Hey, I'm new here so thought I would say hello. I live in England near to London and am about to start Uni having had a gap-year. M:icon_bigg
Welcome, Messiaen! Your first name isn't Olivier, is it? An interesting choice of name! Before I moved to the Netherlands, I lived in Slough (I know :tears which is almost west London and I was a student at London University for my Bachelors.:smilewave
Haha no it isn't but Messiaen is one of my favourite composers and a bit different so i went with it! Slough is ok!!........It's got the biggest Tesco in Europe :icon_wink M
Good choice of Personal Favourite Composer! I'm more Baroque myself (Bach) but I like a bit of Maeeiaen About of the Organ. Do you listen or do you play? Well, I suppose it's a good thing to be known for -and The Office, of course!
My partner and I both plonk. He's much more able than me but then he studied piano and composition at the Royal Academy. I'm just a zealous amateur! He was a chorister at St George's Chapel, Windsor. I sing like a corn-crake! If you look in my photos, under Musical Interests or Home, you'll see Olive and we also have a virtual organ (Hauptwerk) with Metz Cathedral organ on it. Do you know Hauptwerk?
RAM is a great place to study. St George's is such a lovely chapel. Yes, I know Hauptwerk but I have not come across an instrument which uses it......
We bought a second-hand digital organ with 3 manuals and a 32-note pedal-board. It's linked via MIDI to a computer with the Hauptwerk software on in, then on to an amplifier which means we can play it through speakers (lots) or headphones. Once you have the basic software, which comes with St Margaret's Liverpool already loaded, you can buy sample sets of other organs. We have the Cathedral at Metz in France and a two-manual harpsichord also loaded. You can do everything the real organ can do in terms of couplings etc - we have a touch-screen which shows all the stops, pistons etc, plus the pedal pistons. You can even have the authentic sound of the blower and the clunk of the stops, keys and pedals if you want! It's not the same as a REAL organ of course, but it's damned good as a substitute! Praeludium in C by J.C. Kellner | Hauptwerk Virtual Pipe Organ - YouTube This guy in the States is the one who got me interested in it - he has lots of other clips on Youtube. I hope it's allowed to post this here :eek:
I might start looking into that.....we have a now rather old Wyvern model electric at home. Is the software very expensive? Thi sounds similar to the software they had at Salisbury Cathedral whilst the Willis was being refurbished!? That's amazing playing and the Organ sounds very realistic! M
You can download a test version - it has an annoying tick like a metronome which goes on all the time, but it gives you the opportunity to explore its possibilities. The software itself is not TOOOO expensive, but the sample sets can be. The big organs cost a lot to sample. Salisbury - nice cathedral! When we still lived in England, my partner and I used to "do" cathedrals and Salisbury is one of my favourites. If you llok up Hauptwerk Virtual Organ on the internet, you'll find their site. The only thing is you need a pretty fast processor for it to work with a big sample set, but the trial version works on most computers with enough memory. Have fun :smilewave
