Listen to Yuja Wang playing Kasputin
So Keith Emerson like !
Pipe organs actually go down to 16hz (instruments with 32’ stops) but technically there are a handful of rare organs that even have 64’ pedal stops which go down to 8hz.
that's only a fundamental frequency and remember that when you combine higher harmonics you get effectively their fundamental (residual) frequency. When you combine 16' and 10 2/3' you get a resultant tone of acoustical length 32'. Known method of doing that in organbuilding.
There is also one organ with a 128' stop, just over 4hz
@@seth094978 There isn't. There are only two organs with true full-length 64ft pipes - Atlantic City Boardwalk Hall and Sydney Town Hall. Atlantic City does have a quint stop within the same rank of pipes that allows it to give a resultant 128ft, but I doubt if it is effective.
wait till the younger generations discover the pipe organ has the most powerful bass xD
“The hydraulis was used at outdoor public entertainments; its sound was loud and penetrating. Its use declined in the West by the 5th century AD, although Arab writers of the 9th century refer to it. *Later medieval writers thought the hydraulis was a steam-whistle organ such as the calliope*.”
We seem to have bad memories eh? Musical instruments were peak tech back in the day ❤.
Instruments always push the limits of the technology of the day they’re invented :) keyed wind instruments reflect steam engine interlocks, brass valve instruments later steam valves, electric guitars using then-new solid state components and filters and amplifiers… and so on.
Pipe organs used wooden reed expertise, then moved to the expertise of whistle makers and so on; as well as integrating steam-powered air compressors, then diesel etc, before finally universally moving to electric motors… I love how musical instruments reflect the tech of their time.
I am a simple church organist. I'm good, far from great. But... having said that, the organ has taught me to listen. I've been told may choral conductors began as organists because we need to hear everything. I think of the difference between playing organ vs piano as the organ is about fingers, whereas the piano is about the entire body. When I watch great organists the body is far more still than I see in pianists. Maybe that's just me. Enjoy your time on the organ!
One of the difficulties in playing the pedal board is that you need to twist the body without pushing off with your feet in order to play the extremes of the pedal board. This is also true of the pedal clavichord which is particularly sensitive to pressure on the feet. This means that you must be very aware of body mechanics at all times as it can affect the timing and even the sound in some instances. One organist of my acquaintance said that the best lesson he ever had was from a chiropractor who was watching his body mechanics and posture as he was playing.
Such a beautiful and thoughtful video…as always, Nahre
Wonderful... the only way I as a pianist can ever truly understand the mighty organ is to have a truly adept pianist explain it - and this you are doing so well. Thank you immensely! Oh, and by the way, kudos to you for your residency here - truly impressive! 👏🏻👏🏻
Thank you for the insight on pipe organ, Nahre. Also to all wonderful people featured in this video. Wish you all the best on your activities and residency in Elbphilharmonie.
I listen to the pipe organ at the local church sometimes when they practice during the daytime, also not far from me is the church which houses the organ Handel composed the Chandos anthems on when he stayed at canons.
Thanks for doing the extra work to document your journey here. It’s really fascinating.
“What do you play?”
“The building
“What?”
Wow. A beautiful journey inside a whole instrument.
Thanks Nahre
Great video! In just two hours at the organ you managed to describe the last three years of me as a pianist learning the organ. And everything you said was also true for me! Learning the organ has made me a much better musician in every way (much less reliant on muscle memory, playing more consequently and consciously, playing into the space, listening to the sound I’m making, much more conscious of dynamics, less reliant on the sustain pedal, better sight reader, better at improvising, better at reharmonizing, better at playing by ear. It has been a wonderful experience and I would recommend it to everyone!
Very interesting. I enjoyed the pianist playing an organ for the first time experiences and takeaways. And OMG, what an organ to play as a first instrument! And yes, I think it translated back to your piano work well. Those pieces you were playing of yours were superb. Maybe you should consider making a concert video of some of your favorite self composed works. I would listen. You could talk about what you were thinking, as well, your normal mode, but just the music after that 'what it is' in full length would be wonderful.
No microphone or speaker can reproduce the feeling of listening to an organ live. It is a unique experience.
Actually that's true for large, complex symphonic pieces as well, even WITH zero-"compressed" DSM audio on SACDs (Super Audio CDs) and on a super sound system (high-end tower speakers, matched center speaker, powered sub-woofers, all correctly keyed to the room). STILL never more than "somewhat close" to live.
One of the really interesting accompanying anecdotes I remember hearing was how not only was the organ part of the room as it was built into the building, but that often the building and the room were built as part of the organ, meaning the reverberation and shape of the room was to compliment and push the sound around to make the best experience for the audience.
You could install a practice room instrument at home - a quieter and smaller pipe organ will get you the overall technique. You can even get an electronic organ to practice on. Tracker action organs put you up against the pipes.
pipe organs are, in my opinion, the most complete and comprehensive demonstration of the power (both literally and metaphorically) of music. an electric guitar has energy, a grand piano has elegance and a lesser but still notable amount of power, a percussion instrument brings force to an otherwise flat and lifeless tune, and an organ can do all of these at once.
The Organ is just such an exemplary instrument. If you want to feel all emotions of music, listen to organs; they sing the songs the best.
Pipe organs are really synthesizers. Not as much as the electrical part nor the option to choose among sets of pipes that sound different, but because you add stops for different overtones. That's literally additive synthesis.
pretty loud, but still quieter than a dad sneezing.
I absolutely love it that you gave us the button and knot tips in the end
Nahre, your discoveries here exactly match my experience as I transitioned from piano to organ, and covers exactly what I love about the instrument. Nice stuff!
My organ teacher used to complain that becoming an organist destroyed his feel for, and touch on, the piano. I don't know if that's a thing - I haven't felt that way in my own musical journey, though I am just a journeyman on both - but given the change in your playing at the end, if you keep going down this path, I wonder what your experience will be like reconciling the two very different instruments.
Fabulous dive into the organ journey.
I subbed on the organ at my local church as a teen/young adult a couple times. Had years on the piano, Rhodes, many synthesizers and electric organs.
Totally a novice when put in front of the small pipe organ. Humbled, would be an understatement!
Always love your playing!
Amazing and very inspirational!
Thank you
That was a brilliant perspective of a pianist starting on the organ! I realised the same change in listening further than my instrument, when I started playing organ after years of piano. I forget who, but someone said something like, "the most important stop on the organ is the building", and I think this is true for all instruments.
I have a love/hate relationship with organ music because it is so loud and strident but when it's love it's LOVE. Thank you for teaching us so much about it!
I think the same can be said for any music -- organ, piano, orchestral, choral, etc. I've heard pieces in each of those which I love, and other pieces which I greatly dislike.
Not all organ pieces are loud. There are stops on some organs that are so quiet they can barely be heard over the blowers.
Fascinating, Nahre, that sums up many things I always wanted to understand about this magnificent creature-like instrument, thanks so deeply for doing this! ❤😊🙏
i loved every moment of this and greatly appreciate this perspective. this is the type of insight I could have dreamed for as a child. real application. real experience shared . real feedback and open transparent honesty. reflection has helped me grow personally. i feel everyday is another day growing with music. thank you so much ! this is great!
Very cool video, thank you! Especially on the difference between playing a physical piano and a keyboard that's far from a giant sound engine that fills the room from the edges.
Thank you! This helped me to clarify a discussion with friends about differences and similarities between organ and piano. A very interesting video (even though I there are still only 2 and a half composers whose organ music I like).
thanks for a very thoughtful and insightful presentation. Lots of considerations I'd never thought of, comparing organs and pianos as sound sources.
Here's an idea to help compose on an organ at home - you can use a synth and give it long attack and release times.
This way you can get used to the slowness, you wouldn't be able to do fast percussive stuff, and you'll have to be deliberate with your playing
Welcome to my world! (organ and piano) . Now you can understand why I love playing both the piano and organ -- two very different and very gratifying worlds -- hard to play a 32' bombarde on a piano, hard to play Debussy and Rachmaninoff on an organ.
And yes -- in a piano performance, the acoustic ceratinly makes a difference, in a piano performance it's about 90% piano and 10% room; with an organ it's more like 50% instrument and 50% room. With the organ, you learn to play the room as well as the instrument. I'm so glad to see you're enjoying this expansive experience! I hope you will be able to try multiple high-quality instruments of varying sizes and in different acoustics to gain an understanding and experience of how unique each instrument can be in terms of intent, design, and implementation -- not unlike discovering the nuances of many fine wines. It's a big world out there. Enjoy!
I didn't expect to take emotional impact from your evolution on the piano. I'm glad the pipe organ had this effect on you.
Thanks for sharing your experience and insights on playing a pipe organ vis-a-vis a piano 👍🏻
Wonderful video! I'm really happy that you are having these great experiences
I really appreciate the mind shift to thinking about the whole space as effectively part of your instrument applied to piano or other instruments. It reminds me of some of the adjustments I learned to make when playing upright bass on a typical amplified club or festival stage to always ask if they could cut the low frequencies from the stage monitors. If i didn't get that, the low end of the bass would be too much for my bandmates, they would ask for less bass in the monitors, would really only hear the reflection of the bass off the back wall, and we would drag. Thinking not only a out my own instrument, but my instrument in ensemble, and then my instrument in a space really does change how and even what i play. It's really cool to learn how the pipe organ forces that lesson.
It is worth comment that this made you listen deferentially, music like anything immediately consumable, is like conversation, thank you for maintaining the craft's integrity
What a wonderful video! I never knew just how incredible the organ was!
This is great, thanks! maybe next a video about the harmonium or pump organ would also be very cool!
It has always fascinated me. I did get to hear one in a cave when I was little. Last night when I first listened to this, we started having gully washer style rain here, and it made me wonder about what can happen with and without humidity in various instrument sounds, like guitar and flutes, and wood instruments. I know it seems like metal pipe shouldn't change all that much, but I think they can because of another childhood experience of vocalizing through various "headache racks" on the backs of my dad's welding rigs and winch frames. It is cool to hear how you shifted your way of playing to get the stuff you wanted out of it. Thanks for sharing this with us❣️😎
Depending on how they're built, organs can experience some interesting effects. In one church where I played the organ had half of the pipes on one side of the chancel, and the rest of the pipes on the other side. The sun came up on one side and made that side warmer than the other side, which caused the pipes on the sunny side to go out of tune with the pipes on the shaded side. The organ had to be tuned around 11 A.M. in order to use both sides during a Sunday morning service.
Thanks for sharing! I an amateur organist, it s great to see how you approach and appreciate the organ. Btw old organs sometimes have meantone temparature. Which is a new sound experience also. (and also percussion style / minimal music works really well in my humble opinion)
Wow!. What a beautiful video. Thanks a LOT!!!
Loved that piano piece you were practicing. Amazing recording quality of that. You nailed the summary of challenges playing organ. 1) No sustain pedal to simplify transitions between notes. 2) The hall is part of the instrument. 3) Multiple ranks of keys AND foot pedals to play. 4) Most important, the time lag between your hand and hearing the sound would be VERY difficult to adjust to. And that delay is different for every organ based upon its mechanism and its environment. QUESTION: What kind of cable is used to allow the console to sit in the middle of the stage? How do those inputs get mapped back to the physical core of the machine? That looks like one massive MIDI cable. (smile). For another example of someone who has amazing playing ability with her feet on organ, look up Barbara Dennerlein and watch anything she plays on a Hammond B3.
Barbara Denerlein is amazing, one of the outstanding B3 players of the last 30 years, and underrated at that.
Answering to your question, nowadays the cable is often simply an optical fiber. It used to be bunch of individual electrical wires in common shield. I'm speaking only about the movable organ console. The fixed console may be connected also via a mechanical tracker or tubular pneumatic action.
Last night, I was just playing a glorious Organ sounding Preset on the Modeler I use with guitar, and the magestic tones were mesmerizing. It made me wish I had MIDI on my guitar for more accurate tracking, etc.
The Organ is a magnificent instrument, and it is something I longed to play when I was a child, but it was not available. Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition transcribed and played by Calvin Hampton on Organ is fantastic. The only place I could find a recording of it is on SoundCloud, and though the transfer from Vinyl has some fidelity problems, it is still a wonderous achievement and very enjoyable. Thanks
Phenomenal video, so interesting. I’m a hobby pianist and can’t even imagine how a person can master that
Hello medcrisis :)
Yes, it's the King. You should try playing Bach it in a church, that's real power. I still remember attending one of Bach's passions in a big church. The low tones were so powerful that the benches vibrated!
Merci, Nahre. My secret most favoritest instrument.
On the other side of the Pipe organ is the theatre organ, you can have everything a classical pipe organ has, plus all the orchestral stops etc too. Plus pianos, glockenspiel, drums, cymbals, bird whistles, car horns, sleigh bells, xylophones, marimba, celeste, vibraphone, chrysoglott, accordions, cello's etc. There are pretty much no limits.
So nice to see you explore the organ! I just want to add that you experienced one particular organ in one particular room. Organs can be quite different - your experience could be very different with another organ. An historic, maybe smaller one. This adds to the charm and is also challenging: every organ is different and the difference can be huge!
This is a really cool video! I thought it was especially neat that your organ playing affected how you played your home instrument :~)
As a longtime vocalist (choir), being that separated from the source of the music sounds crazy, but also interesting.
I'm from Hamburg, and this is the first video which makes we want to go to a concert at the Elbphilharmonie. Thank you!
Your description of pipe organ's size made me start imagining taking one's favourite pipe organ on tour.
From Fraser Gartshore's TH-cam channel I gather that it isn't quite true anymore that you need to go to the real organ to practice: there is a "virtual organ" software, Hauptwerk, with sample sets from many real organs (often even with samples recorded from different locations in the church). People do end up with complete (Midi) organ consoles at home though...
@jhbnijhof You are correct -- virtual organ software provides excellent access to hundreds of world-class instruments and their acoustics right in your living room (den, etc. . . . )
As an organist, I'm glad you are bringing more attention to this wonderful instrument!
Prior to the advent of modern electronics, the pipe organ was the only instrument that allowed an individual person to perform really elaborate pieces of music (with multiple sections and so on). If you didn't have a pipe organ, you needed pretty much an entire orchestra, and all the musicians that implies, to accomplish the same thing.
Now, of course, you can just multi-track yourself and use as many instruments as you want. But that's a quite recent phenomenon.
Great tour of this instrument
It really is so crazy how they work. I was very actice in the church growing up and was even an acolyte, so I got to go behind the altar and see the inner workings of the organ. I'm no longer part of the church, but this made me appreciate it way more. I never actuakly understood how they worked until watching this
I have always loved the organ. When I was a child, we went to church every weekend. The organs were by far my favourite part about it. The organist would always play for a couple minutes after the priest had left and the sermon was ended. I loved to listen to it.
I grew up going to a small church that housed a rather generous pipe organ, and spent my formative years learning tuba by playing in the quintet there. Trying to match my sound with the bass voices of the organ greatly shaped how I played tuba.
I didn’t really understand how special our organ was until I visited churches with organs with maybe half as many stops, or electronically synthesized sounds. It’s a genuinely special noise.
I enjoy playing the pipe organ so much! 😌
bach was an organist basically his whole life. after hearing you talk about your experience it just makes sense that bach became the most influential musician of all time. wonderful video
I love this video. I love music. But I can't play any instruments at all. As a child, I attempted to learn the cornet, but my family fought me tooth and nail and they won. I wish I could have kept it up.
Bravo for letting your love music win! And thank you for letting me live it vicariously for a few moments. Beautiful. Just beautiful!
I enjoyed hearing that the organ made you experience your own music differently.
Fun fact: that major difference in emission (delay, location) has always yielded two species of organists: the "organic organist" who listens actively to the space and responds instinctively, and the "autistic organist" who only cares about the console (keyboards and stops).
Both are polar opposites, and actual organists sit somewhere along that spectrum, leaning to one side or the other depending on the pieces, the setup etc.
Eg in very reverberant spaces where the console is up high (think the Madeleine church in Paris), you just cannot play organic: everything would end up blurred and very, very late. On the contrary, in modern concert halls and soloist pieces, it would make no sense to play autistically.
Enjoy your discovery, it only ever happens once 😊!
That is a very interesting -- and apt -- range to describe how organists manage the instrument and the room in conjunction with repertoire -- I haven't heard it so well-put before!
I'm retired Air Force, with a background in aviation and other technical operations. I have zero musical capacity, nor interest. This video caused me to feel an association with the operators of pipe organs, as the "switchology" that the musician has to implement, the technical and engineering aspects of the design, construction, and operation of the pipe organ felt shockingly familiar, though obviously for different end-goals. It almost appears as if much of the sophisticated tech that we use today, ranging across the likes of computers, to aircraft / spacecraft, sensors, precision measurement equipment,.etc, all have roots in the design of (among other things) pipe organs. I was already well aware of the material science and fabrication origins that link the modern military to bell making (18th century bell production was as symbolic to cannon production as 20th century spacecraft were symbolic of ICBM production), but never considered that the panels and switches that are so common in the modern era may have been partially inspired by musical instruments. Thank you for the video and my new appreciation for pipe organ operators and engineers.
I wanna hear you on a Hammond B3 organ! Will force you to play differently as well compared to a Pipe organ
yeah, a Wurlitzer would also be a very interesting experiance.
I am an organist with a master's degree in the field. It is an incredible instrument. You really need the pipes - an electronic counterfeit, even though it might "sound like an organ" has a reduced dynamic range which is part and parcel of all amplifiers. Sure, it's louder, but the range of soft to loud is is reduced as a result of the intermodulation products due to the non-linear characteristics of transistors. You have to have pipes!
Basically pipe organ is one whole gigantic piece of architecture that can unleash sound
Wow! I entered a whole new world. Now I want to listen to great pipe organ music🙏
Search for Anna Lapwood, but there are many other fantastic organists out there.
What an insightful video. Thank you. You hinted that this experience is going to affect how you compose. Maybe that could be a separate video? I find learning a different instrument (or using a different voice on a keyboard) really inspires me to compose new music. Did you find your experience with the organ doing something like that? I think many of us would love to hear your thoughts on this topic.
I was a choral scholar at Trinity College Cambridge when the magnificent mechanical-action Metzler was being built in our lovely Tudor chapel. It was a fascinating process, with every pipe being tuned to the resonance of the building resulting in a mellow and balanced instrument. The new organ incorporates elements of the original 17thC instrument blending old and new.
But my goodness the organ is a challenging instrument to play. I was in awe of the skills of the organ scholar, who was just a young student like the rest of us. He would be sightreading a new piece on two keyboards and the foot pedals when the conductor would ask him to transpose down a tone - which he would achieve without a hitch. He went on to become a celebrated conductor and marry a film-star!
I'm just a very average amateur pianist, but several years ago I took organ lessons for a year or so, and it had a huge impact on the way I approach the piano. What you are saying about being conscious of when to start and when to end every note is so true: Organists have to constantly do that, whereas as pianists, we usually are way more focused on the beginning of a note, and are sometimes rather cavalier about its end point. The idea that every sound has a very precise duration that you need to actively manage, instead of just relying on the pedal to do the job for you, really helped me improve my piano skills. And I am also far more drawn to repertoire by the likes of Bach now, whereas before, I was playing mostly romantic repertoire.
Thank you for this very interesting video. There was a clear difference between you playing before and after your pipe-organ experience. I would say that the notes were played softer and more naturally flowing compared to before. You were using more of the dynamic range of the piano.
I always thought the organ was the instrument of instruments, but I didn't know it was to quite that extent. Your music is sick too, awesome chords.
thank you for spreading the beauty of this instrument
Playing on a B3 with waterfall action keys for a couple of months occasionally at this church ministry REALLY helped me play better EP, and Organ kinda things on my DAW and Midi Controllers!
I appreciate this video. As an organist I find it interesting how strange your technique looked on organ at first even as a world class pianist. I’m glad to know it helped your piano playing, because I sometimes had a sense that piano helped organ but not the other way around, because organ can do less in terms of expression (phrasing and expression are entirely related to rubato and time). Keep working on those finger replacements and crossings!
Pipe Organs also are not dynamically sensitive to keyboard touch / velocity (if I recall they use a pedal lever to create volume variations and swells?), which is quite a different experience than playing a piano which we get to so used to as being very touch-sensitive. It explains why playing some older chorales and such which were written to be played on pipe organs are a little weird for us pianists, without any dynamic markings or pedaling, the composers approached these pieces differently.
Cool stuff! I love how even modern synths take cues from pipe organs, such as the way oscillators use pipe feet sizes to denote octave ranges (32', 16', 8' etc), and even all the blending of different pipes for various harmonics is not too different from the way synth oscillators can be harmonically modified through modulation and filters.
yea the only instrument without volume control (excluding shutters).
@jonathanwingmusic -- you're correct about the organ not being able to alter volume level by the keyboard touch. However some organs have a mechanical ("tracker") connection between the key and the valve under each pipe which allows the valve to be opened slowly for a very gradual. smooth introduction of air into the pipe vs. punching the key down quickly causing the pipe to speak with a little extra percussive "chiff" at the beginning of the note sounding. Organs having electric or pneumatic actions simply switch on and off and do not allow this articulation.
@@antoller3541 volume "control" (or differing volumes) other than swell shutters is effected by selection of stops ranging from very quiet to very loud.
@@aBachwardsfellow fascinating and very cool! thanks for sharing
@@jonathanwingmusic I should make one minor correction -- on the tracker action instruments, there is not one valve under each pipe. There is a channel under rows of pipes for each key with a valve which opens to allow air into the channel when the key is pressed. When the key is pressed to admit pressurized air into the channel, all pipes above that channel speak depending on the position of the stop slider below each pipe. The slider has holes in it to allow the air to pass through. When the stop is "pulled" (activated), the slider moves so that holes align with the bottom of the pipes and allow the air to pass through to the pipe. If the stop is not pulled, the solid part of the slider is under the pipes and air cannot pass through from the channel.
However, the tracker action does allow for air to be introduced into the channel (and subsequently the pipes) either gradually or suddenly with different effects as I had said previously -- hope that helps! :-)