In Reply to: Pipe organ sounds posted by Mike Bankemper on January 05, 2000 at 21:57:37:

Hi Mike, I'm also a pipe organist and pipe organ voicer. Most of the samples in the Sanctuary Q-card (which I also have) and the QS are not strait 8' s or 4' s etc. most are composite sounds of several pipe ensemble samples. But as you've discovered, the positive and principal on the card are pretty much 8 footers. One way to divide up the footages is to use the principal at 8' on "sound 1" in a program, then positiv sample playing up 12 semitones (4')in "sound 2" (hit edit select, then go to pitch, then page to semitone:) then use principal again in "sound 3" but use semitone up 24 (2'oktav) then maybe in "sound 4" use the scharf sample. All within the same "program". This gives you basic principal chorus, w/o too much duplexing. Save this to a user program bank, then do the same thing using flutes of different types (this would take a lot of editing out transients inherent in natural flutes) to create a flute chorus. Save it to a user program, then combine the two choruses in a mix. The only problem doing it this way is that it uses up a ton of polyphony. It actually works better if you try for smaller ensembles i.e.; 8', 2-2/3', 1-3/5', etc. By the way the 'trompette' sample really IS as bad as it sounds. The rest of the pipe organ samples are very remeniscent of Allen's early to middle digital years. Don't forget, once you start loading in your own samples from pipe organ CD samples or record your own samples out in the field, the sky is the limit. Alesis' composite synthesis lends itself pretty well to pipe organ samples. I use my QS8 along with a 3m/60 rank tracker (midi-ized) for 32's, celestes, odd mixtures and mutations and big psuedo-reed choruses (from brass samples). You can even make a screaming enchamade if you have the amps and speakers to handle it. If you haven't gotten into the 'editing part' of your QSR, you must start somewhere, it's tricky but well worth it. It opens up a plethora of possibilities. If you need some more advice, e-mail me at reedvoicer@hotmail.com i'll be glad to help you out as much as I can. Paul W.