Digital Church Organs by R. Wayne Grauel & Associates.

We provide affordable digital church organs for serious organists and churches looking for something beyond the ordinary!

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All material and images on this site: Copyright ©2001-2005
 R. Wayne Grauel

The unprecedented capabilities of the digital technology employed by both builders, as well as their design and tonal concepts are the key to what differentiates the tonal quality of these organs from any domestic digital organ in production today.
 
We use software to control dedicated computer hardware to accurately produce the pipe speech in real time, not as a recorded sample. This system is far superior and offers more flexibility than organs using less advanced sampling technology.

Both builders specialize in building organs of quality, both tonally and visually. Both companies offer tonal concepts and specifications for a wide spectrum of historical organ building. Stop lists reflect specific a wide range of tonal concepts in organ building such as Baroque, French Romantic, or other traditions. My goal is to represent builders that fulfill these concepts.

Totally independent voicing:

The true benefit of real time tonal generation by a computer over other organs with sample technology is the ability to instruct the computer how we want to define the actual speech generation process. Through the actual analysis of specific pipe organs, the computer is programmed to exactly replicate each pipe's speech. This programming defines every aspect of both the sound and speech characteristics of the pipe.

Real time waveform computer systems generate the pipe's voice from the ground up with complete control over the sound of the pipe. This includes the other physical properties that are related to physical pipe speech. The speech of an organ pipe is a uniquely complex process. The resulting sound is directly affected by a combination of physical properties including the pipe's physical dimensions, the composition of the pipe metal, and the unique relationship between the shape of the mouth, its position in the pipe, and its width and height. All have a part in the final tone that a pipe makes.

In reality, an organ pipe does not speak immediately. As air enters the pipe it comes up to speed. This happens very quickly, but it does happen. As this happens, the pipe actually goes through several variations of speech before it achieves the sound that we recognize as the pipe's sound, or "steady state" of speech. These beginning sounds are actually transients, more commonly recognized as "chiff".

Some digital organ companies will try to tell you that this is what identifies the sound of a real pipe organ. Some will tell you that “the faster you play, the more chiff you will achieve, just like in Bach's time.” If you are relating to a quality pipe organ, nothing could be further from the truth. Pipes do have transients in their speech, but electronic organ companies tend to “over do it” in regards to chiff. The goal is to minimize transients and have the pipe speak as quickly as possible, thus having the chiff as more of an articulation - much like a consonant before a vowel, rather than a major component of the pipe’s speech.
The process of making a real organ pipe speak as the builder intended is called voicing and it is a complicated process that requires a lot of skill. The final step in this process is when the organ is completed. This is called tonal finishing. With this understanding of a real organ pipe and how it speaks, we can apply this to “Real Time” technology and how the software instructs the computer to make each individual pipe sound. Aside from the actual sustained sound of the particular pipe, or steady state speech, the much more complex task is to replicate the other series of events that identifies what we hear as authentic pipe characteristics.

If we divide the pipe's tone into three parts -- the attack, the main pipe sound or steady speech, and the decay -- the following aspects can be controlled in the voicing process:

Attack: 

This is the most complex and involves varying waveforms, intensities, and frequencies in the brief period before the pipe achieves its steady speech.

Steady State Speech:

This is the actual sound we recognize as the pipe's voice. Pipe voices, due to their huge number of actual harmonics over the frequency spectrum, have been the most complex and difficult sounds to reproduce accurately until now. Real time computer technology has the capability to generate multiple frequencies at varying intensities over the entire spectrum of the harmonic series. This combination of frequencies is the blueprint for the actual pipe sound.

Decay:

Again, as the air stops, the sound diminishes over a number of frequencies at varying amplitudes.

Add to this the inclusion of random generators to slightly vary the characteristics of each note in each rank of digital voices, and you will have some idea of the complexity, capability, and flexibility that these system provide.

The hallmark of any pipe organ is its tonal success in the room. Similarly, our organs are built to order one at a time and completely voiced in the shop, and then tonally finished at the final installation. But that is only part of the equation. As with pipe organs, harpsichords, violins or any other musical instrument that is hand made, the ear and tonal expectations or concept of the builder will render different results for each instrument. Thus, it is reasonable to say that the human part of the equation affects the quality of sound as much as the physical properties of the instrument.

Pipe organs are wind instruments.

Pipe organs breathe by means of bellows and relative wind supply. The air pressure is regulated in the bellows by some force applying pressure on the bellows. The bellows are expanded with air, much like taking a deep breath. When the keys are depressed, air leaves the bellows and is sent to to the organ pipes. Without going into the details of pipe chest design, on certain organs you can actually hear the organ breathe as the wind fluctuates. As the organ is played, the wind in the bellows may vary slightly, depending on the demands of the organ. This is called "winding". Both systems replicate this physical property relative to the demands placed on the instrument to give the player a very realistic sense of the music.

Digital Reverberation:

One of inspirations of both listening to and playing a magnificent pipe organ in a spectacular worship space or concert hall is the impact room acoustics have on the final sound of the organ. Both builders use a dedicated digital reverberation system that can create a realistic acoustic environment for just about any room. This is probably the single biggest advantage that a high quality digital organ has when compared to a pipe organ. A pipe organ's success or failure as a rewarding and enjoyable instrument is often determined by the acoustical properties of its environment. For many churches and for almost all home studios, proper acoustics are non-existent.

Using digital reverb technology specifically designed for this application results in the achievement of a sound in the room that is both natural and believable. Rooms with less than adequate natural acoustics will realize dramatic results.

Our organs offer complete control over many aspects of delay properties with varying delay times and frequency responses to accurately replicate various room characteristics. The amount of reverb for each specific reverb program is completely adjustable from 0 to 100%. An optional antiphonal reverb system is also available on both systems.

Offering churches and serious organists the ultimate in pipe organ models.

Every detail from the organ console design to the finished tonal concept of the organ is deliberate and precisely calculated to represent the same qualities that define any high quality pipe organ. The sound is as authentic as the looks are esthetic!

Each organ that we provide is custom built to each client's exact specifications. Each client has the opportunity to specify stop lists and other features to be incorporated on each organ. We build organs that meet people's individual requirements.

Our organs are designed not only for churches and institutions, but also the growing need among organists who have always wanted an organ in their private studio, but prefer to play nothing but a real pipe organ. To those organists and churches, we can offer this realism and musical experience at a fraction of the cost.