Don’t forget about MIDI! A case study of an innovative church organ recording

• What is the best way to record that big beast? This issue is central to many of uswho have faced the challenge of recording one of the perhaps most traditional of allmusical instruments: Church Organ. This text describes a recording project wheremodern music production technology innovatively was used to record a churchorgan. The primal purpose of the recordings was to make a documentation of howthe recorded church organ sounds after a major renovation. One problem was thatdisturbing road noise from traffic close to the church made it very difficult to recordin the daytime. Therefore the recordings were done in the night when thesurroundings were more silent. During the renovation, a new digitally controlledremote console was installed which is connected with the old pipe organ in thestands. MIDI is used for musical communication between the remote console andthe organ. MIDI technology was used during the production work in an innovativeway solving some of the production problems. Instead of playing the music liveduring the recording sessions, the music was first recorded digitally in musicproduction software using midi sequencer software. This was carried out in daytimeover a long time period. During the actual acoustic recordings the organist, insteadof playing live, started playing back the pre-recorded music live in the organ. And allthe music was recorded acoustically during one night. The recordings resulted in aCD-record that is a true documentation of how the organ sounds live, even thoughthe recordings actually were programmed over a long time. This technology opens up for innovative options for e.g. future compositional work or artistic performances.Experiences från this project also emphasizes the importance of developing futurework as well as education where art and technology can cooperate and strengtheneach other.

Ämnesord

HUMANIORA  -- Konst -- Musik (hsv//swe)

HUMANITIES  -- Arts -- Music (hsv//eng)

HUMANIORA  -- Konst -- Design (hsv//swe)

HUMANITIES  -- Arts -- Design (hsv//eng)

TEKNIK OCH TEKNOLOGIER  -- Annan teknik -- Mediateknik (hsv//swe)

ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY  -- Other Engineering and Technologies -- Media Engineering (hsv//eng)

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