Silver Octopus Studios
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Silver Octopus Studios
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Whilst the unit organ is frowned upon in many circles because it does not follow the rules of artistic organ design, it is a means to an end. Certainly, a "straight organ" will always be superior to the equivalent unit instrument with the same specification but when artistically conceived, unit organs are not without their merits. Perhaps the leading exponent of the Unit system was the genius; John Compton and many of his instruments were very fine. The organ at Downside Abbey was considered by many leading organists at the time to be outstanding even when compared to straight instruments. Here, a very large 4 manual and pedal instrument with 140 stops was derived from just 30 ranks and whilst the acoustics of the building certainly help, the instrument is a masterpiece of voicing and design. So why create a Unit organ for Hauptwerk ? The intention here is to produce relatively large instruments which are playable on even a modest computer system. Not everyone has the resources to own a system with several gigabytes of memory and our unit series is designed to be completely playable even on the FREE edition of Hauptwerk. Because of the fewer amounts of "virtual" pipes used the instruments will not exceed the polyphony and memory demands of this edition. Our specifications for this series are based on a careful study of "what comes from where" in several Compton instruments most notably that of St George's Cathedral in Southwark, London where 19 ranks are used to provide a three manual instrument of 71 stops. The series will be limited to about 20 / 21 ranks and a maximum of 64 stops spread over 3 manuals and pedal. The specification will be fairly similar to the Romantic Series equivalent and will use the same basic samples carefully chosen and rescaled / blended to provide the best possible results. Further details can be found here as time permits and the instruments are finalised.
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cb@silveroctopus.co.uk with
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