Ever Wanted to Play a Building? by Ellie Sheeran

          Ever wanted to play a musical instrument, but were bored with the puny tubas, saxes, and flutes? Well, have you ever wanted to play a building? Pipe organs are some of the most fascinating, beautiful, and sadly overlooked members of the instrumental music world. They produce some of the most stunning and iconic music known to man and have infinite potential in regards to sound experimentation. They're also one of the most massive instruments on the earth, bested only by one other(the carillon), and their intricate construction is at least intriguing from any perspective.

I'm going to use the Chicago Fourth Presbyterian Church's pipe organ as an example as we peer into the remarkable construction of the pipe organ.

How do organs create their unique sounds? 

  Creating Sound

Pipe organs, surprisingly, are wind instruments; meaning they rely on steady airflow to make their sounds. Winding underneath the organ and pervading every corner are air pipes, and they all branch off of the main blower. The blowers, often found in the basement of the church, provide fast, steady air through the base of the pipes, through the top, and out of the hole so they can make their iconic sounds. 

The organist at Fourth Presbyterian demonstrating the blower and its pipes. 

            Sound Control: 

Pipe organs are massive systems of metal, air, and other materials speckled in here and there; so, how can one person wrangle it all? The entire organ system comes together at the control center keyboards: it surrounds the organist, usually consists of five keyboards, a footboard, hundreds of stops, and mute pedals. Mute pedals control a system of blinds that close off the internal parts of the organ for a quieter sound, blocking the sound, and open for a louder one. 

An organist in his control center 

Diversity in Sound

The size of the pipes makes all of the difference in regards to: 

• How high or low the note being played is
• What kind of sound the note is, or what instrument the organ is imitating
• The volume of that sound

The tallest pipes at the organ we’re analyzing are thirty-two feet tall, playing the deepest notes; some of which cannot be transmitted through a normal microphone without the aid of a subwoofer. Likewise, the smallest pipes, the tiniest being smaller than a pinky finger, create the tightest, highest notes. There are, on a standard organ, five keyboards representing different groups of sound(the orchestra, the choir, the woodwinds, etc), a foot-pedal keyboard to play even more notes at once, and hundreds of stops that can further narrow down just what sound an organist is searching for. 

Pipe organs have thousands, sometimes tens of thousands of pipes to work with; most of which are rooted in the basement of the building housing the organ; the Chicago Presbyterian organ has 8,000 and the Boardwalk Hall Auditorium organ boasts just over 33,000. With that many raw sounds to play around with, there are very nearly infinite possibilities in regard to how an organist can play their instrument. 

Stops

Stops are buttons that line the inside of an organist’s control center. Each represents a different family of pipes, and when a stop is pulled out, the air is redirected into that group or groups of pipes. Often, an organist will have many stops activated at once to pin down a certain kind of sound; and fun fact, this is where the phrase “pulling out all the stops” comes from! When an organist pulls out all of the stops, the result is a thunderously loud sound that can reach at least 138 decibels.

An organist pulling out a stop.

 

What kind of music can you play on the organ? 
That’s the beauty of the organ; you can use it for anything! Countless movie soundtracks, especially those from Interstellar, Dunkirk, Jaws, and others, utilize the unique and versatile potential of the pipe organ. Also, many choir pieces use it for background, and there are multiple pieces specifically written for organ, including Toccata and Fugue in D Minor by J.S. Bach and many pieces by Camille Saint-Saëns.