Getting an authentic grand organ sound on an E453

[mcockerill]

Whilst I am generally massively impressed by the E453, I am a little disappointed by the organ sound options. Is there anyway I can persuade my E453 to make a more authentic "Grand Organ" or "Cathedral Organ" sound?

[SeaGtGruff]

Have you tried layering two organ voices together?

[SeaGtGruff]

After fooling around on my PSR-E443, here are a few suggestions:

(1) Turn off DUAL and go through each of the Organ voices until you find one that's closest to the basic sound you're looking for. Skip any voices that turn on the DUAL option, since having two sounds layered together will just confuse the issue. I felt that the Pipe Organ voice sounded closest to what I was wanting, but you might prefer a different voice.

(2) Now turn on the DUAL option, then hold down the DUAL button until the Dual Voice comes up in the Function menu. Set the Dual Voice to the same voice you just chose for the Main Voice.

(3) Go backward in the Function menu to adjust the Main Octave setting, then go forward to adjust the Dual Octave setting, until you get a result you like. For instance, I found that setting the Main Octave to -2 and the Dual Octave to 0 gave a nice "full" sound that I liked.

(4) Now adjust the Main Volume and Dual Volume settings to get a balance between the two voices. You'll probably want to set them to at least 100, or possibly higher. Also, you might want to set them both to the same value.

(5) I think a large part of what gives a cathedral organ its rich sound is the amount of reverb in the cathedral, so adjust the Main Reverb and Dual Reverb to get a richer sound. I tried cranking them both up to 127, but you might not want to go that high.

(6) Now go forward in the Function menu until you get to the Reverb Type, and adjust it to see which setting you like best. I thought that Hall 3 added the most expansiveness to the sound.

(7) If the results still fall short of what you're looking for, you can try cranking up the Main Chorus and Dual Chorus, and experiment with the Chorus Type.

( 8 ) You can also try layering two different voices together, rather than the same voice at two different octaves.

I hope you can cook up something that satisfies your palate!

[SciNote]

Michael described the process I'd use almost verbatim!  In fact, here's a song I submitted in the Christmas music section using a pipe organ sound that I came up with using a very similar method...

https://www.psrtutorial.com/forum/index.php/topic,41604.0.html

The pipe organ sound comes in on the second verse.  Note that one thing I added is to add some envelope generator attack in the voice with the lower pitched sound to simulate how, with a real pipe organ, deep notes take longer to fully sound due to the larger volume of air required to fill the pipes.  You'll also notice how I have the deeper sound as the main voice, and the higher-pitched sound as the dual voice, so that I can initially play a more mellow sounding organ tone with dual voice turned off, and then turn on dual voice to simulate adding more ranks of pipes to give the fuller, more majestic sound.  The more mellow pipe organ comes in at about 1:06 on the song, and then the full organ comes in at about 1:32.

Note that I did this on a PSE-E433, but the same technique should certainly apply to the E443 and E453.

[SeaGtGruff]

Those are some good ideas!

Another thing you could do is set up different Registrations, with each one having Dual on or off, different Main Volume and Dual Volume settings, different Main Octave and Dual Octave offsets, etc.

[vbdx66]

Hi,

Another interesting thing to do is to use the Pan settings on the Main and Dual voices. One possibility is to give a different value to both voices, for instance 48 to the Main and 72 to the Dual voice. It will give the listener the feeling that he is surrounded by the sound, as in a church.

Another possibility, if you are using different Registrations as Michael is suggesting, is to use different Pan settings for each registration. You could for instance pan the voices with the highest pitched timbers completely to the right, going farther left as the voices get deeper, to mimic the disposition of the pipes by register type as on a real pipe organ.

Apart from the obvious Pipe Organ voice, the Chapel organ might also come handy. There are also a few usable organ voices in the XG set, like the Church organ voices and the three Harmonium voices.

Hope this helps,

Regards,

Vinciane

[mcockerill]

Thank you all for your great ideas - I've obviously not been playing around enough so I'm off to try out all your suggestions. (Trouble is I'm spoiled by my AR100 !)

I'll let you know how I get on.

Michael

[mcockerill]

OK a quick update - I've taken Michael's suggestions, reversed them as suggested by Bob, then added in Vinciane's Pan thoughts and I now have something much richer and fuller. I'll tackle chorus options next.

Once again thank you for your great suggestions, I think I can now see my way to releasing a lot more of the E453's capabilities, not just for the organ, but for some of the other voices.

Best rgds,

Michael

[vbdx66]

Hi Michael,

I am very happy that our suggestions helped you to create a fuller, more realistic organ sound.

If by any chance you find the time to do so, would you consider sharing with us the final settings you chose and maybe record a few bars of music so that we could hear the result (I don't have the PSR E433 any more and I am planning to buy a PSR E453 but... you know... I had to replace my laptop... so it'll be mext year when I'll buy a new keyboard...)?

Best Regards,

Vinciane.

[SeaGtGruff]

If by any chance you find the time to do so, would you consider sharing with us the final settings you chose and maybe record a few bars of music so that we could hear the result

Yes-- and even if you can't record any audio for us, we'd be interested in the settings you chose.

(I don't have the PSR E433 any more and I am planning to buy a PSR E453 but... you know... I had to replace my laptop... so it'll be mext year when I'll buy a new keyboard...)?

Hopefully the next models (PSR-E463 and PSR-EW410?) will be announced and presented next month at the Winter NAMM, or perhaps a few months after that at the next Musikmesse. I'm tempted to buy a PSR-EW400 right now while it's on sale for just $299 (which even includes a few extras at some online stores), but I'm also tempted to wait and see what's coming out in 2018. Decisions, decisions!

[vbdx66]

Hi Michael,

A sensitive move would be to wait until the PSR E463 / EW410 (or whatever) come out, and if you don't need all the bells ans whistles of the new keyboards, you'll probably manage to find the old ones at a bargain price next spring 

Personnally, I'd bet on the Musikmesse for the "coming out", the Winter NAMM is too near I think.

By the way I am now typing this on my new laptop 

Best Regards,

Vinciane.

[mcockerill]

Hello - I will try and post a few bars using the improved organ sound on the E453, just waiting for an adapter for my tablet to accept an audio input.

Michael

[mcockerill]

Just about managed to persuade my tablet to record from the E453, so the settings I've used are:

Main Voice 32 Pipe Organ, Main Vol 100, Main Octave -2, Main pan 48, Main Reverb 127
Dual Voice 32 Pipe Organ, Dual Vol 100, Dual Octave 0, Dual Pan 72, Dual Reverb 127
Split Voice 32 Pipe Organ, Split Vol 100, Split Octave -1,Split Pan 48, Split Reverb 127
Overall Reverb Hall3

I had to use Audacity to speed things up a bit as my tablet wouldn't accept an input at full speed!

Anyway hope you enjoy.

Michael

[attachment deleted by admin]

[SeaGtGruff]

Yes, I enjoyed that very much! It really sounded like a big pipe organ in a church-- a nice full, grand sound.

[SciNote]

Okay, I think I got it here!  The big Kahouna! I started with the pipe organ sound that I used in my recording of "Hark! The Herald Angels Sing" (which is in the 2017 holiday songs section).  Then, I combined that with ideas from mcockerill's pipe organ sound posted above, and I think this NAILS IT!  But of course, feel free to experiment and see what you can do with it!

Main Voice
----------------
Voice .......... Theater (27, on PSR-E433)
Volume ....... 85
Octave ........ -2
Pan ............. 45
Reverb ........ 127
Chorus ........ 98
Attack ......... 77
Release ....... 96
CutOff ......... 64
Resonance ... 64

Dual Voice
----------------
Voice .......... PipeOrgn (32, on PSR-E433)
Volume ....... 70
Octave ........ 1
Pan ............. 80
Reverb ........ 127
Chorus ........ 98
Attack ......... 64
Release ....... 64
CutOff ......... 55
Resonance ... 64

Reverb Type -- Hall3 (03, on PSR-E433)
Chorus Type -- Flanger1 (3, on PSR-E433)

I think what helps here are the maxed out reverb, the three octave difference between the main and dual voices, the panning settings, and the flanger setting for the chorus.  I didn't think much about panning until reading the other posts in this thread, but it makes sense to have different frequencies coming from different parts of the sound stage to imitate the way different ranks/pipes of a pipe organ are spread out over a wide area.  You can switch the dual voice on and off to simulate having different numbers of ranks playing.

Adjusting the filter knobs can also help simulate different types of organ stops or ranks being played.

[SciNote]

Here's a sample of some wedding music that I recorded using the organ settings above.  Notice in the first sample (commonly called "Here Comes the Bride") I start out with only the main voice playing, and then I bring in the dual voice to make it sound like more ranks are playing on a pipe organ.

https://app.box.com/s/iz55b8ajuko8ety16e7fuju1vdtbnmfg