pipe organ question

[TC Chris]

Bill can probably answer this. I found a small stash of remaining LPs in my Mom's basement. One was "Organ Moods." It says "Frank Wrightson at the console." But that just poses the question, which console? Which organ? It's a theater organ but an anonymous one. No luck on Google.

Chris Campbell

[Ken Doyle]

Masterseal records was one of the many Remington records budget labels. It's possible that this album was released on multiple labels under multiple titles. I know of no complete discography for either Remington or Masterseal.

[William]

A lot of times the album jacket would say "At the organ", but not tell which one and that's because it was an electronic organ rather than the real thing. They would often show a photo of a pipe organ console which had nothing to do with what was recorded. If I heard the record, I could tell you if it was pipe or not.

Bill

[hermitcrab]

I have a couple albums with organ music from my parents from the 50's I will have to look for them and see if they say who is actually playing

[William]

Chris, is this your organ record?

https://www.discogs.com/release/1591152 ... rgan-Moods

Here's another record he made:

https://www.discogs.com/release/4805250 ... Pipe-Organ

And here's a You-tube track of Frank playing, and he is not playing a real theater organ, he is playing a Hammond with a Leslie speaker hooked to it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gS_mVKtn-Uc

Bill

[electra225]

Bill, can you describe the difference between a theater organ and one that isn't a theater organ as far as how they sound? Or is it one of those "you'll know it when you hear it" kind of things?.....

[TC Chris]

I was wondering the same thing. I was playing the recording on a boom box with mag. phono inputs, not terribly strong fidelity, and I thought it sounded lie a theater organ. And ves, Bill, same recording.

Chris Campbell

[William]

It is one of those things you learn the more you listen to organ music. Back in the day, when the record Chris found at his Mom's cottage was produced, it was fairly easy to tell the difference between pipes and a Hammond. There were other electronic organ builders back then too, and they were fashioned after pipe organ being either classical or theater. The classical electronics came much closer to sounding like the real thing than did the theater electronic organ. The Rodgers organ company was probably the best in trying to duplicate the pipe sound. Their engineers really worked hard at it and the bean counters did not cut corners. They were expensive organs, but sound quite good. Allen, Lowry, Baldwin, Thomas, Conn, Gulbranson, and others were all electronic organ builders and for what they were, they too sounded ok. But there were not a Pipe Organ.

In today's world we have great advancements in electronic organ technology so what was once a PIPE organ wannabe is now a very close reality. Pipe organs are now being digitally sampled, rank by rank, pipe by pipe. With trems and without trems. The result is excellent, but it really depends on how you amplify and the speakers you use. If you stop and consider, every pipe in a pipe organ is basically its own amplifier and speaker. So, if you have 1000 pipes in a pipe organ you have 1000 little amplifiers and speakers which makes every sound being produced clean and clear. Now comes the digital electronic organs. It would be cost prohibitive to have 1000 amplifiers and speaker, let alone the space it would take up. So, what do they do, they try and run as much organ sound thru the least number of amplifiers and speakers as possible but still try and have as realistic a sound as possible. What this does is compress the sound which takes away from the authenticity of trying to sound like the real thing. It's a catch 22, and for what it is worth, it does sound way better than what was available even 20 years ago. But there is still nothing like the real thing, especially in theater organs. The absolute power is what hooked me years and years ago. I guess that is why the pipe organ, being classical or theater, is the "King of Instruments".

I know I got carried away, but for anyone on the forum that enjoys organ music now you can listen to a record or CD and try and figure out if it is real the real thing, or fake. And yes, you can look at the label and most of the time it will tell you what organ it is. But wouldn't it be fun to challenge yourself, take a listen, and than see if your guess is correct.

Have fun and just enjoy listening to music no matter what it is.

Bill

[William]

Chris, a Hammond and their tone wheel system of producing sound, does sound like a theater organ. The Hammond organ basically produces a flute sound, so it sounds much like a theater organ Tibia and by adding a Leslie speaker to a Hammond it even comes closer. Unfortunately, the flute sound is the only sound a Hammond organ can produce. Yes, with their drawbar system of changing tones one can get sounds that sound kind of like strings or reeds but really fall short from the actually sound. The other organs I mentioned in my first post, produced their sounds thru tone oscillators and they came much closer to producing the string and reed sound. But again, not until the digital samples in todays world did the organ world even come close to sounding like the real thing.

Bill

[electra225]

I can pretty much tell which piano player is on a record. They each have features that make their styles unique. I assume the same applies to organ music. I'm not sure I understand yet how to identify the differences. Maybe a more detailed explanation, maybe a different approach would work. All I can tell you is that Jesse Crawford on the organ sounds different than "Cramer on the Console" does. Floyd Cramer played a Thomas, I have no idea what Jesse Crawford played, but they sound different to me. Bill, do you know what instrument Jesse Crawford played?

[William]

Theater organists have their own style as well (so do classical church organists), and some of the newer ones have made it their mission to copy the organist of old. How they play or their style of playing is not as important as how they register the organ, which means what stops they chose. Stop choice plays an important role in identifying whether the organ being played is a real pipe organ or an electronic organ. Until the current digital organ came along, and that can still be questionable, certain stops just do not sound right on anything but on a real pipe organ. As I mentioned before, it is much easier to duplicate a church/classical organ electronically over a theater pipe organ.

Greg, Jesse Crawford, known as the "Poet of the Organ", style is totally different than Floyd Cramer and that is easily noted just by listening to their recordings. Jesse started out playing piano, then moved onto the theater organ and finally he played the Hammond. There are recordings out there of him playing both kinds of organs. Floyd Cramer only played electronic instruments those being Thomas and Hammond. Floyd's style of music was best on an electonic organ while Jesse style was very adaptable to both pipe and electronic. Would or could Floyd play a real theater pipe organ, absolutely and it would have been real cool for him to have done so. The theater pipe organ was designed to be a "unit orchestra" or one-man orchestra which in the time of silent films cut costs to a minimum paying on person instead of a whole orchestra.

Again, I have gotten away from the question at hand mostly because it is a hard one to answer. There are so many different aspects that play into identifying real verses fake and again classical/church is much easier. A classical/church organ is a totally different design than a theater organ even though in principle they share the same basic design. I know that is confusing and that is a book in itself. What it boils down to is, it is difficult to identify a real organ over a fake on a recording. In person, and without seeing the organ or the person playing it, it is much easier because you are in the room where the sound is being produced. The other part, with the real thing, you can feel the pressure being produced from blower and the discharge of air from the tremulants. You do not get that with an electronic organ. The other thing to consider, unless you have a very powerful stereo it is very difficult to produce the sounds of a real pipe organ which makes electronic organs and pipe organs sound more alike when listening. I guess the best thing is just to listen to recordings that identify the organ being played and then do your own comparison.

Here's a sample of an excellent digitally sampled theater organ:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jdkf9QnYxrI

Here's a story about the theater pipe organ and one way to see and hear what the difference is between a theater organ over a classical/church pipe organ:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Issk0AUqnko

Here's a rather long link of Ethel Smith playing the Hammond organ before Hammond allowed Leslie speakers to be used with their organs. If you skip around, you will be able to hear the different sounds a Hammond can make.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uP7A55SJOHY


Here's a Hammond A100, same thing as a Hammond B3 but in a home cabinet, being played in the style Hammonds are known for, JAZZ. This organ has a Leslie speaker. As the guy plays you will hear him switch the Leslie from slow to fast. Note the difference in sound.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pi_gwED-gQw&t=6s

Wikipedia has good info on Theater organs, classical/church organs, the Hammond organ as well as the other manufactures of electronic organs. Reading that info will help you to understand what makes the different organs tick. Other than that, listening is your best way to hear the differences and might I suggest Googling live organ concerts in your area as there is nothing like hearing the real thing.

Bill

[Firedome]

Organs are truly the King of Instruments. As son of a piano teacher and sometimes (crappy) piano player I've always held them in awe. I took a Music Appreciation course my Sr year of High school 1968, and the teacher who also taught the school choirs and band took us to hear some of the great organs in Baltimore City: at the Lyric Theatre (where Baltimore Symphony played), and a tracker action (all wood/mechanical) organ from the early 1800s at one of the oldest churches downtown. The organist came in for us on a school day to play and was fabulous: Bach Toccatas, Passacaglia & Fugue, etc. To me the pipe organ is meant to play classical compostion, the B3 for jazz (Jimmy Smith, Larry Young, Joey DeFrancesco).

In college I'd sneak into the chapel at night (it was always open) and try to play Handel etc on that organ, but I was never really taught or understood proper registration and foot pedal use, so it was just piano playing through pipes really. Moller Organ of Hagerstown (MD) was about 35 miles away and one of the great pipe organ makers, there's quite a few of them in MD and PA.

[William]

I'm in agreement that a Hammond B3 is a jazz organ if it has a Leslie speaker but the Leslie speaker is a big part of what makes the B3 a jazz organ. B3's and other Hammond organs can also be played traditionally as a classical organ and with popular music. Is it a pipe organ, no, but when pipes are not available a Hammond or other electronic organ will do.

As far as pipe organs, both classical and theater have their place in the pipe organ world. Classical/Church organs have been around for hundreds of years and have gone thru major changes over the years. Theater organs are relatively new to the organ world, and they too have gone through major changes over their years on this earth. The modern theater organ is nothing like the original and now is more oriented towards concerts rather than accompanying silent films but can still do that with great success. Through modern technology, the modern classical/church organ can now do things it was never thought possible. Computer technology has really changed both organ types.

To be fair, both classical/church organs and theater organs excel at what they can do with the right artist playing the type of music they were designed for. I like both, and both are considered the "King of Instruments". Both have differences that make them unique. Both were designed for different types of music, but one thing should be noted and that is a theater organ can play classical/church music quite well, but a classical/church organ cannot duplicate the sounds of a theater organ.

Bill

[electra225]

Okay, guys, nobody has said, so I gotta ask. What is a Leslie speaker and what is its signifiance to an organ? Thank you, Bill, for the links. Maybe the light will come on after I digest all those.....

Edit...So you gotta kick off your sneakers to play a theater organ? The organ they played at White Sox games was a theater organ? I may be beginning to grasp the concept.

The theater organ in the warehouse that was being built. I am impressed. Wow, what a project. I have no idea what any of that stuff is, but I admire that effort.

The big organ St. Daniels Catholic Church in Tempe used to have, (may still have) might have been a theater organ, by what these links have shown. The man who played it reminded me a bit of Bob Ralston on the Lawrence Welk show. The organ Bob Ralston played was an electronic of some kind, Thomas, maybe?

Thank you Bill.

[William]

The Leslie speaker was invented by Don Leslie and was a mechanical way to put better sounding vibrato/tremulant to electronic organs. Basically, it's a wooden piece of furniture that has an amplifier, speaker, and a rotating two speed drum. That is the simple version, and they became more complicated with time. The one that everyone wants for a Hammond B3 also has a revolving horn. Here's a link:

https://ask.audio/articles/understandin ... lie-effect

Here's Wikipedia's take on the Leslie:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leslie_speaker

And no, people do play with shoes, some even in bare feet. I play in my socks.

The LW show first used Hammond organs, but by the time Bob Ralston joined the show Thomas was the organ of choice.

St. Daniels Church in Tempe very well could have had a theater organ. When "Talkies" arrived and there was no longer a need for the theater organ a lot of the theaters defaulted on their payments and the organs got repossessed. They were quickly repurposed and sold to churches and became the main music source for those churches. It should be noted, going from a theater organ to a church organ was pretty easy, but going from church to theater was far more difficult and the cost of doing so was greater.

Bill

[electra225]

The one in St. Daniels was what I called a pipe organ. It had the traditional big pipes up behind the organ and the keyboard had multiple layers. I'm sure my terminology is not very good, but that's what I saw. By that description, that would likely make it a theater organ. You could hear the thing for blocks around when it was played before services started. The one we had in our church was a Hammond and it was what I would call a spinet style. Not very complicated, more like a piano. It had tubes. You could see then glowing if you sat in the pew over by the baptismal pool. I reckon the organs they use in ballparks and stadiums is some kind of a smaller instrument.

[TC Chris]

So if church organs are in churches, and theater organs are in theaters, what's the Wanamaker organ?

Chris Campbell

[electra225]

Fill us in on a Wanamaker organ. Never heard of one.

[Firedome]

It's in a store, so is it a Store Organ? LOL. It's in the former Wanamaker's on Market St. in Philadelphia, one of the biggest in the country or world, and world famous. It's now a Macy's store IIRC. In my opinion a true pipe organ is a pipe organ, wherever it is, and the idea of a church organ or theater organ is an artificial distinction. Only big or older churches and/or theaters have a pipe organ, most have electronic organs with either tube or SS amplifiers.

[TC Chris]

https://wanamakerorgan.com/about-the-organ/