Korg Forums

[thejam20]

hi, im lovin the microstation and its sounds, i was a little disapointed though with the pipe organ sounds, they`re no better than my first keyboard a casio ctk750 and thats over 15years old! has anyone managed to create a convincing pipe organ sound on the microstation? i see there are some good ones on youtube by users using the kronos, while i understand the microstation is a budget workstation, and a kronos isnt, i just wondered if any one has done it on a microstation.
if so any tips for me to create one?

[Stargazer]

I used to create a set of Pipe Organs on Roland XP-80, and although it is a completely different machine, I might give you a couple of tips.
First, XP-80 has had terrible Pipe Organs and only one Pipe Organ waveform. Pipe Organ sounds, three of them, mostly faded out if you hold them long enough. They didn't sound natural. But, it's sound was based on 4 wave elements and I used mostly these waveforms, combination of 2, 3 or 4 elements, to create convincing Pipe Organs:

Pipe Organ waveform for basic sound, heavily manipulated by filters, specially LPF
Flute (non vibrato) for distinctive pipe-ish sound (Positive), also a bit closed by LPF mostly (try other filters though)
Clarinet for basses (pedals) and even for main sound (If you keep it for basses only, than it should fade out as you play toward the right end of the keyboard)
Sine wave for the Principal emulation
Some none vibrated mild Electric Organ waves (similar to sine) for added character - but I pushed them in the back of the mix.

Make sure you remove any "click" on attack, which is usually found on Electric Organ waveforms, and even Clarinet. It should have a mellow attack. Put "attack" value a bit lower.

Since AFAIK Microstation does not have that 4-element structure of the sound, you can still use Multi section to develop each of the above sound from above and mix them together. So what you do is, you develop each element of the Pipe Organ sound, based on the above waveforms, and make individual presets out of them. In the Multi section, you put them together and manipulate the volume of each part.
Remember, you have to see which one of the sound should dominate, and which one is to be pushed in the background, as you create the mix. The main work while preparing the programs is to play with Filters, Resonance and Cutoff.
Also, remember, you have several Pipe Organ waveforms in Microstation, and try first doing something with them, by playing with Filters, Resonance and Cutoff as they change the character of the sound most directly and drastically. The Pipe Organ waveforms are Multispamples from 0042-0047. So you have six of them.

Just be patient in your work. I am sure you will be surprised how good your keyboard may sound.

Good luck!

[federicoc]

I've always found that the only way to get really gorgeous, full pipe organ sound, in whatever synth I've ever put my hands on is to mix and match various waveforms, like Stargazer suggested above – by the way that's more or less the way an actual organ sound's formed, mixing various "register", so: yes... definitely go the combi way (which is the best choice for good electric organ as well, see sweetwater's virtual B3), and you'll be able to dinamically alter your organ's sound by turning programs 1-16 up and down.

I'd start with flutes, clarinets and oboes/double reed; also check pure organ program.
Oh, and lot of reverb helps as well if you want to get that cathedral-y sound

Just my 2 eurocents of course

-- Federico