Jump to content


Please note: You can easily log in to MPN using your Facebook account!

Why do organs have two manuals?


Recommended Posts

No, not instruction manuals but the multiple keyboards. I've been pondering this topic for a while.

 

Hammond organs have two manuals, which I suppose is inherited from the classical pipe organs it was attempting to imitate.

 

But why did pipe organs evolve like this in the beginning?

 

Furthermore all types of organs have multiple manuals as a standard feature. Why did this not catch on with other electromechanical keyboards, synths, or even pianos? Wouldn't dual manuals be a fine feature on other keyboard instruments for playing two sounds?

 

I know there are a few rare dual manual synths, but it seems it failed to catch on. Why is it a requirement for organ, but for everything else we make do with a single sound or keyboard splits?

 

One can also question why pedal bass is only used with organs when they would be equally applicable for keyboards or piano. Imagine that!

 

Many questions, love to hear your thoughts.

 

IMG-4220.jpg

hang out with me at woody piano shack
Link to comment
Share on other sites



  • Replies 33
  • Created
  • Last Reply

Top Posters In This Topic

Top Posters In This Topic

I always presumed (and that means I make a pres of u and me) that the multiple ranks of pipe organs were intended to mimic the multiple simultaneous timbres of the orchestral ensemble. Thus the two, three or more manuals of church pipe organs, which were often of fairly short number of keys each (but several manual).
..
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Traditional organ music always needed minimum one manual for rhythm, one manual for solo tones, pedal clavier for bass.

 

Until microprocessors made it possible, you couldn't split an organ manual into different tones. Sure there were combo organs with an octave split for bass but you had three octaves (some four octaves) left over which isn't a practical range.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Think about it this way: any time a polyphonic instrument develops the ability to switch between multiple timbres, the next feature players will want is, "Why can't I play two timbres at the same time"? This is what also prompted the development of multi-timbral synthesizers in the early 80s within only a couple years of the first digital preset synth.

 

So, you're creating organs with multiple stops, one stop is great for bass, and the other is a good melody sound. You could split a single keyboard into half/half (and I'M SURE there were some organs that were) but that has some severe limitations. It assume you're always playing the two stops in different registers, and it has to permanently set a split point. Better to make two full keyboards so the player is not limited. Learning to use two keyboards is not hard, really the only downside is portability, and when you're permanently building an instrument into a hall, that's not an issue. There's also something to be said for dividing duties: upper keyboard for leads, lower keyboard for bass. Your brain quickly becomes accustomed to thinking about the different keyboards for their own tasks. Add in bass pedals and you have 3 assignable keyboards: typically Bass, Melody, and Harmony. You quickly become accustomed to a small number of settings that work best for each duty. I worked with split points for years, and it's a nice feature... if you can control where the split is, but that would be virtually impossible on a pre-electronic instrument.

 

Fast forward to the 20th century. The B3 is nothing more than an attempt at making a small, cheap, "portable" church organ. It had to completely redesign how stops functioned (drawbars are entirely new to organ technology), and it basically uses a simplistic form of "Additive Synthesis" to create timbres, but from a performance standpoint it had to be identical in every way so acoustic organists could step in without having to learn much.

Puck Funk! :)

 

Equipment: Laptop running lots of nerdy software, some keyboards, noise makersâ¦yada yada yadaâ¦maybe a cat?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Yes, as others have said, pipe organ was a "multitimbral" keyboard, each manual had its own sound, and the Hammonds likewise let you select different sounds for the two manuals. BTW, there were dual manual harpschords as well. Today, we have the luxury of stacking all kinds of keyboard pairs to get the multitimbral combination we want, even with multiple sounds on each!

Maybe this is the best place for a shameless plug! Our now not-so-new new video at https://youtu.be/3ZRC3b4p4EI is a 40 minute adaptation of T. S. Eliot's "Prufrock" - check it out! And hopefully I'll have something new here this year. ;-)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Yeah, forgot to mention the harpsichords. Not even sure how those worked, did the two manuals sound different? Or was that to prevent problems during R/L hand crossing? I believe there were also two-manual clavichords. Fortepiano has always been a single keyboard though.

Puck Funk! :)

 

Equipment: Laptop running lots of nerdy software, some keyboards, noise makersâ¦yada yada yadaâ¦maybe a cat?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Yeah, forgot to mention the harpsichords. Not even sure how those worked, did the two manuals sound different? Or was that to prevent problems during R/L hand crossing? I believe there were also two-manual clavichords. Fortepiano has always been a single keyboard though.

 

Harpsichords are not very loud and have almost no dynamic range. The dual manual harpsichords were an attempt to increase their volume by coupling the dual manuals, but it still didn't help much.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Great question!

 

When it comes to organs, I think it's mostly a matter of tradition. The grand piano happened to have one manual from the beginning, and so all the music and playing techniques for the piano evolved around that single manual.

Whereas many of the styles and techniques on the organ was originally developed on two manual instruments (or more), first in classical music and then later in all the early gospel, soul, jazz, blues, etc.

Keyboard players in rock music has been more inclined to adapt to single manual organs, as they typically don't need more with the guitarists taking up most of the band's sonic space.

 

So why did two manuals never catch on for synthesizers?

I think that a lot of it has to do with the fact, that early synthesizer technology could barely support two-manuas in a way that made sense.

Especially polyphony was very limited and to have synth voices enough for two manuals, you had to have quite a bit of analog circuitry going on, which was expensive and often also unreliable.

There were a few of such behemoths made; the Yamaha GX-1 comes to mind, but such instruments were impractically heavy and much too expensive for the vast majority of musicians.

 

Later on I think MIDI has satisfied most players needs for having mulitple manuals. In the occasion you need another manual, it's merely a matter of connecting another keyboard with a cheap cable.

Also given the extra cost and the extra weight, it all makes two manual synthesizers very much a niche product.

I don't think it would be possible to make much money on a modern two-manual syntheizer, the customer base for such an apparatus is to small.

Currently: Kurzweil PC4, PC3X & K2000.

Novation Mininova. Roland FA-06.

IK Multimedia SampleTank 4 & Syntronik.

 

Previously: Korg Trinity Plus. Roland XP-80. Yamaha EX-5.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Why limit it to just TWO???

 

STSULPICEORGAN.png

 

^--- See above...

 

Can you imagine schlepping around a 5-keyboard Hammond B3???

 

My Porta-M3 and Leslie 145 were more than enough!

 

Old No7

Yamaha MODX6 * Hammond SK Pro 73 * Roland Fantom-08 * Crumar Mojo Pedals * Mackie Thump 12As * Tascam DP-24SD * JBL 305 MkIIs

Link to comment
Share on other sites

When it comes to organs, I think it's mostly a matter of tradition. The grand piano happened to have one manual from the beginning, and so all the music and playing techniques for the piano evolved around that single manual.

Mechanically, I have a hard time envisioning how a two manual piano would even work, apart from whether there would be any benefit to it.

Maybe this is the best place for a shameless plug! Our now not-so-new new video at https://youtu.be/3ZRC3b4p4EI is a 40 minute adaptation of T. S. Eliot's "Prufrock" - check it out! And hopefully I'll have something new here this year. ;-)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

When it comes to organs, I think it's mostly a matter of tradition. The grand piano happened to have one manual from the beginning, and so all the music and playing techniques for the piano evolved around that single manual.

Mechanically, I have a hard time envisioning how a two manual piano would even work, apart from whether there would be any benefit to it.

 

A mechanical version of getting the added transposed 4ths and 5ths etc to generate complex chords. Russ Ferrante got turned on to a whole concept of using this when he wanted to create more interesting textures for a collaboration Bobby McFerrin.

J a z z  P i a n o 8 8

--

Yamaha C7D

Montage8 | CP300 | CP4 | SK1-73 | OB6 | Seven

K8.2 | 3300 | CPSv.3

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Why limit it to just TWO???

 

STSULPICEORGAN.png

 

^--- See above...

 

Can you imagine schlepping around a 5-keyboard Hammond B3???

 

My Porta-M3 and Leslie 145 were more than enough!

 

Old No7

 

 

Five manuals because elbows and forehead.

It took a chunk of my life to get here and I am still not sure where "here" is.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

My two cents as a player of the baroque instruments. Harpsichords did not have two manuals for the purpose of volume. Rather, there would typically be a different registration on each keyboard. The bottom keyboard might employ just am 8" string set or perhaps 8" and 4" for a thicker sound. The upper manual would employ an alternate registration, different than the bottom manual, perhaps 8" only or 4" only, or the addition of a buff or lute stop. Listen to a harpsichord recording of Bach"s Italian Concerto as an example, particularly the second movement. The Igor Kipnis recording 'Harpsichord"s Greatest Hits' provides a wealth of examples of the registration possibilities on that instrument.

 

On the pipe organ, from the time of the Baroque masters such as Bach and Buxtehude, each manual would employ a different registration, including a third registration on the pedalboard. This would allow for contrapuntal performances with independent sounds from each manual and pedals. The upper (swell) manual might include a solo stop such as trumpet or oboe to play a solo line over a registration of flutes or principals on the lower (great) manual; or string (organ nomenclature) on the swell as contrast to flutes on the great. Just a couple of many many possibilities.

 

Perhaps best to listen to examples. Couperin"s Mass for the Convents provides a spectacular example of complementary registrations on the organ. I use the Hauptwerk program with my Hammond XK5 (along with a 32 note pedalboard) to transport me to the classical world when I"m not otherwise spinning the Leslie and the modern Hammond sound. Pull up some YouTubes of pipe organists or harpsichordists for an additional perspective.

 

I suppose it all began with the great baroque instrument makers and the composers who took advantage of the phenomenal instruments. We are the beneficiaries of these designs.

Hammond XK5, Alesis QS8, Yamaha DX7IIFD, Roland XV2020 (SRX-11 & 12), Kawai RX7, Scheidmayer Clavichord, Strymon (Flint, Big Sky, Timeline, Mobius, Ola, El Capistan), Neo Ventilator II
Link to comment
Share on other sites

On (pipe) organs, the manuals have fairly well-established roles:

  • The Great manual traditionally contains the meat-and-potato organ sounds, e.g., diapasons / principals, some strings (less fundamental than diapasons) and some flutes (less bright). If you walk into a church and the organ just sounds like an organ, it's probably the Great manual you're hearing. Traditionally, the Great manual's only way to affect timbre is through stop selection. Most of the Great manual's voices are in the volume range from mezzo-piano to forte.
  • The Pedal "manual", which is mostly used for bass, and has volume ranging from piano to fortissimo. It will normally have mostly bread-and-butter sounds (to complement the meat and potatoes in the great), plus hopefully a reed stop when you really need to pierce through.
  • Directly above the Great manual is the Swell manual, so called because all its ranks are enclosed in the wooden louvered "swell" box, allowing you to customize timbre not only with stop selection but with a pedal that affects both volume and high rolloff. If there are just a few piercing reed voices, they will usually go to the swell manual.
  • If there is a third (non-pedal) manual, it will be the "Choir" manual, directly beneath the Great. Its stops are all quiet ones, so the organ won't overpower the choir. Yes, really. Some modern choir manuals are in their own swell boxes.

 

After you've accounted for those three manuals, there are more flexible options: Antiphonals, which sound pipes in another part of the building; Positiv, an alternative to the Choir manual, mimicking small scale organs of the past. Generally, those extra guys are above the swell.

 

Funny thing about Hammonds: the upper manual is generally treated as the Great, or primary, manual due to the presence of the percussion.

-Tom Williams

{First Name} {at} AirNetworking {dot} com

PC4-7, PX-5S, AX-Edge, PC361

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I think it's because someone saw "The 5000 Fingers of Dr. T" by Dr. Seuss and decided they loved children too much to see them suffer like that.

 

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0045464/

 

In all seriousness, as someone focused mostly on the organ's role in reggae/ska, I always thought it was more about having the lead tone and comping tone at hand at all times.

Eugenio Upright, 60th Anniversary P-Bass, USA Geddy Lee J-Bass, Yamaha BBP35, D'angelico SS Bari, EXL1,

Select Strat, 70th Anniversary Esquire, LP 57, Eastman T486, T64, Ibanez PM2, Hammond XK4, Moog Voyager

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Why do organs have multiple manuals? For the same reason Keith Emerson, Rick Wakeman, Geoff Downes and others had stacks of keyboards when they played live.

Some pipe organs in Europe had a single manual, but had split stops. One rank would play on the upper part of the keyboard. The lower part of the manual had a different sounding rank. This was for churches that couldn"t afford a two manual pipe organ. But it allowed it to sound like one.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Not an answer to the question, but when I was traveling in Scotland, I got to play an ancient church pipe organ. The unique thing about it was that it was water-powered -- they had to turn on the water to power the bellows. Anyway, it was a gas gas gas to play a full pipe organ in a church with those huge pipes rumbling. There were at least 3 manuals as I recall and I think more -- in my mind's eye I picture 5. And bass pedals. Fulfilled one of my long-time fantasies -- playing "Louie Louie" on a big church pipe organ. :)
These are only my opinions, not supported by any actual knowledge, experience, or expertise.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

So... big subject.

 

There is no fixed number of manuals in pipe organs. The further back in history you go, the smaller the instrument. The early instruments were all single manual, with keys sticking out the side of the wind chest.

 

Later you get tracker actions, which use levers to allow a small separation between the keys and the wind chest. That allowed two wind chests to be mounted in the same cabinet and each have its own manual.

 

An entire instrument could be considered as a collection of separate organs, each centered around its own wind chest or collection of wind chests, and each with its own set of uniquely voiced pipes. So you have a set of terms describing the various organs which have come into common usage - Swell, Great, Choir, Solo, etc.

 

The convention over the last few hundred years has solidified around Great and Swell being the minimum desirable resources in order to play a majority of liturgical material. So Hammond copied that for his own product.

 

Once indirect actions like pneumatic and electric came into usage, all bets were off, and a single set of pipes could be accessed from different manuals and at different pitches, kinda like samples in your synth presets being used in multiple places.

Moe

---

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

AFAIK the original organs had mechanical linkages which could be connected to a set of 'upper', 'lower' or 'pedal' pipes by means of physically "pulling out the stops".

 

The mechanisms available did not allow a 'split' along any particular manual, and so the practice of upper, middle, lower, pedals became commonplace as organists moved from church organs to more modern electrical then electronic variations.

 

So I suspect it all dates back to 17th(?) century mechanics.

 

JohnG.

Akai EWI 4000s, Yamaha VL70m, Yamaha AN1x, Casio PX560, Yamaha MU1000XG+PLGs-DX,AN,VL.

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Not an answer to the question, but when I was traveling in Scotland, I got to play an ancient church pipe organ. The unique thing about it was that it was water-powered -- they had to turn on the water to power the bellows. Anyway, it was a gas gas gas to play a full pipe organ in a church with those huge pipes rumbling...

Yes, very true! I've had the same thrill whether it's playing a small pipe organ at a country church in rural Vermont, or playing the oldest 3-manual pipe organ in New England.

 

Which reminds me, on the latter, the priest told me: "Some of my flock are reached with the sermon and words I use; some like the grandeur of the church and the pomp & circumstance of the service; while some others... (as his voice trailed off) -- Those you can only reach with this..." And he depressed the pedal for the low C 64-foot pipe -- which was felt, more than heard.

 

After I spend one entire day helping him tune every pipe, when we were all done to "reward" me -- I got to sit inside the pipe room while he played Bach's Toccata & Fugue in D Minor. Still, the musical highlight of my life even today! The inside and behind-the-scenes of a real pipe organ is just as impressive -- if not more so mechanically -- as the external view of the manuals and stops. If I recall, the bellows was 10' or 12' square and had its own room below the organ.

 

Old No7

Yamaha MODX6 * Hammond SK Pro 73 * Roland Fantom-08 * Crumar Mojo Pedals * Mackie Thump 12As * Tascam DP-24SD * JBL 305 MkIIs

Link to comment
Share on other sites

fourty plus years ago there was this

 

f6XA9p.jpg

As I recall, the original plan was for it to have a single manual, but the boards overheated when put that close together and this was the easiest way to keep everything cool.

Dr. Mike Metlay (PhD in nuclear physics, golly gosh) :D

Musician, Author, Editor, Educator, Impresario, Online Radio Guy, Cut-Rate Polymath, and Kindly Pedant

Editor-in-Chief, Bjooks ~ Author of SYNTH GEMS 1

 

clicky!:  more about me ~ my radio station (and my fam) ~ my local tribe ~ my day job ~ my bookmy music

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Unfortunately, your content contains terms that we do not allow. Please edit your content to remove the highlighted words below.
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Restore formatting

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

×
×
  • Create New...