Hauptwerk, the pipe organ simulator. Little bit about pipe organs and its use

[Don_prince]

Hauptwerk, the pipe organ simulator. Little bit about pipe organs and its use...

So somewhere on this forum my specs are stated and people here where suprised by my amounth of ram and why I am whining about more. Well here is your answer: The pipe organ simulator. Mightiest instrument in the universe.

 

https://www.hauptwerk.com/

Hauptwerk is an advanced computer organ system - a virtual pipe organ that takes full advantage of the enormous processing power of the latest computers to provide very complex pipe organ modeling and per-pipe sound shaping, while maintaining the enormous polyphony necessary to model a pipe organ successfully. At its core, Hauptwerk is a powerful and high-performance specialist software sampler, specifically designed and optimized for modeling pipe organs through the use of MIDI.

Hauptwerk may be used:

For study and practice at home by organists, organ enthusiasts and music students.
As a church organ, theatre organ, or concert hall organ where a real pipe organ may not be possible.
As a high quality sound module to power digital organs and voice expanders.
To upgrade old digital/electronic organs to the latest audio technology and realism.
In commercial and home recording studios to provide unparalleled pipe organ sound.
For music composition and arrangement.
For historical organ and music study and research.
For making a playable documentary of endangered or valuable pipe organs.
As an instrument on which to learn the organ in music schools, colleges, etc.


So what do you need to run hauptwerk?
Well for a start your current computer will do. All else you need is a keyboard wether it is usb or midi.

Now we go into the hard core bits:

If you like what you get you want better sound, bigger organs and more. The program works by loading recorded wav files of every single pipe with multiple recordings off attacks (fast slow and others) into the ram. As soon as you hit a key the wav file is played of the stops that are assigned. This can be well over 8000 wav files at a time due to the reverb. So in order to load quick you will need a big SSD. Next crazy amounts of ram as the full organ is loaded into the ram. The better quality the samples the more ram you need. The bigger the organ the more ram you need.

So thats ram and storage. Next, to play the sounds you need a cpu that can handle the polyphony. This is a big bottle neck as this will limit the amount of wav files that can play at a certain time. This is why if you really want the best performance people put off anything possible in windows (onboard soundcard, antivirus, search funtion and whatever you dont use to get a lowest load on the cpu as possible) Having cpu spikes will mess up your sound with high pitched glitches.

At this moment the first organs are comming that need 2 xeons and nearing 200 gb of ram on 24 bit sound samples.

As you want high quality you will take an external sound card. If you care about latency you dont want a USB, Firewire or Thunderbolt one. PCIE goes directly into the cpu without any converters that create distortion so  PCIE soundcards it is. I myself use a Motu 2408 mk3.

Next up is the console. I just work with a few keyboards and a pedalboard. Others use an existing organ via midi, others buy a custom tailored one, others make them themselves.





So the sky is the limmit while you can start underground.

To try it out you can download it for free using this link: http://www.downloadhauptwerk.com/win
It is available for both mac and windows.

There is a lot of free organs and trial organs available. Even ones that use more than the basic version can handle. To unlock polyphony and ram used by the program you will need a dongle. This will also get rid of the irritating bell you hear now and then. If you want to try out the full version give me a heads up. The dongle is a Aladin HASP HL+ key that I am allowed to transmit to you over the internet. Offcource this is a lot of work and not an option to keep on doing multiple times.

Prices for the versions are as follows:

Advanced Editon $599.00

Basic Edition $249.00

Mind you that for this you only have the software. You still need to buy a pipe organ. The organs themselves can be bought from seperate vendors. These organs are so expensive because someone had to sit there in the cold recording pipe for pipe. This takes years. Literaly. Next to that maintaining a pipe organ costs a fortune so the organ owner who has to allow for recording usualy wants a piece of the cake. I dont envy being one of the vendors. Think of the risk of your organ not becoming popular...

In the next reply I will handle some examples of the organs in action.

[Don_prince]

Well so we will handle some off the available organs:

In the Disney movie frankenweenie in the songs was made use of hauptwerk for the organ sounds. As did Hans Zimmer for the movie Interstellar
 

Use was made of these two organs:
Salisbury Cathedral organ https://www.milandigitalaudio.com/instruments/symphonic/1877-salisbury-cathedral-willis/?back=Instruments

Temple Church Harrison & Harrison organ. This was the real organ recorded.

I have heard of a metal band using Hauptwerk in their live performances but I forgot the name. As soon as it comes back it will be put here.
I rember it now:
 
It shows a real organ but that one is to small to produce the sound. I believe they make use of hauptwerk aswell

Nightwish makes use of Hauptwerk in their non live and prerecorded live music. I can only not remember a piece from them where you realy can diferentiate the organ out of the other sounds.

As Hauptwerk is getting more and more popular more bands, movies and artists start using it.

A good site to realy listen to the differend organs is http://www.contrebombarde.com/concerthall/home/browse

A lot of people upload their recordings there. Lots of it is Hyms and classical but sometimes you find the odd rock piece or even metal.

An example here is an improvisation on the Dutch anthem:
 
This is played on the digital version of the organ of the cathedral in Utrecht the netherlands.

Supermario themes go fine on pipe organs:
 
Soundtrack of the movie the Rock
 
Both played on the digital version of the church of Dortmund-Dorstfeld.

Yes they even sell carilions:

http://www.contrebombarde.com/concerthall/music/20528

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These are the clocks of the saint Bavo church in Haarlem.

You raised my up, song became famous by idols and was used in movies and heard on the radio, bit religious.
 
On the Notre Dame de Metz

Side note, this is not the organ of the Notre Dame de Paris. This organ has not been recorded for multiple reasons. 1 the organ owners are worried that they will lose money because less people will hire the organ to play. 2 even at night it is so noisy around the church that it is near impossible to reccord the pipes. You need near absolute silence.

The Dixy volunteers, Theatre organ music
http://www.contrebombarde.com/concerthall/music/20118
Metrolina Theatre Organ, this one is for free and you can download it

Star trek Voyager on the pipe organ in cain
http://www.contrebombarde.com/concerthall/music/19627

Looney tunes on the paramount 310
http://www.contrebombarde.com/concerthall/music/15519

The biggest organ available at this very moment is the one of the basilic in Esztergom, Hungary. Here a famous religious piece from a guy out of the history books, Maarten Luther.
http://www.contrebombarde.com/concerthall/playmusic/7325
Here is a video of the real organ with explanaition about it. (put on subtitles)
 
You can hear the echo of this organ is pretty big aswell.

Just for comparison
Here is a piece of an improvisation of Klaas Jan Mulder on Psalm 68 on the organ of the church in Rotterdam. This is a Hym but it showes the exact same piece played on the same organ so digital vs the real thing.
http://www.contrebombarde.com/concerthall/music/8823
 

You can hear that while the simulated digital one is good it can not get close to the real thing. This is because two things. One, the differend pipes in reality have effect on eachother and have effect on the sound waves. Two the air supply gets effected by multiple pipes and is not steady. This gives the vibrating sound which gives an organ colour. You can simply not simulate this

Next post will contain funny pieces on a pipe organ.

[Don_prince]

So in here I will put funny pipe organ videos

 
 
 
 
Rock 'n Roll sounds awsome on a pipe organ. Though in conventional netherlands it hit certain newspapers how the guy dared to play this after the preacher was done... It was compleate madness.

 
Queen on a pipe organ? Heck yes!

 
 
 
 
 

[wilso845]

A very interesting post love all types of music   

[Frankie]

What a wonderful software. Thank you for sharing this Don Prince. Renaissance age meets 2016!

[Asid]

Very interesting.

Technology and computers are everywhere. It is good to know what our friends are interested in.

Thanks for posting this Don