How mechanical pipe organ actions work against transient control

Alan Woolley

This paper summarises work published and presented previously, supported by additional material. It can be clearly demonstrated by blowing an organ pipe that its transient can be varied, although the effect is not generally considered ‘musical’. It has been debated for several decades whether mechanical pipe organ actions allow the player to vary the transient by the way in which the key is moved. Opinions vary from transient control being fundamental to organ playing to it not being possible. This work shows that the physical characteristics of mechanical organ actions work against transient control and this is corroborated by measurements of key and pallet movements and pressure changes whilst organists are playing. It also looks at what other methods organists are using in order to play expressively. The paper also considers how transients might vary due to other characteristics of organs that are outside players’ direct control but might lead them to believe that variations are due to differences in their key movements.

Mots clés: Control; Expression; Perception; Variation

Domaines: Acoustique [physics.class-ph]

Alan Woolley. How mechanical pipe organ actions work against transient control. Acoustics 2012, Apr 2012, Nantes, France. ⟨hal-00810933⟩