Your patch requests for a new Organ sound-font.

• Sep 27, 2019 - 07:13

I'm preparing a Pipe-Organ sound-font.
What patches(*1) would you like for two manuals (Swell, Great) and a Pedal?
And what combination pairs do you like in each manual?

I will present this sound-font with an mscz template and you will be able to use separate patches for each staff.

(*1) There are 200+ patches I can create. Some examples: Gedeckt, Flute, Principal, Gamba, Cornet , Sesquialtr, String family (Violin, viola, etc), Dulciana, Trumpet, Tuba, Vox humana, Diapason etc...

Comments

• Sep 27, 2019 - 12:23

This is quite an "ask". How can an organist such as myself figure out which combinations, especially plena, I would want to use unless, as with any other organ, I can try the stops and their combinations, intended and fortuitous, before deciding registrations? Are there principals, mutations, and mixtures at the correct pitches for manuals and pedals? How much of the 256 space do you wish to devote to "combinations"?

When an organist, or several, are asked to cooperate with an organ-builder for the specification of a new instrument, access to the builder's extant instruments is necessary to determine what sort of ensembles are within reason.

This is exactly why "soundfont" is an inadequate organ solution.

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• Sep 27, 2019 - 12:42

Werner once (back in early 2011?) integrated Fons Adriaensen's Aeolus organ synthesizer into MuseScore, until at a certain point Fons noticed that, and regardless of him having put the sources out as Open Source (GPL2 up to version 0.84, the version Werner used, GPL3 for version 0.90, the latest I could find), he complained bitterly, at which time that code just got disabled in MuseScore (but is still in, albeit won't compile anymore, so would need quite some rework)

https://www.google.de/search?q=site%3Amusescore.org+aeolus

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• Sep 27, 2019 - 16:44

We have 16256 patch areas. (actually a little more, but this area has occupied the drums)
But no one wants to choose something from that much sound.

I made a raw soundfont. It includes 220 patches, each of which can be used.
I wanted to reduce them, as even the double combinations of 220 patches would confuse them in terms of selection.
For example: a small number of patches and their combinations.
for example: two 16 ', four 8', four 4 'and two 2'. (and combinations)
Six or nine combinations for pedal (with 16 ', 8' and 4 ')

I know that an organ made with Soundfont cannot be what an organist wants to use.
But a composer may want to use it, An music-engraver might want to hear some sounds.

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• Sep 27, 2019 - 19:56

Well, that has more registers than the latest Intel 64-bit processor! Clearly, there can be no way to say which should be chosen without trying them all and listening, and certainly no way to determine which combinations (not just "pairs") work well without trying all of them, based upon knowledge of what should work well, the way an organist would when faced with a new instrument...

I think we need to invent a strategy here.

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• Sep 27, 2019 - 20:11

Looking that list over, I note several problems. "Pedales" is a mistake; that should say "Diapasons". I also note that there are no mutations ("harmonic corroborating stops"), i.e., of non-power-of-two pitches (compare any real classical organ). There are also no mixtures! Not even a sesquialtera or cornet! That leads me to believe these are (many or all) not classical sounds.... only an ear can tell, but the lack of mutations and mixtures is already a problem.

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• Sep 27, 2019 - 20:25

Also, one must bear in mind that, yes, on real pipe organs, many of the names are fanciful, and have no solid referent -- a "tuba major" may be bigger/louder than a "tuba minor" on the same organ, and whether that's an orchestral "tuba" or merely the Latin word for "trumpet" is anybody's guess if they don't know the actual instrument. What's more, although all organists have an idea what a Prinzipal/Diapason/Montre sounds like, Cavaillé-Coll's don't sound like Arp Schnitger's in a different land in a different century; I even played a pipe organ that had four "Diapason" stops, labelled I, II, III, IV, on the same manual, and they were all different. From generic names one can have a general feeling of what the stop ought sound like, fanciful variants probably won't tell you much without hearing it, and, in general, as I said at the outset, and as is true in the rest of MuseScore, no decision or assessment can be made without actually trying the register with the music you intend to play. That is the deal with real pipe organs, and with samples from same, we are dealing the same.

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• Sep 28, 2019 - 12:33

I tried this. This is not at all unlike some of the "organ soundfonts" available "out there". This certainly gets some small-organ sounds; it is recorded in a very dry acoustic environment, and thus "Full Gt+mix" does not sound anywhere as good as the "Old MuseScore Pipe Organ". It is a start, but for ears used to VPO (virtual pipe organ) technology and real instruments, .... well, thanks for working on this....(by the way, those registrations for BWV 545 are not at all reasonable). The lack of "couplers" ( i.e., an MS colla parte feature) is immediately obvious with the lack of a pedal sound simultaneously bright and strong (for, say, BWV 545).

This solves some problems, but serious attempts at organ music have to be recorded with VPO technology and YouTube.

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• Sep 28, 2019 - 16:09

There's no recorded sample set :)
I create these sounds with pure sine-waves and mixes.
So I'm both imitating and synthesizing pipe-org.

I was asking here useful preset patches.(not an professional organist's patch-mixing)
Looks like there is not any patch proposal.
Looks like it's up to me.

Note: The demo sound-font in your hand is exactly the same as an old hammond's set (and presets) with no effect (leslie, rotor, vibrato etc.) applied (see picture). And I added the pedal-bass registrations from another set.

Attachment Size
registration.jpg 73.59 KB

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• Sep 28, 2019 - 16:14

"Hammond organ" is a distinct instrument from "organ", now with its own legitimacy, repertoire, and tradition. In spite of Mr. Hammond's early fantasy, and my ownership of one for many years, it is not suitable for rendering classical organ repertoire. Its theory of classical-organ sound synthesis is as obsolete as buggy whips in this day and age.

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• Sep 28, 2019 - 16:43

People who really play Hammond organs, such as jazz artists, do not use the not-very-impressive "Hammond stop dictionaries" like the one you cite. When I first got a Hammond organ at age 13 or so, I believed its magical claim "Want a Trompette Regal? Just enter 01 3423 498!" as though the entire art of the organ builder could be reduced to nine numbers from 0 to 8. Real jazz/soul artists use drawbar settings like 08 0080 088 etc (I'm just making that up). Trying to match pipe-organ stops is 1930's electronics fantasy, not reality. Organ synthesis without articulation and other dynamics of pipe tone is not possible. I discarded my ancient Hammond thirty years ago for that reason.

This problem has been solved by VPO technology. It can't be represented in a midi soundfont.

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• Sep 27, 2019 - 14:36

We must also ask, "what style and era of organ?" to which your (proper) response might be "Are you nuts? I'm giving you something as opposed to the nothing we have now!" to which my proper response would be, "yeah, thanks, but...".

Of course, there are "organ" (unqualified the adjective bespeaks the problem) soundfonts out there attempting to do this already, that suffer all the inescapable problems I describe.

Even saying "Swell, Great", as opposed to "Oberwerk, Hauptwerk",or "Werk, Rückpositiv" etc. already speaks to what we can expect (e.g., a nondescript mid-20th century English/American organ). Fine, not complaining, but I expect most people "playing this instrument" will want to play Bach and other Baroque masterpieces ... (or maybe "Spooky Halloween Music!" or other "non-traditional organ reperoire models":) ).

I would think a minimal specification for a small 2-manual organ capable of playing Bach would include Principals (Diapason, Oktav, fifteenth etc) on the Great at 8', 4', 2', with luck 2-2/3 and 1-3/5, one "sharp" mixtur of three or more ranks (multiple mixtures is too much to ask), combinable flutes at 8' and 4', maybe a soft string stop (dulciana, etc) for accompanying the swell, maybe a chorus reed at 8' (trumpet). Already more than log base 2 of 256 --- On the swell, there should be both combinable/soloable flues and soloable reeds such as an oboe or krummhorn, and perhaps other soft stops to accompany diapason and chorus-reed combinations on the great. Many Bach chorale prelude textures will require a 16' stop such as a Bourdon or Violone on one manual or the other, to imitate continuo textures in cantata-like movements.

The Pedal must, of course, include a 16' principal, as well as 8' oktav/principal and chorus reed, such as a Posaune 16', although this begs the question of couplers, which do not fit into the midi paradigm at all. Solo reeds of 8' and 4' are an absolute necessity for Bach (as well as a plan for what on the manuals can accompany them)-- just look at the Schübler chorale-preludes. 32' is out of the question if space in either organ lofts or 8-bit spaces is an issue. A quieter 16' Lieblich Gedekt or the like is a necessity, too, although I guess "accompanying a choir" is not an issue here.

Designing an organ is a complicated business.

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• Sep 27, 2019 - 14:39

On the other hand, the fundamental question of "which stops belong to which division" is meaningless in the (general, not "G"eneral) MIDI model , and this affords a degree of flexibility not present in classical organs (although in "unitary" and other theatre organs this notion is indeed exploited). (It is certainly central in midi-controlled virtual or actual pipe organs). If all the stops on the, say, Swell, were controlled by the same, say, expression control (pipe organs predate MIDI in this regard), or had different placements in stereo space, division membership might be a more significant notion. The whole notion of 'division' is almost meaningless in the "soundfont" model, but targeting repertoire conceived in terms of a traditional instrument, in which the divisional model is key, should still be the goal. One can also, in MIDI, have more than one instance of a stop on different "divisions" (or "staves" here), including sounding as 2 pipes at unisons.

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• Sep 27, 2019 - 14:51

This also prioritizes the missing MuseScore colla parte feature. Maintaining 5 staves in sync to play five stops together, without help from MuseScore, is a horrendously difficult way to input and edit music.

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