In my ignorance, I didn’t know that virtual pipe organs even existed until a couple of months ago, when I happened to hear on BBC Radio 3 a recording of a Bach prelude and fugue that caught my attention. It sounded to me like a regular pipe organ, but the voices were clearer and more distinct than I am used to hearing in recordings. It turned out to have been recorded on a virtual organ.<p>The organist is Richard Irwin. I ordered his CD and have enjoyed listening to it:<p><a href="https://www.richardirwinmusic.com/#Major_New_Release_-_Apprentice_to_Master" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://www.richardirwinmusic.com/#Major_New_Release_-_Appre...</a>
"Look mum no computer" on Youtube is wrapping up a series[0] where he bought an old church organ and rebuilt it. He cleaned it up and rewired it to interface via midi as well as the console.<p>[0] <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8PwwRR8deHk&list=PLluPQLh1xzlI7EMB5qIxDd_1OLE-Z_kyC">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8PwwRR8deHk&list=PLluPQLh1xz...</a>
Professional organist here! Having a VPO at home is life changing. I'm lucky to live within a ten minute walk from my current employer, which has quite legitimately one of the best organs in the world, but even then, being able to practice at home occasionally is wonderful.<p>I bought a new home organ about two years ago and (long story) hoped to integrate a pedalboard I already had into it. I still haven't gotten that working, so I'll definitely be looking at this site's pedalboard controller to finally get that working.<p>(Also, feel free to ask me anything about organs, organ software, etc.)
Story time: I briefly worked in a school that, incredibly, didn't have a working bell system. Since this is obviously idiotic, I decided to hack something together. I got a vacuum cleaner from the thrift shop, an old keyboard for free from the Geek Squad at Best Buy, and hooked a solid state relay up to one of the LEDs to drive the vacuum cleaner (credit to Cryptonomicon for the idea, just with a louder outcome). Copious duck tape connected the vacuum cleaner hose to the blow side of the vacuum.<p>For the other end of that hose I built a single organ pipe out of 1/4" plywood. It turns out it's pretty straightforward to make a single pipe that isn't tuned to any note, nevermind a whole set. Going down the Internet rabbit hole on organ pipes was a great relief from the general insanity of working in a school.<p>Unfortunately, I left that position before I finished the software. Probably because instead of using a cron job, I started with writing a lexer and parser for a custom config file.<p>TL;DR: if you just want to make some noise, it's not hard. Build one pipe, build a whole rank, and go wild from there! You needn't bother with the software simulation from TFA if you just want to hack and annoy your neighbors.
Off topic but tangential with a stretch but not really: Donald Knuth is fanatic about pipe organs: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OBO613Q8hAw&t=36s">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OBO613Q8hAw&t=36s</a>
<i>"... majestic ... remarkable ... empowering ... worldwide ... accessible ... innovative ... democratizing ... traditional ... like never before ..."</i><p>Turn the hype generator down from 11, please.