from Hacker News

Organ pipe physics

by praash on 1/3/24, 11:57 AM with 66 comments

• by mastazi on 1/4/24, 11:05 PM

  Physical modelling has come a long way since it first appeared. Many of the instruments included in the Arturia V Collection (one of the most common collections of instrument plug ins) are made using physical modelling [1]. Modartt's products (even more so than Arturia) offer amazing control over the physical model, with the ability to configure per-note parameters [2].

  Speaking of virtual pipe organs, for Organteq to compete with the market leader, Hauptwerk (which is sample-based) there needs to be a good choice of expansions though. With Hauptwerk, you can download hundreds of different organs from all around the world [3]. Modartt has an expansions marketplace for Pianoteq [4], why is the same thing not available for Organteq?

  [1] https://www.arturia.com/phi

  [2] https://www.modartt.com/pianoteq_pro

  [3] https://www.hauptwerk.com/instruments/

  [4] https://www.modartt.com/pianoteq_instruments

• by Cthulhu_ on 1/5/24, 9:48 AM

  Organ building is a slowly dying art, with the companies building and maintaining them slowly going out of business. We have loads of churches and church organs in the Netherlands still, so there still is some business, but at the same time a lot of them are being replaced by digital keyboards.

  I have a cousin who is a professional organ player, he gets to play on the big ones, he's a composer and conductor, he's recorded a few albums and the like. "Small fry" in the bigger music world, but he's one of the people keeping the tradition and craftsmanship alive. I had a look on his website (I don't really keep up with family much), he plays on 150, nearly 200 year old organs sometimes.

• by TexanFeller on 1/4/24, 11:31 PM

  I’m strangely interested in pipe organs, largely because to my ear Toccatta and Fugue in D Minor(BWV 565) is one of the most thrilling pieces of music, like something sent from heaven. It saddens me that people just think of it as a tune to play at Halloween and in vampire movies.

• by NoZebra120vClip on 1/4/24, 11:53 PM

  My Catholic diocese has enjoyed a significant recent tradition of love for sacred music, and to that end, several churches have installed very recent and modern pipe organs as a very permanent and enduring support for congregational worship.

  Our prior bishop wrote a series of documents on sacred music, and two of the churches which have installed brand-new organs are the Cathedral and the Basilica.

  I am not sure that Roman Catholics, much less the general public, understand the critical role played by a pipe organ in choral singing and leading the assembly. There is absolutely no comparison: not a percussive piano banging on metal strings, not a plectrum on a lute such as guitar, no synthesizer can come anywhere close. Electronic organs can approximate the sound, but not the feel, grandeur, and mighty power of a full-throated organ.

  The reason that liturgical Christians have used pipe organs is because of the close approximation of the human voice from the very pipes. A pipe organ works (needless to say) by passing air through columns and making it vibrate at specific frequencies. This is very close to the mechanism used in the human voice. Therefore, it is effortless, even for an inexperienced singer, to summon up a passable tune when led by a competent organist. There are myriad cues which can be employed to wordlessly signal when singing will start and stop, and whether the upcoming strophe is proper to a soloist, the choir, or the whole assembly to come in at once.

  In my days at a chorister, we did indeed rely on grand piano, acoustic guitars, eletronic 1980s-tech organ, and even drums/bass/violin, so unfortunately I did not enjoy much choral experience next to an authentic pipe organ. But now I worship from the pews with one of the best instruments in hundreds of miles, an experienced dedicated schola, and a skilled professional organist/director. Needless to say, it was a breathtaking and gorgeous Christmas as we added a brass ensemble and sang our hearts out.

  Pipe organs never fail to disappoint the tech nerd in us. My own cathedral has a special camera which they use every week, during live streams, to display the manual as the organist plays it, and believe me, pipe organs are cutting-edge tech nowadays, using computer monitors, interfaces, MIDI and all the trappings, to produce good old-fashioned sound from real pipes. I feel it is truly a unique traditional instrument that can be the best of both worlds, and indeed our own church affirms its "pride of place" in liturgical worship at all times.

• by mrob on 1/5/24, 12:47 AM

  If you're interested in this, Colin Pykett has a web site containing many detailed articles about the physics and history of pipe organs:

  https://www.colinpykett.org.uk/completed_work.htm

• by dhosek on 1/5/24, 6:00 AM

  It’s not mentioned, but the bourdon pipe (used for the lowest pitch pipes) is a stopped pipe, which means it overblows at the twelfth rather than the octave, which is why you don’t see the second harmonic in the frequency analysis like you do with the two shorter pipes.

• by blahburn on 1/4/24, 10:40 PM

  Would love to play around with this and hear the differences in sound. Something like what this guy did with the engine simulator https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RKT-sKtR970

• by justinl33 on 1/5/24, 4:55 AM

  > * Organ pipes are DC/AC converters!*

  Mind = blown. Somehow this made it click for me how electrical DC/AC converters work.

• by yardshop on 1/5/24, 4:23 AM

  For anyone interested in another good source of pipe organ music, the public radio show Pipedreams makes their shows available on their website:

  https://www.pipedreams.org/

  Lots of wonderful music and related stories. Great for testing out PA systems! =)

• by hatsunearu on 1/5/24, 12:16 AM

  Resonance, oscillation, vibration, etc is such a universal topic in engineering with a delightfully simple core and common mathematical background that anyone that is deeply familiar with it in their field should be able to find the beauty in oscillations in other fields.

• by bobim on 1/5/24, 10:08 AM

  Is there evidence that the pipe harmonic response can be neglected so the audio signature can be extracted solely from the acoustic cavity modes?

  I’m tempted to run an harmonic analysis of the fluid-structure system to figure this out…

• by swayvil on 1/5/24, 12:46 AM

  Has anybody modeled those singing bowls? That's a serious sine wave.

  Or I guess you could just generate a sine wave.

• by skybrian on 1/4/24, 11:23 PM

  Nice, but someone should do accordion physics.

• by onewheeltom on 1/6/24, 1:45 PM

  There is nothing like being in the space during an organ concert or church service. Shock and awe.