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The
Death
of (Free) Hauptwerk8/20. Hauptwerk still writhes about of course, but unbeknownst to me — because of course the heroic devoted hauptwerkians kept it secret — there is no free version of hauptwerk anymore.
Due to my superior cunning and completely random accident I was present during the glorious days of the free hwerk and have outlived them, although my free hauptwerk 310 is still with us and good as ever — which to be sure is a story in itself, and which the obsolete text below documents in boringly intricate and now — at least the hauptwerk part — totally-obsolete detail.
... Note that not only is the free thing dead, but they’ve got some ridiculous scammy subscription racket, the details of which I can’t be bothered exhuming, although last I looked it can still be bought for a one-time price. ... I explain elsewhere in connection with the stupid photoshop how gloriously wonderful the subscription scam is. This page offers a $600 “perpetual advanced” hwerk, but I could find only rumor of a $250 “basic” edition. Neither of which includes an organ except maybe the St. Anne’s demo (?). ... But anyway, the days of hwerkian glory are apparently past, and I decided I liked miditzer better anyway. ... So there is a “bargain” $10/month “lite” version, you lucky would-be hwerkians....
10/4/20.
Trolling hwerk
technical support,
I found more than one email colloquy which revealed that any organs one
wished to keep from a version 4 installation have to be reinstalled
from a special-for-version-5 rendition — at least, if it was encrypted
and, judging by the pitiful chitter, that’s common — f’rinstance
all
the POW organs
were/are encrypted. ... And
so, as I ominously insist in my famous
software slavery
diatribe, you’re
screwed
when the original vendor — as is so
unlikely in a prosperous solid industry like virtual organs — goes
under, and indeed I found an email
of such — although the email’ll probably be gone with the wind
in a
little while. ... But still I snarkily gloat in fierce abandon....
The
Death of Everything?I suppose the golden days of virtual organs may have wandered off. The hwerk forum still regularly answers technical complaints, suggesting that the high-priced exclusivity strategy may be working over there — but as an expert in stupid scammy hobbyist marketing, by that measure the DSLRs must be doing great! ... But I must say, the unofficial facebook hwerk seems happy, long may they post!
... Mr. Henry’s sweet miditzer forum is too quiet, as they used to say in the westerns — but wait! There’s a January 2021 posting from the estimable Henry claiming they’re delving-away to create a 64-bit Miditzer! ... & ATOS appears to be thriving, but they whine an awful lot.
So I guess maybe everything isn’t dying. I suppose the transient furor of the free POW hwerk 310 organ created a minor golden age for a few precious years, what I innocently basked-in without proper anxiety for the future, foolish me....
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And be sure and see the notes and more notes and even more; not to mention the entire Nord C2 story as I know it. And the virtual organist might include jOrgan and my brief expostulations about Grand Orgue in his journey....
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As my beautiful chart below summarizes, both the Miditzer 216 and Paramount 310 have their ups and downs in my precise Owenlabs technical review. I believe other pitiful web fans like myself have commented that Miditzer makes a good introduction to hauptwerk — and that’s certainly true-enough, in the sense that Miditzer is much easier to install on a Windows computer. But both can be infuriatingly-difficult to get going, at least with anything other than the PC screen. ... But before my glorious late-life conversion, I had ignorantly assumed they were just hopey/dreamy piffleish trash along with all the other wonderful kickstarterish web projects that’ll release a working version any month now — but then in a rush of googling, Miditzer first sprang forth as actually usable, and it wasn’t that bad! — at least for a techno geek such as myself. ... So I was then emboldened to investigate the mysteries and pitiful pomposities of hauptwerk and the beautiful Paramount 310....
Both the hauptwerk Paramounts and Miditzer have promotional (?) aspects that confused me at least. ... Both have (had) free and for-money products, but efforts to use one to promote the other or whatever they’re doing only conveyed to me impenetrable murk. ... For months I couldn’t figure-out the difference between Paramount Organ Work’s free Paramount 310 and the 320 but eventually I found a page which, then, had a selection of useful links and even prices — gone now, but it used to show $179 for the 320 for which I eventually caved-in @ $100 + of course the exorbitant $250 for the requisite version 4 “Basic” hauptwerk software.
... And
I
played the lovely Miditzer
216
for eons
before figuring-out that the advanced 260SP
model, which up to then I
thought
was some kind of legend or ancient broken artifact (like in that wacko
Myst
game), is in
fact available now,
somewhere (I googled
for it),
for a $100 donation.
... What tangled
webs!![[6]](six.png)
... All such things are no
doubt immediately obvious to the psychically-gifted virtual organist,
but not to my confused primitive perceptions.
... So here’s my latter-day expert outsider chart:
| Two One Free Virtual Theater Organs I Have Known, & hwerk ... | ||
| Miditzer 216 | hauptwerk Paramount 310 | |
| Attitude | Friendly scamp | Cryptic
Teutonic![[7]](seven.png)
omniscience |
| Price |
Free,
but not obvious-enough; I’m fond of the $100 version
but it has broken parts. |
“Basic”
$250 and “Insane
Millionaire” $600 versions, both w/dongle,
and the Insane version has multi-channel audio, individual pipe/stop
“voicing”.
But that’s just the hauptwerk
“host”
program! Additional
Paramount
theater organs might be $100 and up. // Recent sighting @ 8/20
hauptwerk version 5 @ $600.... |
| PC | Any ol’ thing | 4 gig memory, giant multiple screens / dedicated organ console? Manual advises 8 gig for a new system |
| Windows? | Only | Of course, but there’s a snooty Macintosh version also |
| Downloading | Scamloader?; small (5 megabytes!) and takes a few minutes | Vast, endless — 2.5 Gigabytes — free theater organ is another half a gig. |
| Installation | A snap | Prolonged agony |
| First use | OK, but can be puzzling | Frightening |
| Operation | Fairly easy | Hard |
| Documentation | Bad: furtive, hermetic | The host program has a detailed high-quality pdf manual |
| Support | Good; might require forum registration | Good |
| Latency delay | Delay makes it harder to play | Delay is unnoticeable with USB audio |
| Computer screen | Eminently usable | Too small; almost illegible; designed for multiple screens? |
| Hardware hookup | This handy chart assumes you have
a MIDI
gadget like my beloved
Nord but if not, both Miditzer
and hauptwerk will make sounds with just a
computer + the
typical PC
speakers
— although Hwerk
made
such a fuss I wasn’t sure, but eventually after I turned-on a stop
or
two in the “tabs” display I could click the mouse
on
the console display keys and hear stuff. With Miditzer, you get to
click
the screen and
play the PC keys!
Obviously they
both are better with MIDI keyboards![[4]](four.png)
+ better audio.
hauptwerk also gets lower latency
with USB
audio, but not Miditzer. |
|
| Software / Hardware Configuration | Can be fiendish | Auto-learn makes it easier |
Both
programs require technical configuration to unique MIDI
channels/devices and
numerous other maddening details, but the
Miditzer requirements are
significantly
harsher with its
barbaric
manual
MIDI
configuration versus hauptwerk’s
modern “auto-learn”.
Presumably because the mostly-free
Miditzer has been without much development for years, while hauptwerk
is
commercially-supported even as I blather.
Although
as is common in such situations, some
Miditzer features work better
than the presumably-much-labored-over hauptwerk
flavors. ... But
for a basic computer + keyboards setup, they’re probably equally
annoying
— maybe Mitz a little less.![[15]](fifteen.png)
|
||
| Sound | The
sound is surprisingly
comparable
Ignore
all that web chitter & puffery; the Paramount 310 doesn’t
sound
so overwhelmingly better, and Miditzer isn’t a pitiful primitive
remnant.
... Well maybe it is a bit; but they both sound lovely. But see
 .... |
|
| The Inconclusive Conclusion |
If you want to get
something going quickly and you’re using a Windows PC and you don’t
mind the latency,
Miditzer.
|
With
a PC or Mac made in the last few years and a good internet connection,
hauptwerk’s
much better at configuring buttons etc. other
than the keyboard, and even the keyboard configuration will often be
easier.
And hwerk can have
noticeably
lower latency.
But it costs money
these days.
|
hauptwerk
Paramount 310Like Captain Kirk discarding the beauteous star maiden-of-the-episode, I callously turned from the endearing Miditzer and embraced the harsh Germanic discipline of hauptwerk + the Paramount 310 — with less latency!...
I
know I wrote
how
Miditzer’s latency builds character; but I’m lazy, and hauptwerk
and the lovely Paramount
310 theater organ,
once past the enduring agony of installation and operation, is
easier
to play — at least the latency
part. Sadly, the 310’s warts
make its scales uneven.
...
But hauptwerk’s
fanatical adherents
claim superior tone....
One confounding distinction between the beloved simple-minded Miditzer and the Paramount 310 — well, it confounded me for days if not months — is that to play the 310 one needs two programs: (1.) the hauptwerk free version, + (2.) the Paramount 310 virtual organ. They must be separately downloaded, at the usual agonizing speed.
Miditzer scores big over hauptwerk in that it saves my stop settings when I exit the program, and restores them when I return. ... The cranky hauptwerk doesn’t understand why you need all that old junk anyway and just throws it away — when you run the program; when you save your settings! ... Like Miditzer, hauptwerk has combination buttons which it does condescend to save / restore. ... Many of hauptwerk’s mysteries melted in the mists after I perused the excellent 316-page PDF manual, but not this — apparently it just throws away stop settings eagerly, and they’d have to fly programmers in from the coast to fix it. When I asked at the hauptwerk forum the kindly response was all like “oh why no I don’t think there’s any way to do that obscure thing you want to do!” even ’though it obviously must be a constant newbie whine....
Getting
the Free hauptwerk
Paramount 310 Theater Organ![[22]](twentytwo.png)
The grand virtual 4-manual
50 rank Paramount 450 with all its required upgrades is available here
maybe.
Any Paramount model above the free 310 requires
the $250 hauptwerk
flavor, but
you insane
millionaires
will want
the super-tweakable hwerk flavor, bringing your virtual organistic
pleasure to $1,350 or so, at least whenever I wrote this — plus,
I assume, additional infuriating
copy-restriction / usb dongle![[11]](eleven.png)
technicalities. ... And the weary years passed me and I didn’t even
notice the even more
pricey
Paramount “341” for another $100, and it requires
the insane
millionaire hauptwerk.
And even with
the higher price, as the
numeric
code implies the 341 only has three
manuals and a mere 41
ranks! ...
A shocking retrenchment! ... Prices are only the home
flavor; there are commercial performance licenses or something
so you can pay through the nose for playing before vast audiences. ...
But do
check the site;
prices vary, often lower!
After the seasons have changed
and you’ve installed the hauptwerk
host program,
and run it, don’t
install the free classical “St. Anne’s” pipe organ it
comes with; I think it
asks? — only because, like everything else hauptwerkian,
you can
probate your will while it goes on. ... No, once the thing is running,
goto “File / Install Organ or Temperament ...” and use that to install the
“Paramount 310”
file you’ve previously downloaded.
And you can work on that boat-in-a-bottle you’ve always wanted-to.
... I hasten
to note
the free/included “St. Anne’s” organ is charming, if
a
little
eccentric![[19]](nineteen.png)
,
but well worth its
timeless
installation....
Once I installed the Paramount 310, it seemed I had to load it every time I ran hauptwerk, with the “Organ“ menu. But it loads much faster than the original install, as they promised, and there is actually some way hwerk can be configured to load the “last” organ automatically, somewhere in the hwerk manual and menus. ... Well after a few computer explosions I’ll break down and document where I did that(in version 4 of course): “General Settings” / “General Preferences” / “Load organ when Haupterk starts?”, change from default “No organ loaded” to “Load last-used organ” ... of course....
The hauptwerk
Paramount 310
screen
as far as I’ve been able to determine in careful scientific tests
doesn’t fit
any computer
I own. ... Which, to be sure, max out at what
I thought
was the “high-definition”
1920x1080 size. hauptwerk
has numerous
panels, fascinating and amusing
I’m
sure, which actually get
in front
of the main screen! 
—
they don’t
“float” to the back, like all other software in creation. ...
My
screenshot above
is the
best I could do,
with the “All Tabs” (i.e. stops) screen, which is what you
probably use while playing.
On
the bright side, the
stops in
the “Console” tab 
are not only
unreadable, but inoperable;
I’m not
intended
to use them for
setting stops (as in the simple-minded single-screen Miditzer).
Which is a tremendous relief, since they’re so very small. ... I
eventually installed hauptwerk
on my humble “Miditzer” 13’’ laptop, and closed
most of the panels
(click the “X”s; the “View”
menu probably gets ’em back), and then I had to
squint at “All Tabs”
—
where
I am
supposed
to click the stops — to see anything. ... After a week or two, I
realized
the window is
resizable, if only a little bit, but still enough to make the text
on the stop tabs a little more legible.
... Legible or not, I’ve prepared
numerous Paramount 310 stop-combination presets by squinting, which I
can
set
off with my Nord buttons....
Physically larger screens — 21’’-and-up desktop LCDs, as opposed to my pitiful laptops — alleviate the squinting problem considerably. But not the screen crowding; hauptwerk’s screens don’t fit. ... Oh I get it; they were probably designed for the holy Apple super-giant 27’’ 2560-by-1440 ultra-def stuff....
Finally I noticed the “All Buttons” tab, which might be more legible; I’m not sure, and the abbreviations confuse me. And if I mouse the Paramount 310 “All Tabs” window to more-or-less fill my 1920x1080 test computer screen, it flips itself to a better horizontal layout — unfortunately leaving no room for any other window....
So I must conclude the hauptwerk Paramounts are intended for large multiple screens and/or elaborate MIDI consoles, but the free 310 at least was workable on my 2010 four gig RAM laptop’s pathetic 13’’ screen + squinting. ... And hauptwerk’s supposed to be usable with a console and no computer screen, which will certainly solve that pesky screen size problem, and of course many hwerk illuminati think a powerful Macintosh desktop with the super-giant screen and dedicated MIDI/audio card(s) is the right stuff and smirk @ small screens and pitifully-tiny Windows laptops....
I, of course, have no giant console, but I am blessed with the Nord which at least has lots of buttons which work OK for controlling the hauptwerk combination presets. A fundamental challenge of the virtual organs is operating the stop tabs; with the mouse it’s virtually impossible during even my performances, and even with many buttons one can usually only hope to control the combinations. “Winging” it with low-rent buttonless MIDI keyboards would probably be tedious....
But then quite belatedly I discovered to my amazement that both hauptwerk and Miditzer can use PC keys for many of these things....
My hauptwerk
InstallationAndUserGuide.pdf
says on PDF page 24 “Please
don’t use Windows
System Restore after installing hauptwerk,
since it might delete or
revert some of hauptwerk’s
files and not others, leaving hauptwerk
in
an unusable condition, while also preventing hauptwerk’s
installer
from
being able to run to repair the installation.”
... Which is bad.![[10]](ten.png)
... And
I will add that hauptwerk’s
copy-restriction
dongle,
when I eventually got one, did not
fill me
with
delight....
And
while
I’m
dissing
the thing, its occasional electronic convulsions
don’t
send me off into furious
rants, which I’m saving up for some appropriate future occasion.
... For now, if I adjust who knows what to be greeted with a
fusillade of crackling noises I just figure I
did something wrong, exit and re-start the program, and try to be
careful....
I did subdue persistent crackling — on the Paramount 310 pedal notes — by lowering the “audio” on the “Audio, MIDI and Performance” window; when I made it -13 (instead of the supplied -10) crackling subsided (but see further esoteric delvings). ... Then I had big-time noises when I recklessly canceled the “St. Anne’s” organ loading — it let me do it! — and loaded the Paramount 310 instead. On that memorable occasion I was crawling around the floor again, trying to find an awful right-channel metallic whining noise before I realized hauptwerk Was Angry. ... And I exited and re-entered the program, and all was serene and beautiful again after a few minutes....
The occasional absolute silence is perhaps more alarming; maybe not the virtual organs’ fault particularly but the Wonders of Windows and never ever happens on a Macintosh — at least not on my Mac since I didn’t install hauptwerk there, which does avoid problems. ... Most of my sonic imbroglios went away with exits and re-entries, reboots and power cycles; except when they didn’t. ... And after a few months relatively incident-free, I don’t feel so threatened....
If you
might get upset at these minor electronic trifles,
perhaps after paying for the software, perhaps while playing before
hundreds
of
people
— which seems unlikely to happen to me — try a free version
for a few weeks ... or years. ... Although I don’t know how you’d
test it.
... I mean really, the beloved Miditzer
certainly
has its crochets, but after two years neither
has done
anything pathological, at least not persistently.
But I still dream of a modern home organ with a single on/off switch that just works. ... Sadly neither Miditzer nor hauptwerk come anywhere near that ideal, to which the VTPOers seem actively opposed, but the music is so beautiful and I am more-or-less content. ... The worst part by far was still the ordeal of installation; but the day-to-day operation has never really seemed to entirely settle down....
One dark day, I screwed-up a registration, and then I thought I was restoring a previous registration but instead restored the original set-up or Heaven knows what. ... I’m not claiming I did it right; I’m claiming that after playing this thing for a million years, it still requires absolute very careful attention to avoid blowing up Pittsburgh. I’m typing this entire entry while it very slowly restores some hideous Paramount 320 from who-knows-where....
So what I was supposed to do was “load” an old registration setup. What I did was restore an entire setup from a year or two ago, and now nothing works. The software does warn you emphatically to save your current settings before restoring — because whoever wrote this program message knows it’s almost impossible to understand what it’s doing and why — because lusers are so dumb you know?!?!? ... If it’d been written by a human being, (1.) it wouldn’t let you “restore” if you didn’t save first, and (2.) it would start-off with the message “To restore combinations our idiotic ‘set’ feature has trashed, use the ‘Load’ button in the ‘Registration’ screen, you sniveling ignoramus”....
I guess I’m supposed to festoon the console with post-it notes saying DON’T RESTORE WITHOUT SAVING YOU DOLT and USE COMBO LOAD INSTEAD and perhaps I’ll get around to that someday. Or perhaps I’ll just spend more time with my beloved Mitz 260SP. ... What I will probably never do is upgrade the hauptwerk software to the latest version; my fear is too strong.
... But in the day, it only took around half an hour to restore my meager settings. ... Well, the first draft; subsequently nothing worked, of course. ... And the fact that I am so unused to this procedure is presumably because I share the non-human origins of the software’s creator and have been able to mostly outwit it so far. ... But I’m still never upgrading hauptwerk. ... If for no other reason than after today’s hauptwerkian hissy-fit, the intricate mechanisms I’ve so carefully hacked to make the thing not as extravagantly-stupid as out-of-the-box — all, of course, immediately failed, and are demanding careful reconstruction — I shudder to think what chaos a different hauptwerk version could wreak. The thing is like the angry crazy dwarves in Scott’s The Talisman. ... So I guess I still haven’t attained virtual organ serenity, at least with the cranky frightening hauptwerk....
Returning to the good stuff, after discovering your computer screen is too small, you get to configure hauptwerk. As opposed to the childlike Miditzer, the admirable hauptwerk “learns” your MIDI gadgets: you can right-click on, say, the hauptwerk Paramount 310’s upper Solo keyboard (i.e. in the “console” view), and if it’s in a good mood, hauptwerk offers to “Auto-detect MIDI/Trigger settings for keyboard: SOLO ...” and then I got to follow a simple procedure described on the screen, where I’d press the lowest and highest key on the Nord swell, and then press a key softly, and then loudly, and it’s done. ... Comparable auto-learning features are available for hauptwerk swell pedals, stop tabs, combo buttons, and probably most everything. ... And for you Nord aficionados out there, be sure to select the right mode to use with hauptwerk’s auto-learn....
The Paramount 310
has three manuals, which seemed a little hard on my
2-manual
Nord, but not really:
theater organs are “unit”
deals anyway and I just assigned two hwerk manuals to one of
the
Nord’s — until the advent of my dubious third
keyboard.![[23]](twentythree.png)
Then, you play. I played, so appropriately I think, Stormy Weather. ... Not in a Bill Irwin arrangement! ... Actually, it was somebody’s “Lowry Organ Masterpieces” or something, intentionally without Hammond registrations in spiteful antique anti-marketing, which is what inspired me to abandon my Nord B3 and play it on the Miditzer in the first place, since I have an atavistic desire to do what the organ book says, even ’though I mostly use the registration I want anyway....
But for me, at least, I have to play actual music to tell how it’s going. Just poking at the thing is always confusing, theater or classical; I can’t tell if it sounds good or what. ... So I played Stormy Weather on both the Miditzer and the hauptwerk Paramount 310, and they both sound wonderful!
And here’s a tip ’n’ trick which wasn’t in the hauptwerkInstallationAndUserGuide.pdf — which, of course is the hauptwerk manual, not the 310 manual; which I don’t think exists....
Anyway, the Paramount 310 comes with a lovely blower effect, so you can hear the virtual air wheezing through the mechanism as you play, but after a while I decided there was enough noise in my living room and clicked it off with the “Blower” button, at the “tabs” screen lower right-hand corner. But that doesn’t “stick”; it turned on the next time I loaded the Paramount 310.
To
make it stay
turned-off, you right-click
on the blower button, select “Adjust
MIDI/trigger settings manually...”, and then at the top on the right
of
the form that shows-up, there’s a check box “Switch defaults
to ’on’
state”. Uncheck
that, and
click OK, and the next time you start the Paramount 310 your virtual
blowers
will blow no more forever, at least
by themselves until you click them on again with the “Blower”
button.
... I first used the top menu “Organ | Load organ, adjusting rank audio/memory options/routing” and disabled the three blower “ranks”. ... When that didn’t work — the blower noise got quieter, but not silent — I begged at the hauptwerk forum, was promptly answered, and here we are! ... My inferior strategy was defective, aside from being more difficult, because I forgot to suppress the “TremBox” ranks also. ... I am so contrite....
... And then in the wandering months I couldn’t find a blower button on the St. Anne’s free demo organ, so I went the “adjusting rank” route which like many things hauptwerkian takes a half hour (apx) to “reload” the organ, but that seemed to do the trick. But as well as “Blower” whatever, I disabled “tremulant mechanism” or something, because I learned from the 310, and a few others; “stop” noises, whatever....
The Menacing Alt ConfigThis hauptwerk feature always gave me the creeps, and I recently realized that’s maybe because it appears to be mentioned only twice in their otherwise voluble documentation; the most prolix was the section “Understanding the configurations” and it did not succeed in that with me. However I must admit that once I tried one of them — in a typical hare-brained scheme to use my third keyboard as a Paramount accompaniment to the Nord’s Hammond emulation, for bells at least — it seems to work great! ... I could still play my other hauptwerk organs including my “regular” Paramount, even ’though the alternate’s got all the keyboards rearranged....
Upgrading
hauptwerk
4.0.0.724?In the fullness of time (@ 1/20), and after calamitous computer destruction, in a fey mood, I asked the hwerk boffins if I could upgrade my version 4 to the insane millionaire flavor. This, you understand, long after hwerk version 5 came-out, and the predictable reply was, No. ... It was just a delusional moment anyway — I was never interested in installing a new version — I’ve still got the older version 4 — and actually the upgrade’d probably be just as unpleasant, but I am protected from my delusional hysteria by hauptwerk intransigence. I suspect it’s the copy protection which, I gather, has gotten much fiercer in newer versions but whatever, I am even more firmly-rooted in the past, and so be it....
Book:
All
About hauptwerkBy Kenneth A. Spencer, who is a proud cog in the hauptwerk industry. His <$30 (@ amazon) book started with filler about the wonders of reed instruments, pipe organs, Hammonds, & etc., but there appears to be a good deal of actual information on obtaining and setting-up hauptwerk (with Windows) and the requisite MIDI debris and, really, it’d be churlish to complain about a $30 book if you’re at all serious about getting involved in the menacing world of hauptwerk & virtual organs — it’ll be but a tiny bit in the general scheme of things, even if you stick with the free version.
But then again, if you’re going on the freeway you could start by reading the free hauptwerk PDF manual. ... And it should be noted that software is often documented in PDF files not just because it’s annoying — although surely that’s a motivation — but because the software, being so EZ to change and all, will be changed. Frequently. And then the printed book’ll be out-of-date, but of course the PDF’ll be updated in a little while, or within a few years or decades, surely. ... Mr. Spencer’s book is about hauptwerk 4.2 which is I believe the current version @ 11/15. But, for instance, he attempts to show us how to use a Windows PC for hwerk, and refers to the “Start” button, which as all us attentive hacks know was expurgated from the repulsive Windows 8.
A little later he seems to advise us (on page 77) to “use an administrator account ... for running hauptwerk” which I never do and which seems like a really bad idea; perhaps he meant “installing”, although even that advice is obscure. And then he goes on again about clicking on “Start”. ... I’ve done my best to avoid knowing more than I must about the intricacies of hauptwerk so when I thought he was goofing again, it was just my ignorance, and against my better judgment I learned something — about “Load organ, adjusting rank” although the information still seems useless. ... Most users can at least hope that the several pages later on, all about MIDI devices, messages, etc., are also useless since, as he eventually concedes, hauptwerk’s got the beautiful auto-learn which is supposed to make knowing all that stuff obsolete. And even then, some of his prescriptions do not comport with my encylopedaic wisdom. But then, I got the old version....
So the book is a geeky kind of pleasure, with lots of factoids/opinions about the product and how to use it — covering classical pipe organ sample sets as well as theater organs. And after all, it is the only printed book on hauptwerk ... However, he doesn’t seem to offer my primo bit of hauptwerkian lore — start with the Mitz, because it installs in under a half-hour, including download....
One of the annoying aspects of Spencer’s book is Chapter Seven (p 103) where he explains how to custom-build / specify a hot PC to accommodate hauptwerk; his recipes of components and qualifications go on for pages. This is a common style at the VTPO forum, amongst the virtual organists. ... I, on the other hand, ran and run the hauptwerk Paramount 320 on ~$600 laptops, not particularly hot PCs. The current one has 8Gb of RAM; the previous, 6. The CPUs are equivalently humdrum, and all the I/O is done via USB (and USB hubs) and USB MIDI. And despite my pitiful hardware, polyphony isn’t constantly dropping-out, latency rearing-up....
I call it the Mighty Organ syndrome. People think they want a 50-rank organ in their living room but that’s just delusional. It’s a hobbyist/enthusiast symptom; they want to collect ’em all. It’s just like the high-fidelity lunatics: you can’t have a 100-piece orchestra in your living room, it will never sound like that. It might sound like something extremely loud, but it won’t be like being there. The sample-set lunacy is just newer, rawer, and sillier. It’s a tasteless quest for bigger/louder. ... And unnecessarily expen$ive, which does seem to be a recurrent theme in the modern man-cave hobby market segment. ... I mean, there is rubythevtpo.com, which is wondrous and obviously expensive and I would never wish to dim its brilliance, but surely telling people in a beginner’s how-to that this kind of thing is normal — well, someone might believe it!
All about hauptwerk is an enthusiast’s book about a gadget he loves. And it has an index! The only thing comparable I can think of is my beautiful intelligent all-but-omniscient web site, what you are viewing now, which doesn’t (have an index; but you can of course search). ... As I was skimming through Spencer’s book and thinking dark thoughts about his relentless plans and grandiose specifications — he assumes you got the insane millionaire version, of course — as I was skimming, I say, I was overcome by a weird desire to go out to the shed and resurrect my 32-note AGO MIDI pedal board and perhaps elaborate it with a Behringer FCB1010 he mentions, for a complete collection of toe-pedal toys and MIDI volume controls. ... So I took some ibuprofens and went into a dark quiet room — and I think the menace is past. But the book might affect you in similar troubling ways....
I have drivelled-on about how horrible it is to hook-up one of these virtual organs, but then a correspondent (!) asked about hooking-up the Nord C2D, which is what I did (almost; I’ve got the crummier C2), and I realized that I hadn’t confided an important secret for that eventuality: I set the Nord to its baroque organ mode, not the hammond organ or other modes.
It’s entirely possible
some
other
Nord mode’d work good, but I doubtless tried a few in my usual
floundering, and the baroque organ 
has unique MIDI
events for the stops: one each for ON and OFF. (The Hammond mode, for
instance,
will emit a slew of stuff as one adjusts a drawbar.) For Mitz and hauptwerk,
I use these
on/off stop MIDI events to fire combo buttons —
that is, one Nord stop (with its up/down buttons on the Nord C2) can
fire
two completely different combo
buttons, without interfering with each other. ... I
set
the stops
for the combo buttons
with a mouse or my beautiful touch screen. ... And there
aren’t
enough buttons
in the world or at
least on my
Nord to
fire
all
the theater organ stops.
Anyway, I discuss the Nord in monstrous plenitude elsewhere, and the beginning of my mitztech diatribe relates to the difficulties of making the MIDI work with these machines in general.
Miditzer’s latency makes it harder to play. But because my heart is pure and I kept playing or who knows, I finally discovered that when I launch into Stand By Your Man or the Wiffenpoof Song sometimes I just forget; the latency disappears somewhere — I play as badly as ever, but latency somehow isn’t a problem. ... And I can deal with Miditzer’s computery programming challenges better than the average techno-peasant, so hauptwerk’s “learning” mode isn’t so enticing. ... And I don’t like programs or machines running all day and night, and Miditzer is more suited to stopping and starting, which it does much faster; including the little convenience of remembering the stops I had on yesterday. ... And my classical organ yearnings are filled more than adequately by my foresighted purchase of the Nord C2 with its achingly beautiful sampled baroque emulation. ... Finally, I like the way Miditzer sounds. ... So if I could only have one — it’d be Miditzer.
But I can have both! And they were both free! ... But I can feel my character building as I somehow ignore Miditzer’s obviously inferior latency.
Youtube is replete with hauptwerk Paramount and Miditzer videos. The Paramount offerings sound a little classier, but probably because the Miditzer perpetrators tend to have lower-rent audio equipment, particularly since the POW promotes professional demos. My experience is the two are comparable, with the edge to Miditzer, but of course that’s me, playing badly. ... One impressive Youtube video is “J S Bach BWV 655 Miditzer 216 midi Virtual Organ”; it’s really lovely and classical! ... Or then “Misha Stefanuk performs Somewhere Over the Rainbow on the Paramount 320 Theater Organ” is very nice too; and he has a real video camera and everything. ... “Over The Rainbow Played On The Miditzer 216” is the low-rent competition: no reverb, no video — but a very plausible-sounding theater organ, and actually a few commenters complain about how good it sounds, presumably because they couldn’t make their Miditzers sound like that.
Note that the free instruments are the “Miditzer 216” and hauptwerk “Paramount 310”; but Misha there for instance plays the extra-cost Paramount 320, and numerous Youtube Miditzerim use the (virtual 3-manual) “260SP”.
|
In the great Manichean struggle of hauptwerk vs. Miditzer I have changed sides at least twice, which is pretty good for a novice virtual organist. My amateur standing is untarnished I believe. ... But nevertheless, at the end of a year or two I still prefer the Miditzer, now the 260, as compared to the Paramount 320. The Mitz is just nicer — which is presumably what Miles and Henry were trying to do, as opposed to the authenticity, numerous ranks, and/or warts (!) which are the professed goal of the Paramount Organ Works. I find it easier to play “theater organ-sounding” stuff on the Miditzer. ... My playing is no better than dubious, and my sound system also, at least compared to the exalted VTPO standard, so perhaps I would wholeheartedly recommend Miditzer to those with limited keyboard skills and cheap sound systems, if it weren’t for the Mitz’s more difficult configuration and of course that devilish latency.
...
I think
it’s
mostly that “mighty
organ”
thing: typical organ fanatics, at least the (appropriately) noisier
ones, seem obsessed by the giant hall-filling flavor of the instrument.
The admirable Jack
Moelmann’s Radio City extravaganza apparently included a
much-beloved,
by him at any rate, attempt to play with every stop tab on.
In contrast,
I am a humble quiet fellow more inclined to the
subtleties of a tibia or two. And my audio
system reflects
these simple inadequacies and is ridiculously under-powered compared to
the VTPO ideal (as
is practically
anyone’s)....
The Insane Millionaire version of hauptwerk/Paramount includes elaborate mechanisms for sending notes to different speakers, a continuation of an ancient electronic organ dichotomy between speaker trickery versus better sound. VTPOers themselves deride such gimmicks of the past, including Leslie-style rotating speakers, at least for theater organs, and there’s even a depised bogus Conn “pipe rack” speaker gadget. ... But their ever-more multiple channel sound is still “in”, and after all, the holy stereo itself is that kind of gimmick; why don’t we just rely on super hifi monophonic sound? — and indeed there is a monophonic lunatic fringe out there amongst the hi-fi “high-end” — which sobriquet is I suspect a drug reference....
So then, if you really want 36 speakers and four subwoofers, hauptwerk’s probably your virtual organ! ... Bon appétit. ... But see The Final Battle for even more of my exciting, dubious, & ultimate conclusions. ... Which were unmistakably foreshadowed by ...
In April 2014, a principal (!) of the esteemed Paramount Organ Works wrote on the VTPO forum
...
All of the [Paramount
Organ Works] VTPO
iterations are intended to be replicas of Pipe Organs and as we all
know, pipe organs are seldom particularly even, not even with the best
regulation in the world (which many don’t receive).
When attempting realism, organs are recorded “warts and all”
which will
include unevenness between pipes and ranks, pipes that don’t quite
“speak” properly, chiffs, etc. etc.
We have removed gross errors
from our sample sets where possible, but
smaller unevenness in some cases has been deliberately left alone. If
everything was perfect, the organ would sound far from real and rather
sterile.
If you want to correct uneven audio levels in pipes, you would need to
use the voicing capability in hauptwerk
Advanced edition. Details are
to be found in the relevant sections of the hauptwerk
User Guide
which
itself can be found by clicking on the “Help” tab within hauptwerk.
... which sounds plausible — but debatable. ... I imagine, for instance, the theater organ purchaser in 1925 debating with the Wurlitzer sales organization, when they explained such defects in a new organ that way. And I believe other VTPO postings have indicated the POW organs aren’t replicas of individual instruments, but include samples from different organs, which makes the “warts & all” theory even more obscure — is it supposed to be an authentic “frankenstein” organ? ... Perhaps they select the most illustrious warts from the group?
No; the reality is that all
sampled instruments, from trumpets to ridiculously expensive piano VSTis
to our beloved virtual organs, will execute on a spectrum between ugly
and good, like the
rest of our sad mortal world. Describing an ugly
electronically-simulated musical instrument as “replicating the
original” is not an explanation but an excuse.
... Not that I’m
suggesting in the least
the hauptwerk
Paramounts are ugly or need
excuses; indeed, that is the dubious enthusiast’s
suggestion!
... But undoubtedly certain aspects of Paramount’s and other
simulations — notably the tremolo
— are obvious compromises, some perhaps inevitable, some doubtless
avoidable
with more work aka money. ... Life is like that — but don’t
tell me
it’s good
because it has warts![[21]](twentyone.png)
.
And then I finally noticed the Paramount 320 piano is compressed! It’s been tampered-with! ... Despite a no-doubt warty decrepit original, this one has punchy attack and extra-long sustain! ... How can this be? How does that preserve the sacred warts!?!?!?
The Miditzer “toy counter” — oogah, bird tweet, phone ringing, my beloved gong, etc. — at least the 260SP flavor, is definitely superior to the hauptwerk Paramount320’s. ... Or louder, anyway, particularly after I made them so, facilitated by dangerous software. ... Shockingly, I’d have to pay hauptwerk $100s to even try that! ... Although I’ve found leaving the Paramount 320’s swell and great shutters closed — i.e., softest, which is the default whenever the program starts — and setting the audio to zero decibels (louder), makes the gong at least almost audible and also, as a bonus, turns-down the treble! (probably).
The
Faithless Organist and his Electronic InstrumentsAs I played my Paramount 320 recently, sprucing-up my wretched registrations, figuring-out intricate software mechanisms to save the combo setups somewhere I can actually find them again — it was good. ... So I guess I’m an atheistic virtual organist, and will believe in nothing but beauty. ... But I’ll continue to sneak off to the Miditzer in the sultry night. ... Or, for that matter, turn my attentions to my beloved chord organ, newly reverberated, to the accompaniment of which I occasionally warble I’ve Got a Pocketful of Dreams and other harmless ditties. ... Or the beautiful Yamaha piano, where my fumbling renditions of Where the Blue of the Night or Moonlight Becomes You sometimes stir me to quietness. ... So it is a hard life. ... And I suppose this is the spot to admit that even after buying the Paramount 320, it hardly sounds so much better than the free 310 — with, after all, my generally softer tibia-esque tendencies and pitiful un-splendiferous audio equipment. ... And the warts....
Finally, I discovered the ridiculous warts claims of the Paramount partisan — were true! ... For instance, there’s a “clunker” at the F above middle C on the Paramount 320 “glock”: an obvious “tap” that shouldn’t be there. ... I’ve been playing this thing on and off since 1/13, and not until 8/14 did I notice! ... Or perhaps it’s more like, maybe some of the ranks were a little cranky, but I assumed that was just accidental. ... Now I can believe it’s intentionally slipshod even as the partisan claims — that in actuality it would’ve cost too much to fix these “authentic” things! ... Maybe it’s OK with the target market of decrepit real theater organists — what they’re used to! — but as a decrepit elderly incompetent organist who only gets to play chintzy electronic imitations, I’m not! ... Neither the beloved Miditzer nor my costly Nord’s baroque actual real sample-set are “authentic” in this way. ... Well, except Miditzer shares the Paramount’s inauthentic tremolo — and also the Mitz has far more authentic latency!
I hasten to add the overall Paramount effect is still lovely; my $350 hauptwerk/Paramount 320 virtual theater organ — or the free 310 — is not obviously broken because, just as the fellow averred, there are no “gross errors” — presumably stuff so obvious it’d make the instrument unsaleable, at least at the hauptwerk/Paramount extortionate prices. ... The enthusiast’s excuse about how fixing these things would make “the organ ... sound far from real and rather sterile” is just intentionally-deceptive babble; my Nord baroque samples don’t sound sterile, despite their no-doubt shameful lack of obvious defects. Heck, the hauptwerk “St. Anne’s” classical organ is also pitifully bereft of warts....
But such preposterous pretensions might explain the strangely-intense VTPO hostility to my beloved Mitz, so inadequately without obvious faults to call its own. ... But see my Final Battle for still further stirring ditherings....
Amongst the virtual organs of my acquaintance Miditzer is alone, in that its sounds were created by a person, the admirable Bruce Miles who explained in a Wed Sep 5, 2012 VTPO forum posting:
I
originally created
the soundset ... used by Miditzer about 13 years ago
using an antique German application Klangsynth. I didn’t have access
to
sample a real theatre organ and the sounds are entirely synthetic with
only my ears to transfer the theatre organ sounds from recordings into
Klangsynth and thence construct the samples. I think I cheated slightly
with one or two of the percussion sounds and based them on real
samples. Still, there’s not much you can’t create with Klangsynth
in
spite of its creakiness although tremulants are easier to add in the
console software.
In contrast, hauptwerk and GrandOrgue and my Nord built-in baroque organ for that matter, and doubtless other virtual organs unnamed or unknown, are sampled from real life: a fellow takes a microphone, points it at some pipes, and plays notes, recording the result, usually in a computer. And generally taking forever and a day to do so, hence the exorbitant $ toll for the parade of hauptwerk Paramounts. And a perpetrator of those very samplings posted something in the VTPO forum about how they still make only pennies an hour doing it — which presumably is why there are so many warts. ... But I doubt the construction of Miles’ sounds was a walk in the park....
The
TibiaAnyway, in defiance of all VTPO decency and reason I persist in opining that the Miditzer 216 and the hauptwerk Paramount 310 sound comparable! ... For one thing, it does not follow as the night the day that sampled organs are better than Miditzer; it depends on the sample, and what Miles did in 1999 — and how many warts are included....
The theater organ for me starts with the tibia, a lovely hollowish-sounding flute, usually tremoloed to what normal people might consider excess. ... The Paramount 310’s is nice, but there’s an obvious grittiness, and listened-to closely I can hear distortion throbbing with the tremolo. The Miditzer tibia has no such artifact, presumably because Miles didn’t add such an effect. Sometimes the 310’s tibia sounds annoyingly gritty; sometimes it’s a lovely breathiness. And sometimes the Miditzer’s is sweet and throbbingly pure; occasionally dull. ... Actually I realized recently they’re probably different flavors; I noticed a Wright piece with a more “mitzish” tibia, flute-ier, hollower compared to the kind Paramount sampled, and the latter kind are also more common on the Wright CDs. ... But I’ll settle for Miles’ choice and obvious neglect of authentic warts.
I used to stridently defy Heaven’s rule and aver that sampled organs have to be designed just as Miditzer was — that sampling doesn’t somehow make them happen magically. ... But then I was beaten by obvious agreement as I trolled the forums + the hauptwerk InstallationAndUserGuide, where the acres of tweakery and adjustment make it blindingly clear that not only are the organs designed for better or worse, but the users, if they’re insane millionaire hauptwerk users at any rate, get to discipline every note if they want. ... And judging by the VTPO forum, they do; every note, all the filters and audio channels, and everything they can get their virtual hands-on. ... And indeed, I finally learned that the POW agrees that their organs must be adjusted if you want to “correct uneven audio levels in pipes”....
Sour
Tutti?So apparently, aspiring virtual organists are sometimes dissatisfied with the out-of-box experience, as am I: my Paramount full organs sound sour unless I turn-off a tremulant or two. ... I want my virtual organ to sound like George Wright’s Chicago Volume One CD, all loud and juicy and reverberant and not obscurely out-of-tune. And the forte and fortissimo combos supplied with the Paramount 310 come with the “solo” tremulant off. ... No doubt some actual theater organs require such measures, certainly after the typical decades of decay, but they probably weren’t designed that way — it’d’ve been an obvious competitive disadvantage....
The movie palaces of yore were designed — as are today’s movie warrens — to be dry; non-reverberant. ... But as far as I know, that would be movie palaces as retrofitted or created for the talkies — the nemesis of the theater organ. ... Vaudeville, the predecessor to movies, might’ve also leaned to dry sound, from the same intelligibility motivations, but it’s likely the intervening silent movie decade or so favored a wet acoustic, to make the theater organ louder and, hence, cheaper....
Whatever, I and many George Wright CDs reverberate, probably for the same reason: to help the illusion of loudness. ... I don’t really want fifty or even 5 ranks in my living room; it would be too loud. But I want it to sound loud, and reverb helps that: a psychological trick that can make what I’m hearing sound further away, because of the large space implied by the reverberation. ... And completely unreliable subjective tests prove it: I’d all but abandoned full organ registrations because they’re just too loud in my human-sized living room, but then one bright morning I tried an even wetter reverb setting and it worked better! I played the full organ softer, but the lengthier wetter reverb seems to make it sound majestic and loud, albeit off in the distance....
And anyway, I think reverberation in itself is beautiful.
And just to nail the coffin on my virtual theater organ expertise pretensions, I think both Miditzer and Paramount benefit from turning down the treble, without which they are apt to be shrill, particularly the fortissimo. Although turning-up the reverb tends to help with that. ... I suppose it could be my working-class speakers, but even with headphones Mitz and Hwerk sound like pipes up close. ... But ideally I would listen from around row 20; as do many theater organ CDs. ... Hence, reverberation and/or some treble diminution. ... And wouldn’t a close-up sound only be in a residence or other small installation? ... Part of the historical point of theater organs was the console could be anywhere, so I would guess that many organists got a hall sound, anyway, along with that pesky latency....
And then again, it occurs to me that maybe my analog volume control could be the snake in the pipes, since the MIDI controls usually used with the virtual organs low-pass softer volumes and maybe I’m just compensating for running them “full-open” like I do. ... But even the fully-open swell at the 20th row wouldn’t sound like that, at least in a historic silent movie palace....
Tremulants:
Virtual vs. RealThe tremolo effect is key to the characteristic theater organ sound and there are two virtual ways to do it:
With two sample sets for each stop, i.e. one “straight”, the other tremoloed. Such an approach doesn’t provide synchronization: the multiple notes in a chord will not tremolo together. ... But actual pipe organs do, and you can hear it easily on George Wright and other CDs. ... It isn’t subtle; it is the obvious sound of a single mechanical device varying the air supply for multiple pipes together, producing a lovely “chuggy” synchronized tremolo in chords. (There are other murky corners in sampled tremolo.)
Alternately, computeristic trickery can “manufacture” the tremolo in real-time (providing synchronization and avoiding other problems). But such a practice is not faithful to the holy sampling faith, and without added financial grease aka R&D it might sound mechanical compared to #1 (i.e., sampled tremolo, like the “authentic” warts, is actually cheaper).
Wrong!What’s funny about this is that, despite forum moaning about the too-crude Miditzer versus the elevated hauptwerk Paramount sampling, both do the all-important theater organ tremolo wrong! ... I never noticed until I happened upon the topic in a 2004 (!) post. ... And now that I’m paying attention, I suspect the randomizing of what was originally synchronized could be one factor in sour Paramount tuttis. ... But aside from that, the difference is hardly striking unless listened-for, and even then, on balance the individual note sampled tremolo mostly sounds as good as the synchronized flavor. Or better! ... But still, it’s definitely not authentic — no matter how many other warts it’s accompanied-by.
Allen
Robotic George Wright TremoloI have puzzled and wondered for many moons how Allen Organ deals with troubled tremolo — but it seems I had the answer all along! ... I just listened to Little Boy Blue on the Allen CD Let George Do It...Again!, and it sounds to my sensitive ears as if they’re doing the right thing. With Allen’s money/brains they can implement strategy #2, with whatever verisimilitude / ornate elaborations it requires — for instance, the organ might have multiple tremolos, for different divisions/manuals. hauptwerk + our poor warts-challenged Paramount Organ Works just doesn’t have the resources for that kind of moon shot....
The Allen recording is of a zombie George Wright playing the Allen model GW4 theater organ from beyond the grave, through the magic of computer gimmickry. But the tremolo sounds chuggy. ... Although I wouldn’t buy the organ without checking further....
... And this just in: while groveling in Miditzer’s antediluvian soundfont, I discovered the tremolo was far more rococo than I had imagined in my ignorant bliss. At least with the tibia, Miles didn’t make different samples with and without tremolo, but implements the effect with different soundfont “instruments” (using the same samples) where the “Mod LFO” parameters are specified differently, or something. ... Seeming to produce a volume + pitch effect, which is what I hear in real theater organ tremolo anyway. ... But even ’though it’s machine made, it still isn’t “chuggy”, like the real thing.
The reckless Paramount enthusiast’s warts argument o’er-stepped its mark with me at least, as I realized a persistent annoyance of the Paramount 310 & 320 was indeed shoddiness in the ranks. ... It’s why the Mitz feels easier to play, particularly with my (sometimes) preferred lower stop counts — because the notes are even and predictable; and the Paramounts’ aren’t. ... My ignorance is vast, but I think it a certainty that Allen’$ virtual theater organs are tragically bereft of such rambling ranks (as is my Nord sampled baroque organ; and the hauptwerk freebie St. Anne)....
The warts are “correct” inasmuch as many of the organs even the super-human Mr. Wright played probably had equally shoddy assortments of poorly-voiced pipes, at least after decades of neglect. And a common solution would be larger registrations — it averages-out the faults — and such is the obvious tendency of most of the theater organ enthusiasts anyway. Although examination of the Wright oeuvre will reveal, I think, that he played more single stops with his later “salon” instrument and maybe some other machines with better maintenance.
Before
the warts revelation,
I had already felt
that Paramount+big
registration==good versus
Miditzer+soft==good,
but now I understand why.
Although
the
implied corollary, Miditzer+big=bad,
isn’t so true, although the Paramount big registrations are
better than the soft stuff
— when I remember to turn-off
the right
tremolos.
...
And thus you also get to the giant audio systems so beloved of the
organistas,
so much better for big
registrations, ergo for hauptwerk/Paramount.
So, with Paramount you get
the ranks
of a real
theater organ! while
Miditzer provides
the
regulation
of a good
theater organ!
... And you can get both,
probably,
via spending
vast sums with Allen
or
someone.
... At
least until Nord makes one
of these things. ... But once I got up-to-date on the warts situation,
I started
registering everything on the Paramount 320 with at least two stops:
the
breathy tibia will
always be accompanied by a flute and/or diapason,
and the result feels more playable, although not as cute. ... So maybe
my Paramount problems
were
just a foolish affection for the lonely tibia? ... Which, however, I
will
certainly not
abandon.
... Presumably at least some of the insider know-it-all VTPOers were well-aware of Paramount’s shoddy sampling and quality variations, but didn’t care to share because it would be negative — which of course just inspires me — but would also violate some victory-at-any-cost supposedly pro-theater-organ party line. ... So I’ll take the low road, with my astonishingly-childlike sans-obvious-defects not-even-sampled-like-an-adult Miditzer, and for that matter all the second-rate music and instruments I naturally gravitate towards....
But the real question is: how come all this stuff doesn’t sound as good as a George Wright CD on the hifi? ... I mean, I know why mine doesn’t (can’t play) but the VTPO organists are always delving delving to make their hauptwerk/Paramounts sound “better”....
I just want to have fun with my home electronic organ. The ever-striving VTPO denizens and console tinkerers are devoted to sacred endless tweakery! ... The two pursuits are related, and occasionally overlap....
The
3-Manual Miditzer
260SPWhen I finally found my way through the Miditzer wandering web site to obtain the advanced (and crashy) Miditzer 3-manual 260SP model and donate a relatively meager $100 (at least compared to the hwerk fare) — I can report that it is better — well, more fun — than the already lovely model 216: while my charming pp tibias seem the same, the loud FF stuff is a little more FF! ... And actually the download might be here this week. Or here....
As
with the hauptwerk
Paramount 310, I
just
assigned the solo and great manuals to the Nord’s swell, and it didn’t
seem to hurt anything in the unified
theater organ. ... Many
of my Miditzer judgments
in these web pages are based on
playing the 260SP; overlap between it and the 216 is extensive, but
there are additional virtual ranks. I address the ridiculous
peculiarly-Miditzer
technical challenges of both virtual organs
inadequately elsewhere.
... But ...
The
260SP
CrashesOne of the ridiculous technical challenges I will inadequately address here is the Miditzer 260SP’s licensing scheme, which seemed more than a little huffy with UAC, but once I managed to get it licensed it worked OK — at least on the Windows 7 laptop I usually play. On a Win7 test desktop where I installed it first, it continued to hard crash regularly, which I really haven’t seen in a while — buzzing graphics and all, requiring reboot! ... This is the 260SP only; the free 216 installs without sturm und drang, which you must pay extra for....
I am guessing what happened was something like this:
As is usual with my careful random practices, I installed the 260SP on my test machine first.
It was highly cranky, presumably the licensing scheme. Somewhere in the chaos, Windows 7 probably offered to run the 260SP program with administrative privileges, and I foolishly agreed. ... Don’t do that. ... Further random research indicates Win7 will foolishly suggest administrative privileges for any new copy of the 260SP exe file; like the man said, don’t. ... Maybe Windows does that after registering the 260SP in the obligatory elevated state?
I really wanted to support the admirable Miditzer establishment anyway, and so I paid the freight and got my magic number, and managed to register the thing.
Then I jejunely installed on the main Nord Imperium downstairs, licensing it without delay, but never agreeing to the satanic administrative deal as far as I remember.
The result, as I now recollect in tranquility, was the test system 260SP crashed fairly regularly, but the downstairs one never did. Uninstalling/reinstalling the test system 260SP didn’t stop the crashing.
Uninstalling, deleting the test system 260SP directory, and running the perilous Windows “regedit” utility and eradicating most traces of “Miditzer260SP” I could find in the registry — and reinstalling: that appears to have fixed it.
After that, Windows again offered to run the 260SP program with administrative privileges, presumably because of its lingering registration convulsions, but this time I turned it down. It didn’t make that offer on the previous uninstall/reinstall adventures, so I assume in those episodes Windows retained the administrative poison through the process, but that the dangerous registry spelunking finally fixed that.
... Actually I suspect there’s some way to defeat the inadvisable privilege-escalation without regedit torment, probably involving right-clicking; but I will probably not live long-enough to know what it is. ... And from time to time apparently, even downstairs, the 260SP gets stressed somehow and Windows will wonder if it’d be fun to run with administrative privileges, but I won’t be fooled again....
These details are hazy; particularly, I’m assuming the satanic privilege business happened in the past because it happened after the uninstall, directory-delete, registry harrowing that I conducted, and I vaguely remember something like that but of course wouldn’t swear to it. ... Whatever; I think I fixed it, at least it hasn’t done that for months. Even while I seriously tormented the poor thing with dangerous software and risky latency testing....
I guess the moral of this story is don’t agree to run the 260SP — or probably any Windows program — with permanent administrative privileges. Official Miditzer recommends administrative privileges just to get the 260SP installed, but in a safer way, by turning-off UAC, but then turning it on again (?). ... My lack of telepathic insight failed me again in this case, so I took the hard road.
... Months later the 260SP hung-up, again, and I had to reboot to set it free, but it was without screen buzzing or other symptom; it just wouldn’t play anymore, and I could see it sulking in the task list. This happened because, apparently, I played/looped a MIDI file and then distracted it, cruelly stealing its program focus which one doesn’t normally do with a sensitive virtual organ. I imagine it shares the failing with the other Mitzs and maybe not with the refined hauptwerk, and the 260sp played the MIDI file fine if I didn’t bother it....
After all that, I got a third keyboard and discovered the fabulous Solo manual was undernourished! It had fewer stop tabs, fewer internal couplers — nada! Pale & anemic, compared to the Great and even the Accompaniment. ... Then after a year or so of obvious mental stagnation, my irrational aversions settled-down a little, and now I routinely set-up contrasting registrations on the three manuals, in amateur style....
Great
CHRY + VIBRA HARPI took me literally years to notice this — I had to petition the Miditzerim for what the Vibra Harp effect vibra-ed — not the harp — but it’s a lovely xmassy bell thing. I made mine louder of course, and now I sound just like George Wright, who bathed his stuff with high-rent versions of this sound + piano....
QUINT
+ TIB IISo I got around to playing the Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy (kiddie arrangement in my mother’s Organ Festival book!) with the beautiful Vibra Harp (aka Celesta; really should be without vibra but poo) and I needed a (bass) clarinetish sound. And found-out what the obscure “Quint” stop is for! ... I only use Tib II with it ’cause I made my beloved Tibia loud because I am so fond of it, but any fluty stop would probably do, and to give it more oomph, more than one. The important part is the Quint, which gives it a clarinetish tone, presumably ’cause of a strong 2nd overtone (octave+5th) which, oddly, the clarinet stop doesn’t seem to provide. ... I suppose I should note that this is the achievement of a lifelong ambition, to play the quintessential Christmas bells music. Of course I’m doing it @ 5/18, but it will be there for the day....
TreatsAnd it has pizza....
Raining
hauptwerks:
a Barton 3/7, 3/10, 3/12This just in: VTPO conspirators have created a hauptwerk organ here — oops, no more. ... Anyway it was lovely! ... Installation wasn’t even a grinding terror, since I’d already suffered through the Horrors of hauptwerk, and this’s just another slot. ... And it’s free free Free — well, more-or-less; the site says it’s “donationware”, and I think it only works with the paid-for $250 hauptwerk. ... In my brief but definitive I Can’t Give You Anything But Love tests, the “3/12 Voiced” was a more than worthy contender....
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Miditzer
160CGoogle for it in the Miditzer maze somewhere (or maybe here or here), but it’s absolutely free. ... Wurlitzer made this thing embedded in an upright piano; Mr. Henry’s imitation has an entire virtual piano with its own stop tab and touch sensitivity; + a respectable Wurlitzer-style virtual organ.
I had a photograph of a similar object on a wall for years — this picture, as it happens — under the impression it was some kind of one-off freak, but now I know it’s just another Wurlitzer. 160Cs are rarer than the other theater organs but apparently Wurlitzer made a bunch (as per the text accompanying the picture); it was relatively cheap. ... The 160C is the deluxe version, with six ranks; apparently the majority (of around 500 “piano consoles”) had three....
The Miditzer 160C is even more wacko than the other Mitzes, because to really make it go you’d want an 88-key MIDI keyboard + the usual 61-key upper manual. But that might well fit better into the wandering home organist’s hopes ’n’ dreams, since you might already have an 88-key Yamaha or Casio, and you could just add another cheapo keyboard for the upper manual. Of course then there’s the often very-expen$ive foot pedal keyboard; and the usual endless cabling, amplification/speakers, & other technical agony. But at least my sustain pedal got used! ... Sadly, latency excuses won’t work here — the prototype piano/organ was obviously played near-enough the pipes for piano-level latency, or it would’ve been unendurable, but the estimable Henry’s imitation still of course shares the Miditzer’s delay — organ voices and piano, so at least it’s not harder to play than the 216.
... Another obscure treasure is the Miditzer 150 (or this page? or google it?), a “5 rank instrument typical of many of the Wurlitzer theatre pipe organs installed in smaller theatres.” ... Collect ’em all!
Miditzer
216 Version
1But at last @ 10/15, version 1 software of the glorious Miditzer 216 is somewhere on the Mitz site — or maybe not, I couldn’t find in a brief search @ 7/31/17 — in an alpha state but seemingly quite playable. Improvements include the inspiring graphic shown, and Fluidsynth (sound) updates.
Stupid
TshirtAnd
then the weary years rolled-on and my antique miditzer tshirts were
wearing
out, and I was faced with a grueling existential 
crisis: I was
running out of tshirts! ... So I made my own, me & amazon, at
the
“prime” (?) “HUTTOBOY”
vendor for a
mere $25.53. These kind of things are like the mist in the morning, and
your mileage will undoubtedly apocalyptically vary, and I haven’t
laundered it yet, where it will doubtlessly dissolve into a fine mist
itself. ... But now I have a tshirt with my own favorite loud-noise 260sp
registration depicted in stunning full color (from a fairly
easily-obtained
screenshot), and my life is complete.
Virtual
$0? ...Because of my saintly character I paid hauptwerk’s $250 “basic” fare, if I still balked at the insane millionaire version and the seemingly-endless parade of enhanced Paramount flavors, although I eventually caved-in for the 320 upgrade @ $100. For comparably edifying reasons, I paid the $100 ticket for the Miditzer 260SP, which got me a more amusing — and dangerous! — Miditzer! ... But those’re the luxury tickets — a universe of virtual organing is available for free.
Sadly, the virtual organs are free only if I don’t count the 6 or $7K I spent on my glorious Nord Imperium; or the consolistas ignore their ceaseless and expensive projects and vast audio systems. ... In short, there is no free lunch. ... I paid a pittance to the virtual organizations to keep their spirits up — but it’s a tiny fraction of the real cost you’re likely to incur with the virtual organs....
And it’s worth every penny....
The VTPO forum used to concentrate on the glorious hwerk and demonstrated how silly all my ideas were, but I’m afraid the Yahoo groups were even sillier and have risen into the starry realms beyond the internet. ... The more ecumenical Organ Forum still exists although it may be headed for the last roundup — today it included exciting advertisements for girls in their underwear, altho the LGBTXYZ+-™ group seems to have disappeared — oops I take it back; appeared the next day....
Still going strong is the hauptwerk forum, and the Dutch guy’s hauptwerk site, which is in Dutch of course. ... And we’ll always have (won’t we?) the American Theatre Organ Society, whose conversion to electronic tolerance was so deeply gratifying so many years ago. And really the best of them all — for me at least — is the Vintage Home Organs Group, where mostly-brit participants in last century’s organ retailing biz enthuse over electronic organs of the past. I’ve put many of their organ pictures on my herd of screen savers and still get a little “lift” when I see some wonderful keyboards + color stop tabs out of the corner of my eye. ... I don’t actually want to own these things, although many forum participants have pictures of rooms jammed with numerous organs. ... It is probably a good thing I ran out of youth before I got adequate wherewithal to splurge on this stuff, although I’m hardly abstemious — I’ve just lost the lust for keyboards reaching to the sky and 32-note pedal boards. ... But again, Vintage Home Organs is a facebook thing which itself seems also to be headed for the last roundup, no matter how many republicans they censor....
... Sadly, “Mr. Mitz” Jim Henry @ the holy Miditzer forum was actually suggesting wrapping the thing up! ... Like Miditzer was “worn out”, presumably along with all the other silly wonderful computer organs, simply because, I suppose, the actual pipe organs are becoming mythological beasts! ... Of course the suggestion was a few years ago and the site still seems healthy.
... A
moderately amazing site is http://theatreorgans.com;
I’m not entirely sure how informative it is — as with so many
things, I just get confused — but it’s gaudy! ... Some
pages play
without permission. ... Somewhere in there I found a biography of
Laurens
Hammond
thehammondorganstory.com/
which,
since I’m an ignoramus, was surprising — apparently
he was a jet-set intellectual type before jets. ... And the “Organ
Classified Ads” were good. ...
I was impressed by http://theatreorgans.com/walnuthill/ but it’s
gone
today (9/19) and there were probably many equally-astounding offerings.
... Most of these
sites,
to
be
sure, glittered with the dust of antiquity, the ruined
temples of our time, with chirpy notices of exciting doings coming up
in
2009 and
pictures of theater organs
played last
who knows when. ... The Theatre
Organ Academy yahoo group is sunk beneath the waves, and it never had
pretty
pictures; and the theatre-sf
forum is no longer even a fading Yahoo wraith. ... It might
appear the
world
of virtual
theater organs — well, any
theater organs — has seen livelier times. ... But then
somewhere on the VTPO
forum a few years back there was a callow youth playing his hauptwerk
ridiculously
well,
so who knows?
... A more up-to-date but still nostalgic site is Andrew Gilbert’s, recounting his career in organs, in Britain....
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The next crucial issue of the age was my external
analog volume control pedal versus Miditzer
and hauptwerk
built-in
volume via the Nord’s supplied (with the
pedal keys 27) MIDI
volume control —
which, I must make clear, regulates the Nord’s
volume flawlessly
excepting physical
crochets
and
pipe emulation eccentricities.
...
No,
here I willl sing of the virtual organ software where MIDI controls
the volume, but not so admirably, at least with the Nord’s
MIDI output. ...
In
its favor, the software approach does
cause the PC screen graphic of the volume pedal(s) to move up and down
endearingly, at least with Miditzer, although I normally have
my only-mortal screen space set to hauptwerk’s
stops
so I don’t
even
get that
gratification with hwerk....
Behringer
gets the virtual nodBut after months of playing, abusive physical
adjustment of the Nord pedal, and MIDI
tinkering![[20]](twenty.png)
, I
concluded one glad morning that my Behringer FCV100
audio volume
control
was just so
much superior in effect, particularly in the ppp
range of which I am so fond. ... A
more-conscientious MIDI pedal might provide better results, although
Miditzer at least seems to have some ugly discontinuities in the piano
end of the range.
But the Behringer analog pedal has a little knob to set the minimum
audio
volume
to
whatever I
want including total
silence, and the range is smooth throughout, minimum to maximum. It is really far
superior. ... Although it’s
occasionally sensitive to static / low-humidity conditions, making a
“bip” at first contact; at least with wool socks! All of which
I thought I left behind in the
frozen North, but even here in my beautiful Tropical
Paradise the air conditioning or something can drive the
humidity low-enough
to
cause
trouble. Or something....
The virtual organs also apparently emulate the wooden shutter in a real organ with low-pass filtering, although like everything else this aroused controversy back in the day at the VTPO forum; I believe Nord — my “gold” standard — does do something comparable in their imitation baroque organ swell shutter. ... But even if the Behringer volume is less authentic — which its obviously superior range virtually so-to-speak guarantees — I still plan to use it anyway, because it sounds better. ... I should note that such vicious inauthenticity was not approved by many refined spirits at the VTPO forum, who are virulently pro-MIDI volume control. ... Which is really kind of odd — I mean, authentic MIDI?
... And then in the end times (2020), I turned the treble down in my mixer, and it was good....
And
then @ 12/15/23 my beloved FCV100 volume pedal lashup got physically
unstable, I’m not really sure how/why,
but
probably just the sad
mortality of velcro, and I am militantly resisting the rot with 3M dual
lock tape, but it does not seem to immediately solve things like it
should, but I will persevere and triumph
somehow. ... & then I
discovered one of my pitiful pieces of 2x4 had wandered-off somewhere —
that piece on the right of my wondrous diagram
—
and no longer provided a pedal-to-wall spacer, and no doubt it doesn’t
work good that way, so the laboratories will delve into it and no doubt
emerge triumphant. ... But it turned-out the non-existent spacer wasn’t
the problem.
We have at least learned something: the dual lock tape is very fine for attaching outdoor temperature sensors to concrete, but it is apparently inferior for the purpose of attaching my pitiful Behringer volume pedal to my glorious Nord Imperium. ... More/better velcro seems to be the future, specifically COCOBOO 4 Inch x 9 Feet Hook and Loop Tape, $18.82 @ amazon @ 1/11/24.
I put the stupid thing back together yesterday, with its new/better velcroish attachment — and it was beautiful!
... And my neglect of my pitiful/beautiful Nord Imperium was almost certainly not functionally-driven, but just wrapped up in my sorrow @ the bitter cold global warming Florida December/January/February darkness, + other existential threats circling the innocent CAS (chronic age syndrome) victim, with his ridiculous organ, his pitiful faults, and his dark fears. ... But now, with a working volume pedal, almost anything is possible — or so I shall faithfully pretend.
... But I must not forget that even in my barren Nord Imperium-less desert there was a precious oasis of peace & serenity — Hammond tube-based chord organ xmas music....
One day I opened A Two Organ Recital (an “Allen AO-100” LP) for the first time, which has one pipe organ, one Allen electronic — brother against brother kind-of like that Civil War thing — playing classical duets, and I couldn’t tell which was memorex! The first piece was by Solar aka “baroque”, both organs emitted charmingly chiffy flute noises and I was duly charmed. ... I’ve never really paid too much attention to this stuff, despite my encyclopedic-obsessive tone, and I only vaguely recall the Allens’ problems seemed to clump in the “mighty organ” area, and the rest of the LP may well bear this out when I hear more on the next laundry day, but so far this 1965 Allen is astonishing. With just a few primitive integrated circuits. And 200 speakers, the record jacket says....
Of course I have simple tastes. A Hammond with suitable reverb and no vibrato can do fairly plausible baroqe flute stops, at least to my low-rent ears....
A
Pipe
Organ in the Living Room?I’ve concluded it’s a bad plan. ... Historically, the rich did install actual pipe organs in their living rooms. But those were great halls and they had armies of servants to maintain them, and once you had that giant room the idea was you wanted a sufficiently-loud instrument to fill it — before electronic amplification.
But I live in sadly middle-class normal-sized spaces. An actual pipe organ in my living room would be a health hazard. Even a “practice” organ with a single rank of pipes would probably be too loud, and not so amusing. ... So I instead want an imitation classical/theater organ, and we are blessed to live in an age when a beautifully-realistic home electronic organ is eminently feasible — but not so ridiculously loud as a real instrument. ... The enthusiasts with their console dreams also typically get carried away with the audio, but even some VTPO posts noted that a vast array of virtual ranks — Paramount Organ Works’ model 450 fifty rank hauptwerk for instance — requires, at the least, many speakers.
That is, even if the ranks are virtual, fifty of them should make a very loud noise. ... Or consider the reverse: if the audio is adjusted so that the full-organ hauptwerk 450 is only loud enough to, say, annihilate your canary, then some single ranks would be inaudible! ... Not that I abhor audio trickery, compression, reverb, whatever seems like fun, which might well make a model 450 ravishing in a reasonable space. ... But sadly, even in a virtual world, there are practical limits....
I
ordered two of
these lovely plastic name plates from somewhere on the internet
for around $30. They appear to be cunningly designed to curve-down a
bit in the middle, so when you screw them on they’ll lie
flat
and not bow-out in an unsightly fashion. But I of course had no
intention of screwing anything onto my precious Nord,
so I cut-up some flexible magnet adhesive plastic, attached it to the
back, and made my own Miditzer Magnet! ... But it tended to skitter
around on the Nord, because of the slight plastic upcurve to the edges,
and so I would bend it back most mornings, so it’d lie still.
And then one sad day when I was cruelly exercising it in this wise, it broke. ... Oh the reverberating significance of it! The bleak sorrow! Of course I had the second one as a backup, but wasn’t I doomed to just repeat the tragedy? ... But then I realized the broken nameplate, with the magnetic stuff still holding it together, worked better than the whole! — because the magnetic plastic held it together enough so there was no visible trace of the break, and now it’ll always lie flat with a nice tiny discreet joint in the middle....
There’s some kind of high moral lesson whistling around in the shrouds there somewhere....
The
Sounds of ThingsI just (5/20) went to youtube and heard this fellow play a rousing bit of theater organ on a 1996 Yamaha AR100. ... And I realized all this agonizing about electronic versus pipes versus hauptwerk versus miditzer — it’s just chaff. ... Dust in the wind. ... All the online BS trying to make mr. consumer feel inferior so he can go out and spend a bunch of money on something — anything — guitars, telescopes, organs — I mean, Mr. Ar100 there sounded wonderful. ... Of course an electronic organ won’t sound like a real organ live, just like an orchestral recording won’t ever sound like a real orchestra, no matter how much you pay for speaker$. ... And incidentally, two electronic organs won’t sound the same either, unless they’re identical models ... and even then....
And don’t get me wrong — I’m in favor of senseless consumer spending: it makes the world go ’round. ... And a video of the dawn in the morning will never be like the real dawn in the morning. ... But the video can be very nice....
—
the
once-and-future-organist & programmer
Monday 3/25/24 11:05 am
|
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But
it’s 
But
buyer beware! 
Usux™
Extortion 2024
