Announcing Glenn Rudolph's Concert Organ Tutorial

[Garritan]

Glenn Rudolph has sent Part 1 of his Concert Organ Tutorial. Here is the link to the tutorial:

http://www.garritan.com/OrganTutorial.html

In this part of his tutorial, Glenn discusses the pipe organ as an instrument and how writing for organ is different than other instruments. He describes the peculiarities of the organ, some of the history or the organ and notating for organ.

Glenn's tutorial is well written and will be of help to anyone wanting to learn more about using the GPO (or any other) concert organ.

The are also excellent pictures of the Concert Pipe Organ in Ingomar United Methodist Church, Pittsburgh, PA.

Thank you Glenn for writing this indispensable and excellent guide to the organ.

Gary Garritan


Concert Pipe Organ in Ingomar United Methodist Church,
Pittsburgh, PA.

[galvedro]

Cool thing! Thank you very much Glenn and Gary.

Anton

[crr]

thank you! very nice

[gardibolt]

Very nice start---I eagerly await parts II and III.....

[Alan Lastufka]

Great start Glenn,

Hope more is on its way soon!

[G Rudolph]

Great start Glenn,

Hope more is on its way soon!

Yep...now that the boring stuff is out of the way, we'll get down to setting up GPO Player instances and arranging "Jerusalem" (any diehard Emerson, Lake & Palmer fans out there? Brain Salad Surgery, anyone?)

Gary & Alan,

Thanks for the help.

[Skysaw]

Not knowing this stuff is the reason I've always stayed away from writing for organ. Thanks for a great resource. I can't wait for the next two parts.

[Jerry W.]

Thanks for the great tutorial! Can't wait to see the next installment. This is great place to share music, tech tricks and hints, AND get educated at the same time.

You gotta love it!

Jerry Wickham

[gardibolt]

While we wait for the next installment (less than patiently), I have a question regarding organ and crescendi. The tutorial indicates that you can change dynamics by adding or removing stops. How would you accomplish these changes in GPO Studio in a way that mimics that procedure? I have an organ piece I'm working on that says "cresc. poco a poco" and am at a bit of a loss as to how to accomplish this crescendo in a realistic manner. One could of course just increase the velocity but that doesn't seem to be how it's actually done on the organ. Any ideas?

[Haydn]

It depends on the design of the organ. The last church I played at had a 3 manual pipe organ. The swell and choir manuals each had shutters which could control the level. The great and pedal manual levels were controlled by adding or removing stops which could also be done with the swell and choir manuals. Most organs also have a crescendo pedal which will add stops as you push it down further adding a crescendo. This doesn't work in a smooth manner as it's just adding stops and the level and timbre can change abruptly in different positions of the pedal.