Controlling a MASSIVE pipe organ with my computer

as they were installing the organ they never thought yeah that anybody would want to do what you're trying to do today which is totally reasonable hey everybody welcome back to the channel we're here again at the fourth presbyterian church with john shearer john thank you so much for letting us be here hey welcome back rob yeah first off if you haven't seen the pipe organ video we did a whole video explaining this instrument so this isn't just like the instrument is just back here so you got pipe basement to ceiling front to back side to side this instrument is literally the size of a building it is before watching this you should really check it out if you haven't this instrument is so amazing and then come back here later in the pipe organ video that we did there was one thing that really stuck out to me and that was we have a midi stop right and i thought that was fascinating because midi is such a modern way of making music or translating music like andrew huang might correct me because he uses midi all the time but i think of midi as like computer sheet music like if you have a midi keyboard you're just sending it this note on at this time turn this note off at this time here's the pitch bend volume all that stuff and just a really small file here's the song here are the notes here's when to play each note and for how long and i use the midi more just for the playback function so you can actually record a piece of music on the organ as you're playing it and the organ will play the piece back exactly as you played it whoa that's cool yeah what i was curious about is since it has a midi out on the stop does it also have a midi in and we were going back and forth with emails of whether or not maybe we could do it i'm not entirely certain as of now if this is even going to work and i have no idea that if i have any song in midi we can plug that in and then bring it through this massive pipe organ that'd be awesome yeah so essentially the midi is going to be playing this and then we can just control the stops how many divisions do we have here nine divisions controlled by different keyboards so you've got the choir division bottom the great division on this keyboard and so you can have a flute here and a clarinet here the oboe here english horn here and you have different sounds waiting on any of these keyboards so i have two my songs that i can't wait to hear played as triumphantly as they ever have and then because any time i have a guitar profile of a song on my computer i can just export that song into midi so i have a long list of songs that we could put into this we can see you know what super mario sounds like on this one so let's try to get the computer set up yeah yeah so where are the midi inputs for this and this is what i was trying to tell you is we don't use it this way and the oregon tech person who installed the system was like he said it had a midi in in that email this is essentially the computer for the organ if we loaded a usb stick with one of your midi files and plopped it in there would it load the midi file how do you access what's on that usb port this is what i was worried about rob yeah so when when you have a song that you've already recorded how do you go about playing it back record all right wow that gives me hope it clearly can write midi to that and then play it back well an internal machine so yeah that should be a way to back it up i was hoping there'd just be like a plug yeah that's what i was hoping to mini plug yeah it looks like the old sega genesis controllers mm-hmm kind of yeah i was looking forward to clicking a button on first yeah and having it go yeah that would be really cool okay so here's another question if we have like rain for example where i have three different parts first one to be here second to be here and third to be all the way in the back that would be so cool yes it is very wishful thinking and i have the owner's manual assign a midi lsp or pc organization that your voices it could just not be possible uh we're here trying to make a youtube video about using the midi function on the organ yes that's it exactly just a five pin midi plug we can't find the midi plug midi out is adjacent to watt dwight rj45 a little black connector and where is that well he says it's inside the organ oh no what if we took the lid off dwight there's a lid oh my gosh you're always trying to do something that may not be possible he said that the midian midi out is is inside the organ but it's not meant to be used yeah so it's fairly inaccessible very and this just doesn't come off like the hood of a car no hey chris i'm good we're actually here making a youtube video the key desk under the delight wow right we found it chris holy cow yeah what we just found it yes you were right right down there oh wow yeah thank you so much chris thank you chris we found it yes okay i can change the channel here but still i'm not getting anything is the song playing okay so we're not we're not getting it did he happen to say on the phone that it was possible so i'm going to call chris again yeah so do we have to take the lid off to do that back to the lid it's possible that the midi is just not hooked up into the ioti system oh so the box just isn't plugged in yeah that's what that's what he's saying this video might have just turned into a two-parter as they were installing the organ they never thought yeah that anybody would want to do what you're trying to do today which is totally reasonable i need to get somebody in here that will get it hooked up in that case it would make sense to come back another day should i do a whip pan to the next day i'll just put this camera right now sure all right so this is day one yeah hey everybody uh with the magic of editing we're back it's a few months later i haven't changed my clothes since while you're away we had our organ technician come in and he wired up the midi function within the organ so that ultimately was what it was fingers crossed hopefully today it will happen let's give it a try what would you like to start with we'll try rain okay so the midi is just going to essentially control the keys okay and then we'll be here controlling this stops great yeah so there's been sitting on some sounds i wish we could communicate through video really how powerful this sounds being in the room all right so do we have it we have it in the midi is yeah and if i hit play it's going to be spinning out of midi channel one we'll see [Music] because that's just the first delay it's not the whole or not the main performance i don't know what division is it playing right yeah yeah it's coming from around [Music] oh did your computer crash oh no oh no i don't know what to do [Music] that was me oh excellent yeah let's see what happens yeah there's a channel if it does a different stop or a different division okay so we do get different divisions okay so we could figure out what midi channel is what division maybe mute everything except for channel one i'd imagine channel one would be the great division yeah that's actually three yeah that's the pedal oh so that's a difference yeah okay yeah midi one is the pedal that makes sense yeah one two three so now two yeah so two would be this right here okay yeah okay that's pretty simple yeah one two three four five six great should be able to technically then give all three their own channels and if we can get into three different divisions right the great division we should have is a pretty attacky very big tone all right and then in the antiphonal division at the other side of the building then we want something for this song for the third delay to be something that's a little more subdued it's also really far away we've got 142 ranks here so it's like 142 orchestra members yeah all right here's rain on a pipe organ [Music] yeah this is a great way to start it [Music] and then another sizeable jump after four this two one sounds great we'll just keep it [Music] all right [Music] so yeah i loved when you brought in whatever you did there that brought in the lower octaves yeah yeah yeah that was very cool wow okay it's beautiful yeah it is so cool to hear that song on this gigantic piece of machinery i feel like we're bringing kind of old world technology with new world technology it's really exciting yeah it's really cool yeah all right let's move on to anchor the rhythm will be on the great and then the lead will be in the antiphonal john if we could find like a really powerful bassy for the for the great division and then something really sparkly for the antiphonal so lead off of antiphonal yeah these two chords i want you to get rid of okay can i do it yeah but sorry that's so cool that is so cool that you can that you can edit the midi and have it come out wow that's awesome shall we [Music] my christmas roll my job's pretty cool [Music] oh it just all sounds there it is [Applause] [Music] wow [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] oh that is powerful yeah the bass notes in the rhythm from here can be so huge that then the lead becomes totally buried these were the two of my songs i just threw a bunch of midi files in there okay so i got a lot of silly stuff okay i have the super mario theme here well let's give it a try [Music] [Applause] oh here it is [Music] yeah there we go [Music] we made it to the castle here's an experiment i wanted to do let's go to necrophagus necrophagus is a metal band and i've always wondered if you play it through a pipe organ is it just bach so we got the three guitars on the great division and then the solos on the internal [Music] yes [Music] that's so cool amazing yeah that it really works it doesn't sound like bach all right so let's see what else do we have here [Music] let's throw on animals as leaders there's like 40 tracks oh my gosh come on tosin what are you doing to us i say to as if i know him on first name basis i've never met him mr obasi why are you doing this to us [Music] foreign [Music] up here let's go with bohemian rhapsody so i got chimes harp in the back we got strings up here [Applause] [Music] [Applause] it's definitely there [Music] [Applause] i'm noticing that a lot like the midi notes [Music] nothing's coming [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] yes can we grab the choir [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] oh i'm starting that part over that was such a letdown that we didn't have the guitars on [Music] [Music] so [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] that was great wow we missed you freddy [Laughter] wow you know how we're going to top that that's that's the ending there john thank you so so much you're welcome appreciate it this has been great you subscribe to this channel if you like i'm sure this isn't the last time we do something like this uh anything you would like to plug john come to fourth church hear great music lots of great concerts here all the time and we'll see you here on the internet uh next week

Channel: Rob Scallon

Views: 2,078,849

Keywords: Rob Scallon, music, musician, guitar, guitarist, pipe organ, the pipe organ, instrument the size of a building, instrument, musical instrument, MIDI, producer, necrophagist, mario, mario theme, metal, metallica, queen, huge instrument, piano, programming music, DAW, playing music, playing, organ, theorbo, theremin, educational, mod, midi programming, music producer, produce, production, how to, Chicago, laptop, recording music, playing the pipe organ, song, performance, pipe organ music, challenge

Id: SQHdFAm7g7E

Length: 21min 45sec (1305 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 30 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/[deleted]]

Wow that was actually pretty cool. I love Rob. I mean, I haven’t actually met him in person. I love Mr. Scallon.