I'm trying to learn and understand "Keyboard Coupling" in terms of electronics

[FlametopFred]

Home Organs (and pipe organs too) seem to have a lot of easy-looking
switches called "Keyboard Coupling" .... where you can couple the upper
keyboard to the lower, or vice-versa, or you can couple a built-in home
organ synth to the upper keyboard.</p>

How do these work, basically?</p>

</p>

I am trying to learn about them.</p>

cheers</p>

</p>

[Austin766]

Re: I'm trying to learn and understand &quot;Keyboard Coupling&quot; in terms of electronics

Well, I speak as an organist, but on pipe organs, there are two types of couplers, intermanual or divisional couplers and intramanual couplers. The inter manual couplers allow you to play all of the stops drawn on one manual or one division and play them on a different manual.

On an organ with mechanical key action, the couplers physically link the manuals together, such that depressing any key on the manual to which the other is coupled actually plays those same keys on the manual you have coupled from. If you watch this video you'll get a good idea of how the inter manual couplers work on mechanical action organs. http://youtube.com/watch?v=P1ba3TZUZJk. You're much mor likely to find couplers for floating divisions (divisions which may be played on any manual, or on more than one manual) on instruments with electric or electro pneumatic action. On electric or ep action instruments you'll likely also find intermanual couplers for pitches higher and lower than 8' unison pitch, this is usually 16' (one octave lower) and 4' (one octave higher), these work in the same manner as the 8' couplers.

On electric action instruments you'll also likely find couplers that say things like "swell 16" "Swell to Swell 16," or "Sw to Sw 16" or some variant thereof. these couplers are the intramanual couplers, they are also known as the octave and sub-octave couplers. They allow you to create a larger sound from one division than if you played the division at unison pitch alone. They work in a manner similar to the intermanual couplers, except they are for one manual only.

The entire console set up determines the placement of the couplers, so I won't male any generalizations about where to find them, but you'll know them when you see them. What you get in terms of couplers depends on what kind of instrument you have, some (more expensive) instruments (like the higher end Allen and Rodgers insruments as well as things like the Trinity Wall Street M&amp;O) have very complete sets of couplers, but the Allen I've done much of my practicing on had only very basic couplers. So what you get on Electronic instruments depends on what you pay and what you have.