Overview I’ve been using a program to display sheet music on my computer. It’s not bad, but I wanted to have some features that it didn’t have. So, what is a guy to do but sit down and write his own sheet music software? Open source, of course, so others can build on it, improve it, and I can …

Pedalboard As discussed in planning / pedalboard, I searched eBay to see if I could find a good quality pedalboard at a reasonable price. Reasonable to me was £200 or less in good shape or £300 or less with an encoder. Checking today, I can see prices between £1 and £250, all unecoded. You need to watch carefully as …

If you’ve read the planning sections, you know how I came to make my decisions for my organ plus some resources links. Here is a summary of what I’ve chosen. Keyboard Central to the system is my keyboard. I chose a Viscount Cantorum Duo for a dual keyboard arrangement. As a complete keyboard instrument, it …

I wanted two monitors for my organ: one touchscreen to control the organ and one screen for music that I scanned into the computer. This way I wouldn’t have to fumble with sheets of music. I had one old monitor I was going to use for the music but needed a simple touchscreen monitor. For touchscreen monitors, you …

What did I choose? Well, other pages have pretty much said what I decided, but here is one page VPO (Virtual Pipe Organ) I chose GrandOrgue (G.O.) to start with rather than Hauptwerk or jOrgan. The choice was simple: something free that would let me get started but still have “real” (well, realish) organ …

The Cantorum Duo is a two keyboard, fully self-contained instrument. It has 27 stops and 4 variations on each of those stops. It also has several “orchestral” stops available for each division. It has a fair amount of configuration available, such as echo duration, pitch and temperaments. To be fair, if you …

Keyboards are very important; you’ll be touching them every time you play so the weight, feel, and responsiveness are one of the most important factors when it comes to playing the organ. (Sound will be covered later but there are many options available that are separate from the keyboard touch. At first I …

I’ll be filling in the info on the computer board and sofware programming later.

Expression pedals Expression Pedals are a strange area where finding pre-built can be a bit trial. There are plenty of commercial ones built for guitar or synth but most are not really sized or built for organs. Ones for organs vary in quality and materials. When you look for information about making one, you will …

Choosing a Pedalboard Ranging from 13 to 32 keys and different geometries, the choices can be a bit overwhelming. (I’m not interested in pedalboards with less than 30 keys.) Usually made of some hardwood and having contact switches to help encode pedal presses, they should be fairly easy to make (not by me) and …