Topic by Daniel W

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  • Daniel W
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  • Registered: 03-02-2020
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Topic: Silky smooth simmering sound?

While I partially chose Organteq because of its crisp, clean and upfront sound, I would, sometimes, like to create a very dreamy and distant registration, as if played from some far, up and away, antiphonal echo division.

Though this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QBhnpPdkhHM
concerns itself with a competing product, I hope it is okay to use it as a reference, since the beginning of the (rather long and moody) intro (to a presentation of a seemingly nice home setup) gives a quite good example of the organ kind of softly simmering away, with a thick, wavering sound.

With the default preset, the softest single stop I have found is the Bourdon 16' on the Grand Orgue, but as it is just one stop, it's not as smeary as I would sometimes like. Pulling, as designed, the Voix Celeste 8' with a Gambe 8', activating the tremulant and closing the expression pedal, goes some way towards a "floating beating sound", as the user manual describes it, but even at minimum expression, it is already fairly prominent and in-your-face.

As this is a virtual organ, I could, of course, just turn down the volume, which makes the sound softer, but still not quite as buttery as I would sometimes like, and doing so would prevent me from building up to a more crescendo-like registration later on.

Maybe I could fiddle with the reverb to create a more diffuse sound, but the parameters available, mainly seems to affect the size of the virtual environment. I don't see any way there, to make just one division appear to be (much) further away from the listener. I could perhaps load Organteq as a plugin in my DAW (Reason) and play with a different reverb for one of the divisions. I've done something similar to add a fake 32' fundamental (a sine) to the pedal, but since Reason doesn't support "VSTs that can receive on separate MIDI channels", I need to load one instance per keyboard, which makes the GUI a bit messier to deal with than I would like.

Before this gets too long, I would greatly appreciate any tips, tricks, thoughts and ideas on how to achive a more velvety sound in Organteq.

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Reply by Daniel W

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  • Daniel W
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Re: Silky smooth simmering sound?

Well, a first answer from myself...

When playing (with) a synth, it is common to play, say, three oscillators at almost a unison pitch, with one tuned a little sharp and another one a tad flat. Done right, it can add some richness, even to basic waveforms.

Since Organteq is a software model, it easily allows certain things that would take a long time, at best, to do with a physical organ, such as retuning a rank or two. The Gambe 8' happens to be present on all the keyboards, so I played a bit with the tuning, making one ten or so cents sharp, another one correspondingly flat, and left the third as is. Using couplers to play them togehter, gave me a tad more simmery sound, even without the tremulants.

As a narrow string pipe like the Gambe, are rich in overtones, maybe,I should try experimenting with a few flute stops instead, to get a mellower tone? 8' flutes are not as plentiful in the default layout, but since, again, this is software, I can have four(ty) 8' flutes if I like. It's getting late here, though, so that'll have to wait for another day.

[Edit:typo]

Last edited by Daniel W (28-02-2021 00:11)
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Reply by CuriousDan

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Re: Silky smooth simmering sound?

Daniel W wrote:

While I partially chose Organteq because of its crisp, clean and upfront sound, I would, sometimes, like to create a very dreamy and distant registration, as if played from some far, up and away, antiphonal echo division.

Maybe the Modartt team could implement a slider to adjust the volume ratio in the swell? Make it ppp...

Last edited by CuriousDan (01-03-2021 11:35)

Reply by Daniel W

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  • Daniel W
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Re: Silky smooth simmering sound?

CuriousDan wrote:

Maybe the Modartt team could implement a slider to adjust the volume ratio in the swell? Make it ppp...

Perhaps. I guess the current expression range is modelled on how a typical swell shade would dampen the sound, both in volume and frequency response, but yes, being able to tweak more of the model parameters could be nice. After all, there are always special cases, like this nice little https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qhLbcKeVQK8 1042-pipe organ, which has double expression - a swell box in a swell box (there's a sketch around 15:38), allowing a greater dynamic range from a relatively small organ.

I can pick, say, one of the 8' Bourdons, long press the drawknob to get to its settings and lower the volume as much as I like, for just that stop. For some more variation, I can do the same with, say, one of the 4' Flutes and 2' Doublettes. That, however, just lowers the volume and doesn't give the kind of texture to the sound that I'm looking for.

As a test, I made all stops in the Récit division, about ten dB quieter, and replaced all but the Voixes, Regale and Cornet Mixture with Bourdons, detuned by various amounts, up to +/- fifteen or so cents. As one wouldn't normally do that to an organ, the result sounded a tad strange, maybe in the direction of a Leslie cabinet, on a pipe organ.

Right now I'm thinking that maybe I should try soft reeds and strings, possibly at a low volume, and a fairly liberal detuning of one or two ranks, but maybe not more than that.

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