The Church Organ

The WERSI organ provides two different methods of tone generation to replicate the sounds of the church organ, namely Drawbars and Pipe Organ Samples. The sine waves produced by the drawbar system have a flute like tonal quality and so are ideally suited to the synthesis of Flute and Diapason stops. Combinations of just the octave drawbars work best here. Reed and String stops can also be synthesised by adding the non-octave drawbars, but these are generally less realistic as they require the more complex harmonics of square waves. Any of the drawbar systems on the organ can be employed, OX7, OAS Drawbars or VST Plugins, either individually or in combination. The Vibrato controls should either be switched off or set to one of the ‘C’ (Chorus) modes. The Leslie Speaker operating in Chorale mode can also assist in producing an authentic church organ ambience as can the setting of longer reverberation times in a dedicated Drawbar Reverberation Unit.

The pipe organ samples are recordings taken from a variety of different church organs. A number of individual Flute, Diapason, Reed and String stops are provided for use either in solo work or for adding together in suitable combinations. Currently only a maximum of four sounds can be layered together on any keyboard of a WERSI instrument so a number of more complex combination samples are also provided to produce full organ registrations. An optional package called the Sound Factory, featured later in the showcase, overcomes this layering restriction by enabling a greatly increased number of sounds to be added together, so many more stops can be combined just as in an actual pipe organ. With the activation of an optional Sakral Package the existing samples can be significantly augmented by a range of additional single and combination samples, again recorded from actual instruments, and so produce a very comprehensive church organ sound set. Either or both of these sets of samples can be used separately or together and can even be combined with any or all of the drawbar systems.

In the following Cantata by Bach we hear both the OX7 Drawbar System and the Pipe Organ Samples combined together in four registrations that build into a full organ crescendo. We start with a soft flute accompaniment to which is added a diapason solo, then a soft diapason accompaniment with a quint solo, followed by the diapason chorus and finally the full organ. We move back down through the registrations to finish where we started with the soft flute. Oh and don’t be surprised if in addition to the church organ sounds you also hear a solo chorister and the ringing of church bells, courtesy of the instrument’s Special Effects Unit !

Jesu Joy of Man’s Desiring

WERSI ORGAN SHOWCASE

THE CHURCH ORGAN

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