I don't understand your "see Skepticism" reference.

It's not possible for me to tell from the mpg I downloaded whether it is a real "pipe organ" or faked. The choral addition always 'vamps up' that style of music. There is a lot of reverb (especially notable on the vocal parts), which is masking any way I can tell if the organ is a real pipe one or not, especially through the samplping rate and my tiny speakers.

Pipe organs are huge monstrous (very non-portable!) things that can have dozens of individual pipes for each note on the keyboard. They usually have more than one keyboard (called 'manuals') and one set of pedals for the feet (that spans a few octaves - definitely more than one!) It is possible through "couplers", to link octaves or sub-octaves of any individual note from the same manual and also from other manuals and the pedals.

Very few individuals are able to purchase their own. A few of us are able to cajole (or pay for) time on one.

While Rock Bands with big budgets may be able to gain access to one for a recording session, I suspect that most of what you think is a "pipe organ" sound used in music is an electronic organ. With big enough speakers to handle the very high and low frequencies - from only a few cycles per second (subsonic) to the limit of human hearing 15-20,000 cycles per second, you get a pretty good imitation. the only problem being that the real pipe organ, because of the multiplicity of individual pipes (sound sources) has a different character of sound compared to electronic tone generators which are usually lock-step divided electronically and thus always maintain constant pitch differences between the "apparent sources".

Thus several of your normal Yamaha, etc, keyboards and a pedal set will give you much of the sound you expect.

Pipe organs, although they have a piano keyboard, are not played like one. A Piano (Piano Forte) is a percussive instrument, the pipe organ opens a valve that causes a pipe to speak at a constant wind pressure(volume). More than one pipe may be ganged to the key through 'stops' & 'couplers', thus varying the quality and volume of the sound. A relatively few pipe are often gathered into a box with a lid or shutters controlled by a special foot pedal, which allows muffling of the tone/volume, and these pipes are controlled directly from the 'swell organ' manual. It is NOT a 'voume pedal'.

Thus playing a run of notes in a 'legato' style is a skill to be learned. On the earliest pipe organs, the notes were sounded by punching large buttons with the fists. Varying systems of coupleing the keyboards to the pipe were developed, including mechanical (rods or wires), pneumatic (air tubes), electric (switched under the keys and relays), and electro-pneumatic (a combination of the last two). Each system has a different 'feel' and none of them feel like a 'piano keyboard', so those expensive 'velocity sensitive' electronic keyboards will give completely the wrong sound unless you turn that feature off.

It is best recommended that you learn how to play on a piano and read the score - that's what was recommended to me. After a couple of years - depending on the speed of your technical progress - you will find the move to a pipe organ somewhat easier, as you now only have to struggle with the pedals and stops and couplers!

If you take the 'electronic organ' keyboard method instead of a real piano, that will work, but the change to the real thing is still breathtaking, and a significant step.

Good Luck, it's a lot of hard work - skill (gained thru many hours of technical studies practice) makes it SOUND easy! :-)

But it is worth it if you stick with it.

See you in at least three years...

Robin