Daniel,

I tried to post this before, but it got lost, so I started again, and it's [correct apostrophe usage!] a little longer. I hope it encourages to keep on with something you have been inspired to want.

It is good to see that someone without a 'Classical Music' background is sufficiently inspired to be interested in Acoustic instruments from a "Classical Music" background. First off although, that is not a violin, but a cello you hear in that track - same family of instruments, larger body and deeper tone.

"You're saying I really couldn't have one of these in my house (the size of a piano)?" A parlor organ is about the size of a piano, but it doesn't have the 32 foot and 64 foot bass pedal pipes of a real pipe organ, it is a 'Reed Organ' - no pipes. Those large pipes REALLY cause your chest to shake, an effect that Rock Bands try to emulate with thousands of watts of amplification. The churches you mention probably had their pipe organs constructed in the 15-16 centuries (or earlier), constantly modified and updated since then. No small part of the 'sound' of a pipe organ is the acoustics of the building in which it is housed, something to remembered if you want one in your 'house'. Pipe Organs need LARGE rooms, like a cathedral! You CAN fake some of that ambience electronically these days.

There are eccentrics that have built their houses around their own pipe organ. My local church had a 'portable' pipe organ - well, portable on an ox-cart in the days they bought it - and it was about 10-12 feet high, about 15 - 20 feet wide and about 5-6 feet deep. They sold it to get a much physically smaller electronic organ, as they claimed that the maintainence costs were too high for them. BTW, I don't go to that church any more - although it has nothing to do with that matter!

The pipe organ was one of the main instruments that J.S. Bach wrote much serious and 'heavy' music for. The 'Toccata and Fugue in D minor' is one such sort of piece that you may have heard - it has been well popularised, especially by 'The Haunted House' Pinball Arcade Game, now released as the lead and trial game in a package of such games for the PC. I thoroughly used to enjoy playing that when much younger - it gives both hands and the feet a proper workout. I had started on the Bach Fuges series, but life intervened and my family shifted towns, and I lost regular access to a pipe organ. Without the foot pedals you can only practice so much.

There are 2 types (or styles) of Pipe Organ - Church Organs & Theatre Organs. Theatre organs were a fairly modern invention, intended to be the centrepiece of a Town Hall, or for social gatherings. They may have drums, "bells and whistles", etc, and were often installed in places that became silent movie houses, and have a different range of stops, intended to create a different style of sound from Church organs. Church organs were intended to be reverent, accompany the singing of a soloist, choir, or congregation, and to provide a little polite incidental music for taking up the collection, filling in gaps, the bride walking down to the altar, and the congregation filing out. In England, some church organs were rescued from destruction by the Puritans, and set up by Landlords in Public Houses, where they were used for entertainment, leading eventually to Music Hall -> theatre organs.

If you want to learn to play a pipe organ thru the path of using an electric organ rather than the piano, be warned that those electronic units that have only an octave of feet pedals will not teach you proper 'pipe organ pedal technique', you will have to get a much larger and more expensive unit that has the full 3 or so octave feet pedal set, or learn again about using the feet pedals when you move to a full size pipe organ. In that respect there really isn't much difference between learning how to handle a 'piano keyboard' manual via a piano or an electronic organ.

The 'velocity sensitive' keyboards are designed to imitate the action and response as well as the sound of a piano, so if you learn with one of them - you can now get midi keyboards with that built in - there is really no excuse for claiming that you do not know how to play a piano. If you start on a piano the shift to organ is easy.

The real necessity to remember is that the skills you first need to acquire are

1) Reading music notation

2) Understanding some basic music theory

you can acquire sufficient of these to get started with almost any instrument, such as a tinwhistle.

3) The ability to use the keyboard

Some form of piano style keyboard is needed to develop the manual dexterity - at least three years, maybe 5 -6 years. I'm not kidding - the 'good stuff' IS hard work to play, and you can't be stumbling because you aren't at ease on a 'piano keyboard'. of course, you may be able to start at a simple level with pieces of lower technical difficulty once you start to gain access to a pipe organ, and then you will be spurred on to improve via more practice.

4) The theory of how the pipes on the pipe organ work - how you mix sounds and waveforms, how you create volumes and tone colours, and how you contrast one sound with another. If you use an electronic organ to learn to play a 'piano keyboard', only one with 'Hammond drawbars' will impart some of this sort of knowledge directly - otherwise you will have to work with premixed samples of simulated existing real world pipe stop sounds selected through a set of switches, thinking thru this 'preset' sound to understand what the real thing does. You will learn how to play an electronic organ, but you will still need to learn the skill of generating the sounds from a real pipe organ. Much of the same argument applies to a 'harmonium' or 'reed organ' - reeds and flutes have different waveforms.

BTW all pianos are not the same either, there is a lot of difference between a 'grand piano' action and an upright piano. And there are dozens of upright piano actions, each slightly different too. The more expensive the instrument, the more sensitivity provided in the action. Pipe organ keyboards have no such keyboard subtleties, the notes are 'on' or 'off', and will continue to sound with the same volume for as long as you hold the key down, unlike a piano. Most modern electronic organs try to have some sort of 'velocity sensitive' touch to the keyboard. Without it, the trained ear can easily pick between a real piano and an organ pretending to be a piano (but not so easily a harpsichord!).

You should go to a large reference library, especially one that is part of the music department of a university or conservatorium, when you can ask to see some appropriate reference material about pipe organs.

'You won't start on a pipe organ,' I agree with this, 'but if you want to play one some day, learn on an electronic organ, not a piano.' Obviously I don't agree with that! I disagree entirely - an electronic organ is no more like a pipe organ than a piano is. And, for hundreds of years electronic organs did not exist! In the days when I learnt, they were almost as unaccessible and nearly as unaffordable for the beginner as was a pipe organ! J. S. Bach learnt his physical keyboard skills on other instruments with a 'piano keyboard', some of these were totally silent practice instruments!

'Where to find a teacher? Find a dealer (in organs) -- they've always got connections. Or, talk to a church organist.' Good advice, to be taken in addition to what I have already said. It's a long term project. If you want to be a Fighter Pilot, first you need to learn how to fly a plane, any plane, even a glider! Then you learn to handle faster planes, then if you are good enough, the people who pay the big bills for the big toys, may turn you loose on the big toys! - if they think you are good enough!

Gaining access to a pipe organ is a problem. Like the Fighter Pilot analogy, you may find it difficult to gain access until you can demonstrate that the necessary maintainence incurred by having someone else play it is worthwhile. Of course, if you had grown up like me in a church with a decent large pipe organ, you probably wouldn't be here, asking these questions. Even so I had difficulty getting on to the 'roster' of 'approved organists'. I played piano for the Sunday School kids, with nearly a thousand tunes I could play on instant demand (with the books in front of me!), and had won prizes in the local Eisteddford for Piano & Singing, and had several years of Music Theory & Practical Exams behind me (perhaps even more musical experience and demonsrtated ablity than many on the 'roster'!), but even so, it took quite some time before they would let an obviously keen 13 year old loose on their precious expensive toy!

So stick with it, it's a good ambition for a musician, and takes some persistence and hard work, but it is definitely worth it!

Robin