A prelude, for us organists, is typically the thing we do before a liturgical service. In other words, incidental to another thing that is about to happen. That is exactly what this improvisation is: it is an experiment as I am outlining and sketching a new work. And by new work, I mean a future album of music; at least, that’s the plan. In the mean time, I am playing around and trying to navigate waters that I have thought about and am now doing some practical realizations.
So what is this thing that I’m doing? Let me explain! Outside of the organ world, I also love playing with synthesizers, which is certainly something you can hear in my Aria with Nine Variations. I have played with vintage synths, I own a Yamaha CS1-x that I have used for many years, and more recently, I have been playing with software synths. In the Aria, I used the shareware synth HELM, which I will still promote as one of the best places to start if you are new to synths. For this project I was looking for something a bit more powerful: Arturia’s Pigments!
What makes this synth so special is that it is Arturia’s only true software synth and it has four different engines to create sounds: traditional waves, wave table, granular, and the one I was really curious about, an additive synth generator. Additive synthesis, simply put, is the process of adding partials or harmonics to a fundamental pitch. In part, that is what an organ does – you play a pitch on the manuals or pedals and add and subtract stops to that fundamental. Put the two together and I think there is a lot of potential!
This improvisation is the result of that experimentation. I set up Pigments to work with my travel control synth (Native Instrument’s M25) and here it is! The fun part, for me at least, was trying to imitate and manipulate the sum total of the sound. Since organs cannot play pitches outside of their temperament and tuning, it is really nice to be able to have something that allows me to do that. It was also fun to be able to “dim” the synth and close the box of the organ to create a similar sonic effect. I will be doing a whole series of these as I prepare my next big project!