This is how it looks:

https://www.icloud.com/sharedalbum/fr-f...4CBC940198

My device has:

(A) 14 buttons for easy/quick access to the stop combinations, namely

on the lower row:  10 buttons, a button for each stop combination.
on the upper row: buttons for previous/next stop combination and previous/next bank.

The buttons are positioned in the same way as the corresponding touch screen buttons in Organteq’s Jamb View

(B) A knob for easy access to volume control.

It works as follow: when one of the 14 buttons is pressed, a note on/note off MIDI message is sent and the nearby LED flashes for 200ms to confirm the MIDI action. No need to have the LED lit longer, because the organist can see the current (active) stop combination on the screen. Moreover, my MIDI controller is USB powered, so it is not reasonable to strain the USB port for a LED light  which nobody needs.

I attach a video showing how it works:

https://www.icloud.com/sharedalbum/fr-f...B7FBBF654E

The front panel  has been made of PLA using a 3D printer.  For the electronics I used an Arduino Pro Micro PCB and WS2812B individually addressable LEDs.  The wiring has been designed by …  Claude (free version), who also wrote the firmware code and explained me how to upload it. The price of the materials is very low, but there is a lot of work, especially precision soldering.

Why did I build this?
Why was I not happy with MIDI controllers available on the market?

First of all, the positioning of the buttons on the front panel of the available MIDI controllers is not at all suited  for  the Organteq interface. Usually such MIDI controllers have a 4x4 or 5x3 button matrix.

I saw that a very popular choice is Elgato’s Stream Deck MK2.

I did not try this device, but studying the specifications, I think that it is not optimal for Organteq use.
The main reason: Elgato’s Stream Deck is not a MIDI controller. It can be converted into a MIDI controller by installing a MIDI plugin. But the device requires the application Stream Deck running in the background, taking processor power,  RAM and straining  the USB port.

A simple MIDI controller (as mine) does not take any meaningful computer power and is natively compatible with any computer platform without any driver or application running in the background.

Our best solution is to lean towards a flute based registration. The great is always playing broken chords to keep the choir in time.

Organteq has so many options that I can spend days chasing a registration that I think works but at our church does not. We are a Catholic Church in Perth Western Australia playing traditional and more modern Catholic approved hymns.

Does anyone have experience in using Organteq for hymns? Is someone able to assist with some suggested registrations please.

I face the uncomfortable reality of explaining to my wife, who is also our choir leader, that the investment we made in Organteq may not have been the sure fire answer I thought it would be.

Thank you for listening to me.

At the moment I have a setup with 1 keyboard en one pedal board for the base.
Wen I play a base note (on one of the pedals) and play 4 notes at the same time on the keyboard all sounds fine.
But wihen I press 5 notes at the same time on the keyboard instead of 4 the base note stops playing. But the base note continues playing again when I release the 5th note.
And when I play 5 notes arpeggio on the keyboard (not together at the same time, but slightly after eachother but holdding the notes instead of releasing the notes) all six notes (that is including the base note) are audible and perfect.

Is there a setting to solve thius problem?

Thanks

Koen

Many thanks.

This is a playlist with 4 videos showing the digital organ which I built  last spring (using Organteq) in full action:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=P...kb0GhpfxrZ

The recording does not reproduce perfectly the beautiful/deep  sound we had in the church.  For two reasons:
First, I am an ignorant mathematician, not a sound engineer.
Second, for the recording I had only 3 mics, whereas the sound system has 8 (eight) speakers, namely:
- Two powerful full range speakers in front of the church, and 
- 2+2 high/middle range speakers + 2 massive subwoofers mounted behind the church, at about 3 m heigh!
Since our church is quite small, I use a simple stereo system, so only 2 channels (3 speakers per channel).

The distance between the two front speakers and the six rear speakers is about 12m. For the connection I used a 20 m long ethernet cable and 2 baluns. No signal strength loss, no noise, perfect synchronisation! 
The whole  investment for the organ (including the 8 speaker sound system and the Italian made pedalboard) was about 5 500€, whereas restoring the old UK made pipe organ would cost many tens (maybe hundreds) of thousands of €! 
Best regards,
Andrei

P.S. The image from the left is taken using a 200€  PTZ Tenveo camera (bought on Amazon) and the image from the right (which shows the manuals) is taken using an iPhone connected wirelessly to my Mac.  This explains the latency of the recording from the right.

I’m planning to start a modular organ console project and would like to begin with a single manual setup (no pedalboard for now), mainly to learn the building process and improve it step by step.

The keyboard I plan to use is a Fatar 61TP/8O.

Before designing everything from scratch, I was wondering if anyone here has:
    •    cabinet plans or blueprints suitable for a Fatar 61TP/8O
    •    dimensional schemes for a compact single-manual console
    •    ergonomic recommendations (manual height, key height from the floor, depth, bench distance, etc.)
    •    advice from your own console builds

Space is currently limited, so I’m aiming for a compact and modular solution. The idea is to start with one manual, but possibly expand in the future up to two or even three manuals (and later add a pedalboard).

Any shared plans, sketches, measurements, photos, or useful links would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you in advance for your help!

Best regards,
Luigi

Each preconfigured Organteq preset comes with a wonderful demo file playing the Toccata in D minor Dorian  and also with a preset demo file.

I tried to play several midi files for organ found on the internet. They sound fine, but I noticed that these files don't contain any information about the stops. They play using the stops chosen by the user,  and this initial stop combination remains static (does not change during playing).

My questions:

(1) Can one find on the internent midi files for organ which also encode (and play in real time) the stop configurations used by the organist during the recording?

If yes, I imagine that such a file will sound correctly only when played with certain presets (which contain all the stops used during recording).

(2) Does the midi file obtained by recording a piece played in Organteq contain the stop combination encoding ? 

Thank you in advance.

With best regards, Andrei

Spent January talking with local cantors and voicers familiar with the Rühlmann tradition, managed to get some recordings of individual stops which helped massively with recreating the sound. The interesting bit about Rühlmann organs from this period: they're late-Romantic but with a very specific character. Sharp strings that cut through and color the Principal 8', flutes that are quite powerful without any spitting sounds, and principals that sing with minimal chiff. The second manual isn't some weak afterthought either as it's a proper additive partner to the Hauptwerk, even on smaller instruments.

Original tuning was Parisian pitch with equal temperament. The current organ stands around 440 Hz now, but I've used 435 in the preset since that's historically accurate.

Overall, it was interesting to work specifically with local organs (most of which are by Rühlmann by the way). His work somewhat resembles Cavaillé-Coll. One local organ in Bobbau was actually built after Rühlmann studied with Cavaillé-Coll, which explains his love for using French stops instead of those typical in German Baroque, for instance. The replica turned out quite convincing. Not perfect itself, but perfectly playable.

I've uploaded the preset to FXP Corner along with a three keyboards mapping file that matches the actual organ's compass:

Manual I & II: C-f³ (54 keys each)
Pedal: C-d¹ (27 keys)

Preset itself:
https://forum.modartt.com/file/6dov4p5s

Keyboard mapping:
https://github.com/coignard/organteq-st...boards.otm

René Coignard

https://coignard.bandcamp.com/album/wiegenlied-f-r-z-ge

I used Bome MIDI Translator to allow me to control all 3 swell pedals with just the one on my EL-900 and also to control the gain control of the pedal section so it too will 'swell'

Here's my initial result (don't listen to the wrong notes I was concentrating more on the GUI to give a 'performance')

https://forum.modartt.com/uploads.php?f...c%2001.mp3

I had an old Yamaha Electone and it had a button rail (is that what it's called?) under each manual. You press these buttons to change sounds (stop combinations) with your fingers.

Is there any existing product to do the same? I guess it needs to be USB-connected and then you can assign different combinations to each button in Organteq 2.

In my post about the Organteq 2 template + MIDI bridge for Dorico, which allowed using stops by their name, I mentioned that I also have a template I use for finished works, and unlike that complex template, this one is much simpler to use and mainly just requires pre-prepared registration.

Using Shift+P you can enter the sequential number of an Organteq 2 combination from the current preset: for example, c1 (or [c1] if you don't want it displayed in the score) triggers the first combination. The middle staff is set to Rückpositiv by default, but you can switch manuals by writing [hw] for Hauptwerk, [rp] for Rückpositiv, or [sw] for Schwellwerk above the staff where you need to change the manual.

Here's a demo of the template in action with my composition "Für Irina":

https://youtu.be/4qSY4SwGoWs

To get this working you'll need two files: the Dorico template itself and a MIDI mapping in .otm format, which needs to be placed in Organteq 2's MidiMappings folder.

By default when playback starts, the template resets the organ state through General Cancel, but this can be replaced with any pre-prepared combination by changing this behaviour in the Init section of the Organteq 2 Expression Map.

Guten Rutsch!

René Coignard