Modartt user forum » Organteq user forum » Does Organteq interface with a home Organ, like a Lowrey?
I am planning to visit my parents next week. My Dad has a Lowrey home Organ, a few years old like the Liberty or similar. He asked that I see if anyone has tried to interlace the two - I do not know if the Lowrey has separate MIDI ins and Outs for the keyboards.
Has anyone tried this?
I haven't worked with Lowrey Organs a lot (usually Allen church organs or the occasional Hammond), but I believe they started having MIDI I/O on some models starting in the 1980s, and I'm quite sure all Lowrey Liberty models have MIDI. I don't know exactly what MIDI will send or not send on it (if every piston or button has its own MIDI CC or value), but on the other consoles I've worked with--including Church Pipe Organs with MIDI stop knobs--the MIDI connectivity is there to interlace the main organ with any additional software/sounds/stops that you can control electronically. You'll probably need to do a moderate amount of assigning MIDI events in OTQ, but after that it should work the way you're hoping.
Feel free to test and report back and tell us how it goes, and enjoy the holidays with your family!
MIDI-enabled products first became available in 1983. Most Lowrey organs were made before then. For details, see the Wikipedia article "List of Lowrey organs."
I am planning to visit my parents next week. My Dad has a Lowrey home Organ, a few years old like the Liberty or similar. He asked that I see if anyone has tried to interlace the two - I do not know if the Lowrey has separate MIDI ins and Outs for the keyboards.
Has anyone tried this?
REPLY:
This is David's father with the answer for anyone that has a Lowrey organ with MIDI in/out plugs and AUX in and out (typically mono 1/4" phone plugs) on the rear panel. I have the top of the line Aria model which actually has a decent audio system and makes this really worth while. There are tons of older Lowrey instruments available that can economically be used to provide two keyboards, pedals and an expression/creshendo pedal as well as perform its original function of an easy to learn home organ.
After a bit of experimenting I was able to get great Organteq sounds using the two Lowrey keyboards, the pedals and the expression pedal. All connections mentioned here are into the panel on the back of the Lowrey instrument. My initial hookup used a USB to MIDI adapter cable (<$5) and a cable with a 1/8" stereo phone plug on one end and two 1/4" phone plugs on the other (<$10).
Here are the steps:
1. Go to the MIDI page on the Lowrey features menu and disable Local MIDI. This uncouples the pedals and keyboards from the Lowrey tone generators.
2. Plug the 1/8" stereo plug into the earphone jack on the computer and the mono 1/4" plugs into the AUX in jacks on the back panel.
3. Plug the usb MIDI adapter cable into the MIDI OUT port on the back panel and the other end into a USB port on the computer.
4. (Optional) Get even better sound by plugging in a powered speaker or subwoofer into the AUX out jacks. In my setup, I used a stereo Bluetooth adapter to send the audio to a powered speaker and powered subwoofer in the back of the room to add a sense of space. This works remarkably well with the different Organteq environments.
5. (Really optional) I eliminated the MIDI computer cables by using MIDI Bluetooth with a WIDI BUD usb adapter on the computer end and a Yamaha BT-01 adapter plugged into the MIDI out port on the Lowrey.
Confession: I am not an organist, but love being able to recreate the power and tones of a large pipe organ in my own home. The quality of Organteq voicing is so good, the original Lowrey sounds (which I thought were quite good - and they really are on my model) pale in comparison.
My current need: A basic book that explains how to set up Organteq. It should include a glossary of terms, suggestions on how to use the couplers and stops and how to balance the sound levels so that one manual doesn't overwhelm the other.
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I haven't worked with Lowrey Organs a lot (usually Allen church organs or the occasional Hammond), but I believe they started having MIDI I/O on some models starting in the 1980s, and I'm quite sure all Lowrey Liberty models have MIDI. I don't know exactly what MIDI will send or not send on it (if every piston or button has its own MIDI CC or value), but on the other consoles I've worked with--including Church Pipe Organs with MIDI stop knobs--the MIDI connectivity is there to interlace the main organ with any additional software/sounds/stops that you can control electronically. You'll probably need to do a moderate amount of assigning MIDI events in OTQ, but after that it should work the way you're hoping.
Feel free to test and report back and tell us how it goes, and enjoy the holidays with your family!
REPLY: Please read my reply below. I got a good start along the lines you suggested. There must be a lot that I have overlooked as there are controls on the Lowrey that may generate their own MIDI messages that can be used with Organteq. For one thing, it would be great to switch to the third manual with a button or pedal press. Also I know very little about actually playing pipe organs and the terms/names that are commonly used to define the different sounds (flutes, reeds, vox humana, etc.) It is all great fun.