I have been hunting for the perfect organ sound for some time now. With the help of some samples and recordings from real organs I was able to study the composition of the pipe harmonics. So it came about that in late 2020 I set myself the goal to recreate similar timbres artificially.

My first attempt (M1) still sounded very synthetic. Only through IR recordings in my local church did I really realize how important the sound of the room is, so that my next attempt was a reverb-first approach. When I finally loaded an impulse I was very happy with (a combination of multiple noise recordings I had from other past projects that I shaped to my liking) into my DAW and tried it on a trumpet sample, I knew I finally was on to something. Optimized for that artificial room that gives this organ its character, I then built up the harmonics of a single pipe, frequency by frequency, using I don’t know how many synth instances (Massive)* with mostly just sine and a couple of saw waves stacked on one another, all with slightly different LFO. I tweaked and processed the result several times and finally exported it note by note – the whole thing shifted across the keyboard, looped the samples individually and imported them into Kontakt.

Through a lot of tinkering, an increasingly complex sound was created from relatively few samples through effective layering within Kontakt. Later I just added another sample (made the same way) specifically designed to bring out pedal range’s low end.

After almost two years of recurring tweaking, the result seems quite realistic for a synthetic organ but at the same time still remains very pure & in-tune so that it causes relatively few problems in the mix. (The processed samples use the default Kontakt reverb for re-adding a tail but can be turned completely dry so that your own effects can be applied to them) Also, since the organ is not mechanical, I feel it is very responsive and fun to play. Meanwhile this instrument has become my goto organ no matter if I want to fill my strings with additional sonic power or just play some “church organ” at home.

——————————————————————————–
*I used Massive because it gave me exactly the control over the sound I needed, but I’m sure another synth would have done as well, since the essential part of the sound is created by sending it through the convolution reverb (and various other post-processing FX).

Contributors

Jean Haffner