What Determines an Organ Style/Design?

[myorgan]

Folks,

In another thread, I was discussing a particular organ I might consider a church-style home organ. The thought made me ask myself the question, How are the different organ styles determined? I'm sure there is some sort of crossover between them, but what would you all consider the difference to be between Classical, Theatre, Home, Church, or other styles of organs. Are there crossovers; are there specific categories; are there new categories? For a builder the individual criteria might be well-defined, but what about the general buyer/player--how would (s)he know?

Michael

[andyg]

I think you can subdivide the home organ into various groups. 'Old school', like your Heritage, with organs loosely based on theatre sounds. Theatre, like Conn, Rodgers, Allen. Hammond - and clones. Orchestral, where the voices start to become more realistic and you start to get orchestral strings. Digital Orchestral, which includes all the current crop.

As you know, they all go into Home Organs on here, apart from Hammond and Theatre. Classical home organs? Well, there's no doubt that you can have a classical organ at home, and indeed there were even spinet models from the likes of Conn. But we've never treated them as home organs here. Indeed you could have a pipe organ at home, but we wouldn't class that as a 'home organ' either!

Crossovers? Well, there are multi-spec digital organs that will do classical and theatre, some that will have orchestral sounds as well. There are digital home organs that may well have high quality classical and theatre sounds. At one point it was clearly defined, but nowadays tThe lines get blurred!

[samibe]

Classical/Church - Stop tabs are typically in a straight rows above the manuals or on slanted panels to either side of the manuals. Drawknobs (if present) are usually on slanted panels to either side of manuals. They usually have full 61-note manuals and 32-note pedalboards. The console is usually more square with sharper corners. They are often found in churches.

Theatre/Church - Horseshoe-shaped console often with more curvy scrollwork and carved embellishments. Tabs curve all the way around the horseshoe console and are colored the match the stop family. They usually have full 61-note manuals and 32-note pedalboards. I was surprised by how many theatre organs were being sold by churches while I was in the market for my organ. Ranks are often louder than classical organs (pipe ranks under higher pressures) to make up for the fact that the organ is so unified. Usually, included traps and effects in addition to standard ranks.

Home - These are a bit outside my experience. In my opinion they seemed to have smaller pedalboards (12 -25 notes) and often (but not always) smaller manuals too (49-note offset). They also seemed to have smaller buttons instead of stops (which allows them to fit more sounds and effects onto a smaller console).

Hammond/Church - Tonewheel organs that used drawbars to generate different timbres. Hammond organs had their own cabinet design although some that were sold to churches had a slightly more classical console. These are also a bit outside my experience so I'm sure someone from that side of the forum will fill in the gaps.

Edit: It looks like my understanding of/experience with Home organs is more of the spinet variety.

Crossover - By the time I get done with the modifications of my digital Theatre organ, I will likely use it more as a VPO with optional Classical, Theatre, and/or Orchestral specifications along with a couple of alternate sounds for each stop. It will look like a theatre organ but it won't necessarily sound like one. I guess that since it will be in my home (at least after I move it out of my mom's) it might be considered a home organ. Although, I wouldn't necessarily consider a three-manual instrument typical of a home organ.

As for how or why styles are the way they are, I think it has to do mainly with utility and some tradition. Drawknobs and a square console were probably easier for the organ builder to work with on a fully mechanical/tracker organ back in the day and that style has continued to today due to tradition. The horseshoe shape and color coded tabs make the theatre organ very easy to register on the fly (which is one of the reasons I got one). Theatre organs didn't need to accommodate the organ builder as much because they functioned with pneumatic or electro-mechanical actions. The advent of digital organs allowed many more features to be packed into a smaller home organ for a much more modest price.

[jbird604]

Good question for discussion, Michael. I think we all "know" a serious classical or church organ when we see one, as it will have the standard divisions (in English, great/swell/pedal plus possibly choir or positiv or solo, etc) and the stops will be in vertical choruses, including 16', 8', and 4' members plus 2' and higher for flutes and principals. The voices will cover the four basic tone families. The console will be laid out more or less in the standard classical style (AGO or equivalent).

And we all "know" a theater organ when we see or hear one -- a Wurlitzer or Morton or Kimball, etc. with lots of tibias and strings in place of flutes and principals. Reeds more imitative of actual orchestral instruments. Heavy tremulants. Less development of vertical choruses, possibly few or no 2' stops or higher, few or no mixtures. Usually will have some tuned percussions such as bells, and possibly un-tuned ones as well, such as bass drum, snare, cymbal, various other noise-makers. Stop layout is probably different too, with the divisions more likely to be called Accompaniment and Solo, with Accomp stops toward the left, near the pedal stops, Solos on the right.

There have always been models that straddled the fence of course. And a lot of theaterish organs that have been pressed into service as church organs, as well as some home entertainment machines (sadly).

Sometimes I see an organ that seems to partake to some extent of both types. The Rodgers 780 analog comes to mind. Laid out like a classical model, it has some colored tabs (another typical characteristic of theater organs) and some keen strings, pungent reeds, and other theater sounds, but still has vertical choruses, including mixtures, and enough genuine principals and flutes to please most church players.

Roland/Rodgers gave us the W5000 back in the 90's that seemed to try to please everybody, with Hammond drawbars, a Leslie simulator that was quite good, along with a plethora of classical, theatrical, and orchestral "stops" that were contained in a large number of "tabs" that were actually more like "presets" and called up an entire registration rather than a single stop. Was the W5000 a church organ (I have seen several in churches)? Or a home entertainment organ? A Hammond clone?

Hammond has a history of offering models that might be called crossovers too. The most recent, I think, is the 926 (or there may be a more recent incarnation). This series from Hammond, going all the way back at least to the 820 (sold in the late 70's), have full sets of drawbars and built-in Leslies or Leslie simulators, but also have stop tabs with pipe stops engraved on them. Early models such as the 820 had pretty crude sounds on those tabs, but the 926 actually had wonderful sampled pipe organ stops that would make most any classical player happy.

[andyg]

I think the W5000 was aimed at the church that wanted a bit of gospel and praise band - hence the Hammond and orchestral bits - but still wanted some traditional pipe sounds. I thought it was a brilliant instrument, especially with a real leslie on the end. But I think we sold one over here, maybe two, and I don't see it cropping up much stateside either.

I'm not 100% sure that Hammond are still doing the classical range. It's on some websites but is it 'new old stock'. Suzuki seem to be concentrating purely on the B-3, XK and SK lines.

[Ben Madison]

Their distinct types of styles per see, but the stop layouts have become so standard across the board, when the theater pipe organ came out because instead of having stuff cluttering the console why not go for stop tabs and rocker switches their more cleaner and more apt to make rapid changes to the available registration. What i find telling is rather the rank list because you can a standard church console in a theater, does that make it a church organ?

[Silken Path]

On my W5000, I have reprogrammed ALL the buttons to have voices from the built-in classical library. This gives it 3 voices for the upper and lower manuals and two for the pedals. Some of the voices are like flute 8-4-2, reed 8-16-32, and bourdon 32.

I think that they thought they could capture churches that had used Hammonds, included the Rodgers library to satisfy other organists, and the synth section was a bizarre way to include the PR-300 voices and drums. Although I know of one W5000 also in a home (a non-forum member in Scotland), I think the expense of them (and the full audio panel on the back) aimed it straight at congregations.

I'm using it mostly for Hauptwerk and maniac Hammond sounds now. It has a half-moon switch, too, to run my Vent.

[jbird604]

I used to dream of building a purely "preset" all-purpose church organ. It would've been more or less a standard two-manual keystack and AGO pedalboard, a single expression pedal. And no stop tabs at all. I'd have used a row of pistons below the lower to call up a series of maybe 16 general purpose registrations, beginning with two or three really soft flute and/or string combos. Then a gentle build-up, adding more and stronger and higher pitched sounds, culminating in a grand FFF piston with reeds and everything.

A second row of preset pistons under the other manual would call up 16 different registrations useful for quiet and solo playing. A few devoted to varieties of celestes (I'm a fool for celestes). A few fluty ones, a few orchestral, a couple of different reed solos with celeste accomp, a chime solo with celeste accomp.

In my dream world, I would build these and sell them to all my small church customers to replace their horrifying Thomas and Kimball fun machines. Then all the little old lady organ players wouldn't have to know anything specific about registration, just know which piston to use for a given purpose. There would be no more such players turning on some crazy ridiculous mix of stops with the wildest tremulant on the organ and loud 16' stops on the manuals for that extra special muddy tone quality.

Alas, my project never got off the ground, as more pressing issues like feeding my children took precedence.

Now some younger guy is going to have to take my concept and market it to the masses, if churches ever start buying organs again!

[samibe]

John, That's how I set up the a few of the preset memories on the Allen at my church. I set up one memory to be ensemble registrations that ranged from contemplative (general piston 1) to joyful and triumphant (general piston 10) for congregational singing. I set up the divisional pistons in a similar manner but with slightly different stops (e.g. I added the 32' stops for the toe studs). I also set up another memory with solo registrations (celeste/ensemble + solo voice(s)) to be used for prelude/postlude.

The other organists at my church haven't read the manual to know how to set any of the presets and most of them don't even try to figure out how to set different registrations. I let them know that I set up some preset memories and they have been very appreciative that they don't have to poke around until they get something that sounds okay. They can sit down and select a preset that roughly corresponds to the desired volume and be good to go. I initially set it up that way because that makes it easier for me. Recently, I've been getting better at hand registering during prelude/postlude so I can explore the organ beyond my initial presets (I keep finding stops that grow on me over time and then I have to work them into my preset registrations).

[jbird604]

Good idea, Sam. And we're not too far off the original topic. A "preset" organ might in fact be considered another one of the styles or types of organ, as it is a distinctly different way to lay out an organ, and may produce sounds that might otherwise be thought of as belonging to one of the major organ styles. A pragmatic and flexible type of instrument, an organ for all.

There have in fact been organs built somewhat like this. For example, I used to have a Yamaha HX-1 (which I made the subject of a thread a few years ago). This organ has no "stops" as such, just a variety of tones and patches, filters, processors, etc. You play around with the controls until you get the kind of sound you want, then you can save those settings to a piston, and you can save a complete series of presets to a floppy disk for long-term archiving.

To use such an organ as a church organ (or to practice for church, as I did), you make up a series of tones and effects that sort of simulate the kinds of registrations you would use at church, then you save them in sequence to the 12 pistons.

Because this kind of organ has no actual stops, and can theoretically serve (in a pinch) as a stand-in for a classical organ or for a theater organ or almost any other kind of organ, I think it qualifies as a unique organ type of its own.

So add that to the list -- Classical, Theater, Hammond, Orchestral, Fun Machine, and now "Preset."

[myorgan]

Thanks, all for contributing to this thread. I knew the term "style" could be interpreted a few different ways, so I didn't define it too precisely. That said:

I would generally classify organs somewhat like the following:

• Home Organ--Divided into the following sub-categories:
  • Spinet--Two offset keyboards with an octave of pedals
  • Entertainment--Sometimes larger than the Spinet organ, but generally with onboard rhythms, orchestra sounds, and percussion. They may or may not have longer keyboards (perhaps velocity sensitive) or longer pedal boards. Maybe even lit stops.
  
  
• Classical/Church Organs--With the following general features
  • AGO (or similar) specifications
  • Two or more 56-61 note keyboards
  • 30-32 note pedal board
  • Stops containing all four families: Diapason, Flutes, Strings, & Reeds
  • Great Diapason Chorus
  • Swell Reed Chorus
  • Swell Flute Chorus
  • Strings w/celeste on at least one manual.
  
  
• Theatre Organs--With the following general features
  • Horseshoe console
  • Colored stop tabs according to stop family
  • Tibia Chorus possibly without Diapasons
  • Vibrato is heavy, compared with Classical/Church Tremolo
  • Highly unified, borrowed, and/or duplexed
  • Traps and percussion
  • Second touch available (dual pressure keys)
  • Mood lighting in the console.;-)
  
  
• Crossover Organs--Those which don't fit easily into one of the other categories
  • Single-keyboard instrument which are more like organs than pianos, but can do both
  • May have rhythms and sound patches which can be layered like an organ rather than a piano
  • May even have pedals and a volume pedal rather than piano-styled pedals
  • Has home organ features, but church, classical, or theatre sounds or controls
  
  
• Hammond--Well, they're an entity unto themselves. There are spinet models, church models, and they've been used in theatres. There aren't many niches Hammond organs haven't breached.

What think ye all?

Michael

[Leisesturm]

A number of Virtual Pipe Organs have very ... nostalgic, styling. Harkening back to the Baroque even. Touch screens? Erm... no. So what does the designer do when the price point does not allow for a modern reproduction of a 16th Century drawknob? Pistons. Lots o' pistons. Maybe even some toe levers. So Cavaille Coll. You can tuck a monitor (or touch screen) behind the music rack for setup and major programming assignments but day to day registration duties are accomplished purely via the General and Divisional pistons.

I think we can agree that the main difference between Theater Style and Classical Style instruments, besides the console layouts is the basing of Classical Organ plenum on the Principal or Diapason and the Theater Organ plenum on the Tibia. What are being called "Home Organs" in this thread are, to me, a very specific sub-category of Theater Organ supplied with extensive auto-accompaniment built ins. These can be strictly rythmic or they can be elaborate harmonic sequencers in both real time and pre-sequenced variants.

[Silken Path]

A number of reed organs have been made with non-functional pipe facades. I think they'd fall in the church or institutional organ genre.

Cabinet pipe organs could be found in homes and chapels.

[Ben Madison]

Thanks, all for contributing to this thread. I knew the term "style" could be interpreted a few different ways, so I didn't define it too precisely. That said:

I would generally classify organs somewhat like the following:

• Home Organ--Divided into the following sub-categories:
  • Spinet--Two offset keyboards with an octave of pedals
  • Entertainment--Sometimes larger than the Spinet organ, but generally with onboard rhythms, orchestra sounds, and percussion. They may or may not have longer keyboards (perhaps velocity sensitive) or longer pedal boards. Maybe even lit stops.
  
  
• Classical/Church Organs--With the following general features
  • AGO (or similar) specifications
  • Two or more 56-61 note keyboards
  • 30-32 note pedal board
  • Stops containing all four families: Diapason, Flutes, Strings, & Reeds
  • Great Diapason Chorus
  • Swell Reed Chorus
  • Swell Flute Chorus
  • Strings w/celeste on at least one manual.
  
  
• Theatre Organs--With the following general features
  • Horseshoe console
  • Colored stop tabs according to stop family
  • Tibia Chorus possibly without Diapasons
  • Vibrato is heavy, compared with Classical/Church Tremolo
  • Highly unified, borrowed, and/or duplexed
  • Traps and percussion
  • Second touch available (dual pressure keys)
  • Mood lighting in the console.;-)
  
  
• Crossover Organs--Those which don't fit easily into one of the other categories
  • Single-keyboard instrument which are more like organs than pianos, but can do both
  • May have rhythms and sound patches which can be layered like an organ rather than a piano
  • May even have pedals and a volume pedal rather than piano-styled pedals
  • Has home organ features, but church, classical, or theatre sounds or controls
  
  
• Hammond--Well, they're an entity unto themselves. There are spinet models, church models, and they've been used in theatres. There aren't many niches Hammond organs haven't breached.

What think ye all?

Michael

Does Traps include "Sound Effects?"

[Silken Path]

Does Traps include "Sound Effects?"

Or "toy counter?"