
Self-Playing Pipe Organ - loopsy
https://www.raspberrypi.org/magpi/self-playing-pipe-organ/
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Animats
Most large organs are electrically controlled anyway, and the keys are just
on/off switches. All those organ stops control an overly complicated
combination of electrical, mechanical, and pneumatic parts which implement a
switching system to change the mapping between keyboard and pipes. This is
just a logic function, but implemented with century old technology it's the
size of a mainframe computer.

In modern pipe organs all that switchgear is replaced with a microprocessor.
Once that's done, it's trivial to add MIDI in/out, and the organ console is
often just MIDI keyboards. Self-playing is a standard feature today.

The Stanford Theater in Palo Alto has a modern pipe organ, and it was
deliberately built without self-play. But that's because the place is a hobby
project of somebody who inherited money from HP.

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bencollier49
Yep, the 'Durian' concert hall in Singapore, for instance, has an organ with
an additional wireless console, which can be moved to wherever is most
convenient. I was there as the German organ builders responsible for it were
putting on the finishing touches.

What interests me about the organ in the clip is that the music, "putting on
the ritz", has been slowed down. That implies that the mechanical pipe
switching system must be a bit slow.

Given that this guy did the whole thing largely from first principles, neither
of the above are meant as a criticism; it's a brilliant project!

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ottomanbob
Former church pipe organist here. I've always thought organ is a great
candidate for a digitally manipulated real instrument as playing with
precision and feel is NOT dependent on fine motor functions as it is for most
keyboard and string instruments.

Press velocity is not correlated with volume- in fact sound is not dependent
on a key press at all. Organs don't really require percussive mechanical
functions for a full range of control: an idea virtual/real instrument.

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jacquesm
Ditto Harpsichord.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a04EO5gNfMw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a04EO5gNfMw)

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woliveirajr
> the physical engineering was more problematic

I always find amusing how dealing with physical world is challenging even if
you know everything about it in theory.

Like this scene from Big Bang Theory that I use as an example in every class:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i9en6AcVkBo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i9en6AcVkBo)

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skykooler
I find it interesting that both this and Wintergatan's Marble Machine were
both self-playing instruments inspired by Matthias Wandel.

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unstuckdev
Finally, technology toots its _own_ horn.

