I have been interested in pipe organs since I was very young. In fact I grew up within a few hundred yards of the Alexandra Palace Willis organ. It had once been described by Marcel Dupre as “the finest concert organ in the world”. Sadly, the organ was silent, and in desperate need of repair.

  Many years later, in California I tried to acquire a real pipe organ, but missed out on the one I really wanted. Actually having a pipe organ in a small house is not a good idea, as the acoustics are completely unsuitable. There is a saying in the organ world - “The most important stop on the organ is the building it is in.” So I decided that an electronic organ was a better way to go.

 I acquired a Yamaha Electone, missing the bench and pedalboard, then moved up to a Schober Recital, which I “supercharged” with an extra set of generators and a combination action (which finally self-destructed!) Then I was lucky enough to find a Klann console paired with a Conn Custom Electronic Church Organ (Model 904) which was quite an impressive beast. The console is splendid, and I still have it,  but the Conn organ was not so good. Despite being very complicated, and, apparently, hideously expensive, the sound was far from satisfactory. It’s sad to think that someone probably dumped their pipe organ and replaced it with this monster.

  A friend of mine introduced me to a computer program and a Soundfont that started me on a quest to develop a computer-based pipe organ simulation. The program was “Building Blocks”, a MIDI program, and the Soundfont was “Jeux” by John McCoy.  I used Building Blocks to create a control system where individual stops could be drawn. Having worked out the basics of this system using a Roland keyboard and a desktop computer, I took the plunge and snipped off the several hundred wires that joined the Klann console to the Conn. I  installed a MIDI interface and the computer into the console.

 To achieve any kind of polyphony performance with Soundfonts, I needed to find a way to have more than one sound card working in a computer, and at the time this was almost impossible. I discovered the KX Project  which made it possible. I have kept the web pages I wrote describing my PC Organ Project for anyone who is interested, but be warned, the information is obsolete.

 Computer programmers began to write sophisticated organ-specific applications, and my efforts began to pale in comparison.  I used jOrgan for a while,  but when Hauptwerk arrived, I decided to use it exclusively. The realism of the sound is amazing. jOrgan is an excellent program, and it is free, but I am not content with the quality of Soundfonts.

  I now have Ken Bales’ “St. George’s Casavant” sample set installed in the organ as the default sample set, and I have a few smaller Hauptwerk organs also, including a very pretty Willis organ of just a few stops.