My Virtual Organ


I've long wanted a MIDI-based virtual organ.  The pipe organ is very well suited to digital sampling technology, and in the last few years some very fine products have appeared that make it possible to have something like very large, beautiful pipe organs at home.  This is the story of my virtual pipe organ.

I built my organ around the remarkable dedicated pipe-organ simulator software Hauptwerk.  Other options are available (look here for a good list), but Hauptwerk does the most complete job, and there is an amazing collection of sampled organs for Hauptwerk.

When building the physical setup for my virtual organ I had to solve a few problems:
I focused on functionality rather than looks.  A basic approach of MIDI keyboard controllers with home-built stands has worked out nicely.  Here is the result, both in the context of my computer workstation and closeup on the organ (click on any figure for larger versions):


 
The organs I have for Hauptwerk are
If you have Kontakt or Gigastudio, a cheaper alternative is the PMI Baroque Organ, a smaller but very nice-sounding modern baroque organ.  This is what I was playing before I got Hauptwerk.  This is just a collection of samples, but Nils Liberg has created a nice Kontakt script that allows you to select registrations (I wrote my own scripts and software for key switching and manual aslection, but it is dedicated to my system and not ready for sharing).  Hauptwerk does a much better job simulating organ sound and dynamics, so if you don't already own Kontakt or Gigastudio you'd be better off buying Hauptwerk.  

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