What’s a Virtual Pipe Organ?
Recently we announced to the parish that WE ARE GETTING AN ORGAN FOR OUR CHURCH!!!! In the next few weeks we will feature short articles to help us understand the breadth and depth of this great blessing!
Organ Talk, Week 5: What’s a Virtual Pipe Organ?
Virtual Pipe Organs incorporate a console (where the organist plays), a computer with a powerful processor and lots of memory, organ modeling software called Hauptwerk (“HOWPT-vehrk”), sample sets recorded from celebrated pipe organs, and a state-of-the-art audio system. Hauptwerk is named after the principal division of German pipe organs.
Each sample set is created by audio engineers meticulously recording every note of an entire pipe organ. High-end microphones are located very close to or inside the pipe organ, part way out into the church, and at the far end of the church, opposite the organ. For each pipe, these three sets of microphones record a short note, a somewhat longer note, and a note held for a long time. All these high fidelity recordings are combined into a sample set that acts as a database containing a virtual representation of the entire pipe organ.
It is a remarkable technology that will effectively allow us to have an instrument of high quality sound, for a fraction of the cost of an actual pipe organ.
