The story of my home made pipe organ (2000) | Hacker News Reader

The story of my home made pipe organ (2000)

sentex.ca

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I've been following Mattias' work for a while now. It's impressive the amount of really big projects he has finished over the years. His YouTube channel has all sorts of interesting projects on it.

If you're into homemade instruments and the process behind making them, bellowphone is fun one to check out. He goes into detail about his builds and also has performances of himself playing his wacky creations.

He's one of the OG woodworkers on Youtube. Just went to check and I've been subscribed for 15 years apparently. Always happy to see one of his videos pop up.

He just put out a video today of making a wooden CNC machine.

That's just awesome!

I didn't realize it was Matthias Wendell! Of course it has his fingerprints all over it, he has this way of balancing an attention to detail with knowing where to leave well enough alone that's deeply admirable

Donald E. Knuth approves. https://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/organ.html

I too approve, but I'm sickly envying a pedal keyboard to exercise. I have no place in my home really, I know I could just buy a Studiologic pedalboard with 17 keys, along with SL X SE, but it's quite expensive and space consuming...

When I first saw the headline, I imagined a big huge organ with 100 keys and pedals, lots of stops, and huge pipes. I was very pleasantly surprised to see something small, with maybe 48 keys, and a handful of creatively-placed pipes!

Sometimes when we imagine a project, we think about how big it is, and get discouraged -- but this is a good reminder that some of the best projects are small, and thus, are less daunting and more easily tackled!

If you want to see a big pipe organ, try lookmumnocomputer on YouTube. He got a giant setup, and added MIDI!

Sam is a real hacker too. Such a delightful personality.

Strongly encourage people to hear a big pipe organ at least once, like the Wanamaker in Philadelphia. Church ones are usually great because of the acoustics. It is a visceral pleasure like no other. No matter how good your home sound system is, it won’t compare to the chest-rattling and wholly immersive in-person experience.

+1 to this! And is classical music isn't your jam, there's always theatre organs[1] :)

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z_8AoVxO1fg

Does this imply that the average american church only has an electronic organ or keyboard?

While my sample size is only a couple of dozen, I have never been in an American church with a pipe organ.

Keep in mind that the median American church building is only a few decades old.

Vast majority of churches use synths, yes

I accidentally ended up in a church while the organist was practicing. It felt like the whole building shook, which is impressive in a 500 year old building with meter thick walls.

I can totally see how people used to think pipe organs were the voice of god.

I love DIY music of any kind. Weird Javascript synths, PVC pipe flutes, badly tuned wooden vibraphones on the playgrounds, tissue box and rubber band guitars - give me all of it. Every time someone builds something to make a sound they're doing art, expressing one of the things I love most about humans - that we like to make interesting noises. (and ugly ones too!)

The _physicality_ of music is maybe the closest thing I can think of to real actual magic. We build these devices to modulate the pressure of air in specific ways so that we can transmit sound. Us humans have got built in hardware that is capable of incredibly fine control of air pressure and hardware for decoding those pressure waves into language - and even sometimes to bypass the language decoding and hit us directly in our emotions.

Take some time to really think about how sound works and how we're able to produce and receive it. It sounds like something out of a fantasy novel!

Then you probably have already heard of this guy: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCqzB9Ks5H939XLuSuVLuPVw

He does a bunch of awesome stuff with PVC and 3D printed parts.

I meant to include his name near my mention of PVC flutes. Love watching him play (both in the sense of playing music and in the sense of seeing his creativity and passion on display). Nicolas Bras is always a fun watch!

Fundamentals of Musical Acoustics by Benade is a great Dover book for those interested in musical instruments.

Not to detract from anything you said, but what if I told you there is a world where the beings etch arcane glyphs into crystals and then enchant them to do their bidding using esoteric incantations?

Mattias is a wizard of woodworking. His other site has numerous amazing projects: https://woodgears.ca/index.html (like a 26" bandsaw: https://woodgears.ca/big_bandsaw/26in.html and pantorouter: https://woodgears.ca/pantorouter/xl.html)

The wooden CNC router is great:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wMi0TJx-7ks

There’s a fascinating series of YouTube videos of someone buying and refurbishing a church organ https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLluPQLh1xzlI7EMB5qIxDd_1O...

An amazing project, and I love that he always calls it "Joan's organ." What a tribute.

LOOK MUM NO COMPUTER is such an awesome guy, and a shining star of how PUNK DIY electronics can get

My neighbor's son, who is an amazingly gifted organist but a bit of a disaster with mechanical things, bought himself an old organ and currently has it in about ten thousand pieces all around the basement. I've been helping him with it, as I'm the exact opposite of him- zero musical talent but pretty good with mechanical stuff. It's a daunting project, but a lot of fun to work through.

Here's his webpage for it, including the PCB and code for the MIDI controller he built for it.

https://www.lookmumnocomputer.com/joans-church-organ

Here is another series of two men building an organ into the back of a truck

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLNE6DEIclzg3WYK2Sqz2x...

I stumbled across this page myself recently whilst wondering what was possible DIY.

Also the Baumorgel https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=weAV0i8fGFE

Question for anyone knowledgeable. I had an idea to take a large block of wood and a router to cut a number of channels. Then put plywood on the top to make a rank of pipes. The lip and throat could be also done with a router.

I imagine the physics of each pipe would work fine monophonically. I think it would work polyphonically but I wonder if there would be interference?

How much does the resonance of the individual pipe contribute to timbre?

> Also the Baumorgel https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=weAV0i8fGFE

Wow, that thing is really a work of art! Also, using bellows instead of a pump is a nice touch...

As the "pipe" gets longer the size (diameter, length/width...) needs to get bigger too. This link doesn't do that and the pipes are the worse for it though he made a number of other "mistakes" that made is not as good as it could be - but hey it works and doesn't sound too bad so give it credit even if it isn't ideal.

Because you would be coupling the pipes it would change things. However how much isn't clear. The important thing is each pipes sounds the same other than the pitch so if you go from a flute sound to a trumpet sound that would be bad, but if it all sounds like the same instrument except for the pitch you did great. I think any negative could be mitigated by just having a few "pipes" on the end that never have air but are there only to 'finish' the resonance of the nearby pipes. The important thing is that the pipes end up in tune and sound the same other than pitch. You can do that.

Now the next question is if you follow the same plan again can you get a set of pipes that sound like a different instrument from the first. Or more importantly can you get enough different sounds to be worth it? I'm not clear.

By using a router and simple construction my aim was more consistency! Vs building many boxes and individual mouths.

I've never built anything like this and probably never will. I think that's the biggest variable here!

Cutting away a lot with a router is a slow, noisy and dusty process. Less work to just glue together the channels out of smaller pieces of wood. Also, that way you can take individual pipes out and tweak them (called voicing).

Another thing to be wary of -- pipes too close together sometimes pull together in pitch if both are played at the same time.

https://orgelkidsusa.org/commission_a_kit/ I don't know if they're still up and making them but orgelkids used to sell an assemble yourself kit.

The local organ guild has one. I took my kids to an event to assemble it. Lots of fun but it is a better one time assemble event not a have and play thing. The local guild has one because they are a bunch of "old people" who noticed there are no young kids getting into their hobby/job and so they found something fun that they hope interests kids in the pipe organ. I hope it works out - the organ is really neat and this is fun for kids to assemble.

The organ itself is a design from the Netherlands. The link you live has some sort of rights to the design in the US, but if you live elsewhere I'm not sure what the legal terms are - likely you can find a different answer.

For those in the US, https://www.agohq.org/ is the place to go to find your local chapter.

Does/did Donald Knuth not have a pipe organ in his home?

https://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/organ.html

Indeed – and not to mention Håkon Wium Lie, of CSS and Opera fame, who also wanted to build his own home organ, but ended up buying an entire organ building company (https://ryde-berg.no).

This brings back memories, found this site 20 years ago when I dreamed of building a pipe organ. My dreams were more ambitious and I used to spend a good number of hours scouring ebay for used pipes and researching and dreaming, got myself a copy of The Art of Organ Building and drew lots of plans. Eventually I realized the sort of organ I would need to be happy was beyond my means and ambitions but it was a fun dream.

The organ which inspired my dreams: https://jehanalain.ch/orgue/

Edit: The Alain Organ, not the Tagliavini, did not check the link closely enough and missed it covered two organs.

Openpipes.org is where I would send everyone first. Make a console to play with computer sounds. If you really like it buy a large house with a room for an organ but computers sound amazing with good speakers and are a lot cheaper.

Thanks for sharing this, I hadn't heard of Openpipes before but it looks great! GrandOrgue [1] is another Open Source digital organ and pretty neat too.

[1] https://github.com/GrandOrgue/grandorgue

GrandOrgue is the software behind OpenPipes (well one of several options). Open pipes is more about the whole system of owning an organ.

My son converted an analog organ to a digital organ - I think he used GrandOrgue if I recall.

His "Converting an Old Organ into a Digital Organ" video [1] quickly became the most popular YouTube video on my tiny channel

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Kb6SQpgSqk

Do you know of they have just a set of audio samples?

What a beautiful instrument! When I saw the title I assumed this would be another instrument cobbled together from various decommissioned instruments. This is a much more interesting project!

We had a small 6-rank organ in our shop for a while. A Holtkamp orignally in a funeral home, and then modified for a residence before we picked it up. But it became a nuisance to maintain, keep in tune, and play.

I went to a Hauptwerk digital DIY one and it really is better for small and residential use. For one thing, you can have the volume at safe levels!

NPR had a story about a NEW pipe organ album:

https://www.npr.org/2025/01/17/nx-s1-5232116/james-mcvinnie-...

I enjoy modular synths and always felt they were essentially pipe organs - with some zzt zzt.

I've heard that quite often, but it isn't really, is it? You can't plug the flue rank into the diapason for frequency modulation, or change the envelope, etc. The sound isn't even synthetic, which --to me-- is the key meaning of the word synthesizer. A pipe organ combines sounds, but so does a brass band.

The one thing it does have in common with a modular, is that it is a beast of an instrument, and requires much more understanding of the working than e.g. a piano.

BTW, if you like "new" organ music, you might like Anna Lapwood's album "Luna," although it's more conventional than your link.

I suppose one could say that an pipe organ and a typical synth setup may have somewhat similar interfaces, but wildly different implementations.

> You can't plug the flue rank into the diapason for frequency modulation, or change the envelope, etc.

"String" sounds are implemented by having two ranks tuned slightly different from each other. They're not plugged "into" each other, but they're definitely working together to produce a certain sound.

Anna Lapwood is a very exciting organist. She has the social media skills to build a huge following, enjoys exploring all facets of the instrument in both traditional and non-traditional contexts, and is an exceptional musician.

Piano strings are also detuned. The ensemble sound of a string section also comes from small detunings (and timing differences). I don't see that as a characteristic feature of a synthesizer.

Totally agree on Anna Lapwood.

>"String" sounds are implemented by having two ranks tuned slightly different from each other.

The effect you describe is called "voix celeste" (or just "celeste") on pipe organs. But it's common to have "string" stops without the detuning. These are just open flue pipes with unusually narrow scaling, which causes them to produce lots of upper harmonics and weak fundamentals, like real bowed string instruments.

Sam Battle of LOOKMUMNOCOMPUTER would love this

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