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I play a lot of Bach. Depending on the piece I am working on I find it useful to try it on different keyboard types, piano, harpsi organ. I have a number of good pianos and a good built in harpsichord on my Yamaha CP88.
I am currently working on the Fugue #1 of the Well Tempered Clavier, very difficult. Since it has a lot of difficult legato passages it would be vey useful to try them out over a pipe organ sound.
So I am asking the knowledgeable forum what would be a nice VST pipe organ sound ? Besides a reasonable sound the key requirement for me is simplicity. I will not use it a lot and I don't want to spend 3 hrs configuring it to play 30 minutes or something.
So far I have tried: Garritan Pipe organ: lots of presents, too many and not so good sound IMO Hauptwerk: way too complicated
Spitfire audio has 2 different pipe organs that also sound very differently one from the other. Check the audio demos at their website. The older VST is called union chapel organ, I believe; the most recent is called Symphonic Organ. They sound good to my amateur ears.
Btw, VSL also has an organ VST (konzerthaus vienna) for under 200 dollars; organteq is a bit more expensive but is also an interesting option that has a good demo version thta you can try.
I have only heard the demos, haven't seen any reviews of it, but if you just want a list of organ VSTs, here's one more to consider: Eternity Church Organ by Marcos Ciscar from Loot Audio. Simeon Amburgey did an improvisation on it:
Yamaha saved the best of the organ sounds and technologies for the YC88.
Have you tried tweaking the onboard organ sounds (I believe it has two pipe organ sounds?) on the CP88? If you're not going to use the VSTs a lot, I'm thinking you might be able to tweak some available sounds to your liking and save a few bucks.
My personal favorite for organ is the FerroFish hardware sound module but that's also out of your budget range.
A man must love a thing very much if he practices it without any hope of fame or money, but even practice it without any hope of doing it well. Such a man must love the toils of the work more than any other man can love the rewards of it. G. K. Chesterton
Pitea blows my mind. My favorite pipe organ VST. Markus Sigg makes several good ones. The Pitea is my favorite though. Great Sub Bass is a MUST from your playback system.
Whilst not a dedicated organ VST, the UVI Orchestral Suite contains numerous good quality pipe organs, in two separate groupings - "Cathedral Organ" and "Meditation Organ" - each with at least 12 preset variations for the main manual and 6 pedal sound variation each too.
For €199 it satisfies both the demand for pipe organs, plus gives you a great all-rounder VST with impressive range of decent orchestral instruments, harpsichords, percussion, etc.
For playing organ or harpsichord repertoire (using harpsichord sounds) on a digital instrument I would suggest a 61-key semi-weighted midi keyboard as the more valuable addition to a CP88.
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For playing organ or harpsichord repertoire (using harpsichord sounds) on a digital instrument I would suggest a 61-key semi-weighted midi keyboard as the more valuable addition to a CP88.
Yes, that makes a lot of sense, Piano Keybed is quite hard for organ stuff. Problem is space . . .
A used Studiologic SL-61 61-key controller is relatively inexpensive and very compact. The SL-161 is usually a bit pricier, and adds aftertouch, which is not useful for harpsichord or organ. A used Akai MPK61 or new MPK261 will each cost more, but have buttons, knobs, and sliders that could be mapped to organ stops, and USB out so you would not need an adapter for the 5-pin DIN connector. A space solution is to stack it above your DP.
I find harpsichord even more demanding than organ on a weighted keyboard because the interpretive style makes much more extensive use of ornaments than typically used on piano or even on organ. When playing two voices with the right hand and playing frequent trills on the outer voice with fingers 4 and 5, a weighted keyboard action significantly increases the difficulty of a given piece, and may increase risk of injury.
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Good ideas / suggestion, thanks. I would imagine your nick is a hint at your musical passions . . . I am very familiar with Flemish renaissance a cappella polyphony, not so much with keyboard works. I listened to some Sweelinck stuff on you tube, intriguing . . .
I do play some of Sweelinck's music, but my interest is more his contribution to music from a historical perspective, both in the development of keyboard technique, and in the development of fughal writing, which grew from some of his fantasies. For instance, the introduction to one of his echo fantasies, Fantasy in the Manner of an Echo in D dorian/minor is a short fugue, possibly the earliest known example of one, but precise years of composition for his music are not reliably known.
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