ELECTRIC ORGANS

Evening Star, Issue 23657, 17 August 1940, Page 4

ELECTRIC ORGANS

HOW THEY WORK NO CONGLOMERATION OF PIPES Sessions by electric organs have become increasingly popular. Many listeners have strange ideas both about the instrument itself and the methods used by the player to produce the varied themes heard. One listener to a session wished to know whether it was a street organ with a handle turned by an electric device, ahd another refused to believe that the organ existed at all, and asserted that actually an orchestra was being used. The average electric organ la about the size of a small piano, with a keyboard similar to that of a pipe organ. But there the similarity ends. There is no array of pipes, great and small. Instead there are small discs, from which the required notes are obtained as the result of electric impulses set up by the player. • There are two manual keyboards, as in the ordinary organ, and the usual pedal keyboard. It is the variation in the manipulation of the stops which enables the organist to create the effects which have made it difficult for the average listener to visualise the instrument.

It is surprising to learn that there are only nine stops, on the instrument. But on each of these stops there are eight niches, and by using the stops and the niches in varying ways it is possible to produce 253,000,000 different combinations. In the average broadcast only 30 or 40 combinations are used, but there is no limit to what can be done. It is by the manipulation of these combinations that- the player produces the different sounds which give the illusion that varied instruments, string, wind, and percussion, are being used. Naturally the player of such an organ has his limitations in the matter of the effects which may be produced at the one time. One pair of hands and one pair of feet can do only a certain amount, however expert the owner. That is why, at times, a pianist is called in to - provide the background, to leave the organist free to attend to the effects which convince the radio listener that saxophones, trumpets, violins, and a clarinet or so, have been brought together to produce the item.