Play a pipe organ on your computer.    (continued.)

MidiTzer :
If you played the sample music from the prior page, the reason for the pipe organ realism is that the sounds
heard are actual recordings of authentic pipe organs.   Since a pipe organ has the widest range of frequencies
of any instrument, a quality sound system or quality headphones would provide the maximum enjoyment.  
The MidiTzer has so much realism that it can even provide mechanical sounds to imitate a real pipe organ
for stop changes, etc.    

The PC even provides choral and reverberation effects to enhance the sound.  The virtual organ will keep
a PC quite busy as so many events are taking place to produce the music and updating graphics.   I recommend
that you do not attempt to run any other program when playing a virtual organ.  I think there was a cipher
(stuck note) caused one time when I changed the volume level with my mouse.  To avoid this remote possibly, I
suggest  using a manual volume control on your headphones or speaker.

And, YES, you may have heard some 'pop's  from the MP3 files.  The recording setup was not the best, but
if your PC is properly setup I expect you will not hear a 'pop' during virtual organ performances.  I used a
USB 1 connection to receive the digital audio for recording and perhaps I should have used a USB 2.1 connection.

The former descriptions and sound samples were based on the MidiTzer Style 216 program a small FREE
program which can be downloaded and run on a PC.    Hundreds of MidiTzer Style 216 MIDI files are
also available on line, also by signing up to their free Forum.   The home page for the MidiTzer is:
               http://www.virtualorgan.com/

Here are two good documents:  
MidiTzer Style 216 (PDF)        MIDI  Keyboard Information (PDF)         


Maybe I can make the MIDI files easier to access, etc.     Email me questions...

(The realism mentioned above does not go as far as what I have experienced in one electronic organ which
was... yes,  let's say "married" to a real pipe organ in a Manchester church.   I was of course thrilled to be able
to assist in this installation which included MIDI interfaces.   The pipes and electronic tones of course need
to play in concert with each other, so the tuning of the electronic tones is critical.   The speed of sound varies
somewhat with temperature and correspondingly the pitch of each pipe changes somewhat with the air
temperature.      In order to compensate for pipe pitch variations with temperature, an electronic thermometer
was placed in the area of the pipes.  The corresponding temperature signal was monitored to fine tune all
electronics tone generators.   The result:  At all room temperatures the pipes and electronic tones would stay
in tune with each other !!)

jOrgan :
There are other free virtual organ web sites that can provide very similar results as the MidiTzer in case
you have a Mac, Linux, (or PC) system.   jOrgan is a Java based virtual organ which has documentation at:
             http://jorgan.sourceforge.net/introduction

An advantage of jOrgan is that it actually allows you to design your own console if you want.  It sounds the same.
There are many functioning console designs which allow you to get the virtual organ working fairly quickly.
A disadvantage to jOrgan is that it consists of more pieces which makes it more complex to set up your computer.

In addition to MidiTzer, I setup jOrgan on my PC and used a console design (without the keyboard & pedals) which
produces similar results to the MidiTzer Style 216.   I hope the same MIDI files will work with little or no modification.  

With a virtual organ it is possible to create your own unique 'pipe' sounds if you wish.
If you like, look up "soundfont" on the web to give you some information on this subject.

Here is a good reference document:      A Beginner's Guide to jOrgan

 I expect to add more to this page.    Let me know if you have questions...  



What I'd like to pursue with jOrgan is more investigation with just intonation (a continuation of my latest synthesizer
project).    You can Google just intonation so I wont explain here.    In order to add just intonation, it would require
some research in the present jOrgan design, which is fortunately publicly available.  

Also PCs are cheap, especially if they do not include a monitor, CD/DVD drive, keyboard, ...  , so I'm thinking of running
FOUR PCs on jOrgan but splitting up the MIDI (NOTE ON and OFF) signals (by hardware) so that for each note in the
octave, one PC would be responsible for only 3 notes out of 12.   I have a (MIDI controllable) quadraphonic audio sound
processor for providing external choral and reverberation effects.    This should reduce the PC's burden and allow
more realism at the same time.   The four or eight audio outputs would be amplified and drive up to eight speakers
in the condo for more realism.    (Yes, sometimes our neighbors leave us and besides which we will not be in a condo forever.)