Steven, I can’t believe you have only ten likes for this video. Yours is exactly what I need. And what a superb but practical organ you have built. I had been frustrated that with a nice keyboard, even when aligned more to “organ” use they mean electric organ, not pipe organ simulation. I was thinking about getting the m-audio keyboard you have and perhaps its Oxygen pro workstation big brother instead of your Hammond, but also thought about getting a mid- range stage piano/organ or synth and mating it with an m-audio to get more functions, but was not sure it would work. But you have solved it all. As I said before, brilliant video. 1. How well documented and how reliably available are those midi coders you found? Could you write down for us the models you used, or features you specifically needed which informed you which board to buy please? 2. The m-audio keyboards don’t have an expression pedal. With the analogue input into the top board which measures resistance or perhaps a voltage divider(?), I could plug into that, yes? 3. I live in a regional town in Queensland so will never be able to get a set of stops (or a foot pedal board) from a real organ. Would one or two of those multicoloured lighted midi controller boards do the job? Or better, could I make a classy set of momentary switches or on/off buttons and feed those to one of the midi boards? (And if so, which board would I need to buy for that? Thinking about chasing that down on the internet put me off a lot!.) 4. Did you ever try the GrandOrgue freeware virtual pipe organ? 5. Did you get on line help from the virtual organ on-line throng? 6. How do you spell “Peon” - as in Nepean, or Pion of Muon fame, or something else? I have never written anything on TH-cam before, so congratulations on that too! Cheers George
George - this is a pretty esoteric topic, and that coupled with the joys of the TH-cam algorithm I suppose explains why there hasn't been more interest in this video. 1) The midi-boutique range is more or less the de-facto standard for building these kind of things. Support used to be fantastic, with the founder and tech guru answering my questions himself. Sadly he died of COVID in the first wave. HWCE2 is the midi encoder. It will handle all your contact closure inputs and also has a few analog ins as well for things like swell shoes, volume control potentiometer etc... You can plug it straight into a diode row/scan arrangement, or you can use expander boards that let you hook up contact closures. There are various kits available and you just order the configuration that suits your needs. Midi decoder I used is the mddp128. There is a P channel and N channel version depending on whether you want to switch on the hight side or low side. There are a variety of board options available depending on how many outputs you need. There is a version with higher power transistors, however I am using the standard power one, and it is quite happy to switch my SAMS (stop action magnets). I did manage to blow up a mddp128 because I had wired it incorrectly. The trick with SAMS is whilst they look fantastic, and it is so great to see all those solenoids just throwing into place, it gets electically tricky because you have the ground for you contact closure in commoned with ground for the solenoids, being interfaced to completely differend boards, and so you end up becoming very confused as to just where ground is. The Midi Boutique boards use a bridge rectifier on their inputs so it doesn't matter the polarity of power, however this means there is a diode drop to system ground. So I removed the bridge rectifiers and replaced with a single diode on the positive side (so it couldn't be blown up by wrong polarity) - this way at least I now knew that ground was ground. So as you can see, you need to be pretty good with electronics to do this, but can come up with a fantastic system if you do. Hauptwerk is incredible in its flexibility, and knows how to drive things like SAMs out of the box, you just have to configure it. 2) I have not tried this, however I would expect that it just sends a midi signal when you do this. So the answer should be YES, but wouldn't know for sure without trying. I couldn't get the volume sliders to work on my M-Audio keyboard, even though I thought they should, and the documentation is pretty average. 3) Where are you in Queensland? My friend FB is in Queensland, and I just left my spare stop rail with him a few months ago. He also has things like pedal boards kicking around, and I have a spare pedal board myself that needs a new home. Yes - an off the shelf midi lighted board would be the easiest way to get going. I think by the time you stuff about with a Contact Closure board you might as well just do a proper stop rail. 4) No - never used GrandOrgue. Whilst there is no longer a free version of HauptWerk, it is absolutely fantastic. I am complete amateur in terms of playing, and not very good at all, but this is a lot of fun and I think HauptWerk is worth every penny. 5)In the end no, worked it out myself, trial and error. 6) Pianorgan - as in not a Pianola, but a Pianorgan. I just noted you emailed me, we can carry on the conversation there, but I'll leave this up here in case it is useful to anyone else.
Steven, I can’t believe you have only ten likes for this video. Yours is exactly what I need.
And what a superb but practical organ you have built. I had been frustrated that with a nice keyboard, even when aligned more to “organ” use they mean electric organ, not pipe organ simulation.
I was thinking about getting the m-audio keyboard you have and perhaps its Oxygen pro workstation big brother instead of your Hammond, but also thought about getting a mid- range stage piano/organ or synth and mating it with an m-audio to get more functions, but was not sure it would work. But you have solved it all. As I said before, brilliant video.
1. How well documented and how reliably available are those midi coders you found? Could you write down for us the models you used, or features you specifically needed which informed you which board to buy please?
2. The m-audio keyboards don’t have an expression pedal. With the analogue input into the top board which measures resistance or perhaps a voltage divider(?), I could plug into that, yes?
3. I live in a regional town in Queensland so will never be able to get a set of stops (or a foot pedal board) from a real organ. Would one or two of those multicoloured lighted midi controller boards do the job? Or better, could I make a classy set of momentary switches or on/off buttons and feed those to one of the midi boards? (And if so, which board would I need to buy for that? Thinking about chasing that down on the internet put me off a lot!.)
4. Did you ever try the GrandOrgue freeware virtual pipe organ?
5. Did you get on line help from the virtual organ on-line throng?
6. How do you spell “Peon” - as in Nepean, or Pion of Muon fame, or something else?
I have never written anything on TH-cam before, so congratulations on that too!
Cheers
George
George - this is a pretty esoteric topic, and that coupled with the joys of the TH-cam algorithm I suppose explains why there hasn't been more interest in this video.
1) The midi-boutique range is more or less the de-facto standard for building these kind of things. Support used to be fantastic, with the founder and tech guru answering my questions himself. Sadly he died of COVID in the first wave.
HWCE2 is the midi encoder. It will handle all your contact closure inputs and also has a few analog ins as well for things like swell shoes, volume control potentiometer etc... You can plug it straight into a diode row/scan arrangement, or you can use expander boards that let you hook up contact closures. There are various kits available and you just order the configuration that suits your needs.
Midi decoder I used is the mddp128. There is a P channel and N channel version depending on whether you want to switch on the hight side or low side. There are a variety of board options available depending on how many outputs you need. There is a version with higher power transistors, however I am using the standard power one, and it is quite happy to switch my SAMS (stop action magnets). I did manage to blow up a mddp128 because I had wired it incorrectly. The trick with SAMS is whilst they look fantastic, and it is so great to see all those solenoids just throwing into place, it gets electically tricky because you have the ground for you contact closure in commoned with ground for the solenoids, being interfaced to completely differend boards, and so you end up becoming very confused as to just where ground is. The Midi Boutique boards use a bridge rectifier on their inputs so it doesn't matter the polarity of power, however this means there is a diode drop to system ground. So I removed the bridge rectifiers and replaced with a single diode on the positive side (so it couldn't be blown up by wrong polarity) - this way at least I now knew that ground was ground.
So as you can see, you need to be pretty good with electronics to do this, but can come up with a fantastic system if you do. Hauptwerk is incredible in its flexibility, and knows how to drive things like SAMs out of the box, you just have to configure it.
2) I have not tried this, however I would expect that it just sends a midi signal when you do this. So the answer should be YES, but wouldn't know for sure without trying. I couldn't get the volume sliders to work on my M-Audio keyboard, even though I thought they should, and the documentation is pretty average.
3) Where are you in Queensland? My friend FB is in Queensland, and I just left my spare stop rail with him a few months ago. He also has things like pedal boards kicking around, and I have a spare pedal board myself that needs a new home. Yes - an off the shelf midi lighted board would be the easiest way to get going. I think by the time you stuff about with a Contact Closure board you might as well just do a proper stop rail.
4) No - never used GrandOrgue. Whilst there is no longer a free version of HauptWerk, it is absolutely fantastic. I am complete amateur in terms of playing, and not very good at all, but this is a lot of fun and I think HauptWerk is worth every penny.
5)In the end no, worked it out myself, trial and error.
6) Pianorgan - as in not a Pianola, but a Pianorgan.
I just noted you emailed me, we can carry on the conversation there, but I'll leave this up here in case it is useful to anyone else.
Thanks FB!
Is there any way I could make my own organ stops? I only have a non-organ 61 keys keyboard
Yes, there's all sorts of options out there - Google is your friend.
Very nice.
Does the M Audio midi controller keep reverting back to default midi channel one after power down -
I couldn't get it to change channel at all. It doesn't seem to do what the manual says.
Well that is just a bummer too. If I had discovered that I would have been very worried.
@@audionautica6843 My M-audio Keystation 49s both send velocity and change MIDI channel properly. No idea what happened to your Keystation 61.