The story of my home made pipe organ (2000)
40 comments
·January 26, 2025snowfarthing
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!
emursebrian
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.
jedimastert
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
janlaureys
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.
skykooler
He just put out a video today of making a wooden CNC machine.
p0w3n3d
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...
tomcam
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.
smj-edison
+1 to this! And is classical music isn't your jam, there's always theatre organs[1] :)
hvs
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)
tantalor
The wooden CNC router is great:
epiccoleman
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!
throwawayForMe2
Fundamentals of Musical Acoustics by Benade is a great Dover book for those interested in musical instruments.
georgelyon
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.
epiccoleman
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!
cbsks
There’s a fascinating series of YouTube videos of someone buying and refurbishing a church organ https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLluPQLh1xzlI7EMB5qIxDd_1O...
technothrasher
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.
jedimastert
LOOK MUM NO COMPUTER is such an awesome guy, and a shining star of how PUNK DIY electronics can get
Jordan_Pelt
An amazing project, and I love that he always calls it "Joan's organ." What a tribute.
bradyd
Here's his webpage for it, including the PCB and code for the MIDI controller he built for it.
Avshalom
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.
bluGill
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.
afandian
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?
MatthiasWandel
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.
bluGill
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.
afandian
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!
rob74
> 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...
bluGill
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.
pentacent_hq
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.
bluGill
GrandOrgue is the software behind OpenPipes (well one of several options). Open pipes is more about the whole system of owning an organ.
organsnyder
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!
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.