Virtual Pipe Organ

The future of digital organs is PC based. I mean PC in the inclusive sense of Windows, Linux, or Mac personal computers which have nearly become commodity items these days. Follow the money, custom software and hardware cannot keep pace with consumer electronics economy of scale. For some time, there has been a commercial virtual pipe organ (VPO) software application called Hauptwerk, and it is pretty much the state of the art as far as VPO's go. But it also has a state of the art price tag, even though there is a free limited version you can use. If you are building a $100,000 church organ, that is the software to use probably. It can even actuate electromagnetic stop tabs. Check it out, I'm sure you will be impressed.

On the other hand, for a few years, there has been a free alternative with which I am just starting to become familiar. It's called jOrgan and it works on PC, Linux, or Mac (under Java Runtime Environment or JRE). The coolest part is jOrgan is open source, and thus nearly obsolescence proof, and jOrgan only stands to get more capable with time. This is a pretty amazing piece of software, and for some time I have been wanting to install it and take it for a test drive. This week I did.

The Windows XP install is a breeze. Download the executable, install, and start playing the virtual keyboard. I do not plan to configure it further because my Windows computer is not close enough to my organ MIDI controller console to use it easily. Instead, I decided to build a jOrgan Virtual Pipe Organ using entirely free software. I started out with a Pentium 1.7Ghz CPU with 768mb RAM (maxed out memory for this aging Hewlett Packard) into which I had installed an M-Audio Audiophile 24/96 audio card (which allows hardware MIDI control via a serial port and has excellent quality stereo output). Then I wiped the drive with some software called Darik's Boot and Nuke (DBAN), which is intended to make a hard drive safe to sell on ebay without worrying that someone will obtain your financial data. In my case, the purpose was to make sure it was a completely clean install. Then following the incredibly detailed step-by-step instructions written out for me on the jOrgan Forum, I was able to install Puppy Linux 5.1.1, a very lightweight and free operating system. Then the Java Runtime Environment (JRE), and finally jOrgan. It took some time alright, which is why I waited until the weekend to tackle it without rushing, but it really wasn't hard. It is quite surprising to me how far this little Puppy distribution of Linux has come with regard to ease of use.

Wow! What fun! With jOrgan, given enough time and effort and access to the right equipment, you can create your own virtual pipe organ to emulate an actual pipe organ. Fortunately, others have made several already, so you don't have to, but it's nice to know we can. The sound is very realistic, even allows adjustment of tracker sounds and wind noise, as well as chiff. Even on my very modestly powered computer, there was no appreciable lag. In fact there was probably significantly less than there is on a real pipe organ, but it's been a long time since I've played a real pipe organ so I can't really judge that. All I know is when I hooked it up to my portable keyboard for testing it did not play tricks with my brain like some high latency MIDI apps have done before.

I'm playing the sounds dry, but it is possible to add convolution reverb. That will be my next project, but for now, I'm just enjoying the sounds of pipes. Or virtual pipes if you insist.

Makes me want to hurry up and convert those old analog Rodgers organs to MIDI so they sound this good. If you want to know more, check out the jOrgan website and forum.