Recreation of famous Electronic, Electric, Reed, Theatre, and Pipe organs and their stops in OPL3 Synthesis.
Today on "Stuff No One Asked For", we're going to make a playable organ out of a broken electronic organ, spare 90s PC parts, and a Creative Labs Sound Blaster 16! Or at least the stops for one, if it existed. Sadly, such a thing does not exist yet.
The SB16 has a YMF262 on board, which is a stereo 4-op FM synth chip. Here are the polyphony configurations it can be in:
- 2-op mode - 18 voices
- Double voice mode - 9 voices
- 4-op mode, minimum 12 voices
Rules of thumb:
- 4-op mode is a little tricky. each 4-op voice takes 2 2-op channels, to a maximum of 6. the remaining channels can be used as 2-op.
- Double voice mode sounds the best, but gives you only 9 voices maximum if you use only double voice mode stops.
- The lowest polyphony is 9 voices, which should be enough to handle most protestant hymns.
However, all of this can vary depending on the stops you use.
The Mighty SoundBlaster doesn't exist just yet, but here are the directories:
- Solo
- Swell
- Great
- Choir
- Pedal
- Classics - Presets of the famous organs. This is when you want a specific sound from a specific organ, and fast. The Mighty Wurlitzer and Hammond B3 would be included here.
- Electronic - These presets will imitate the (relatively) inexpensive electronic organs of the 70s, including Rhythmtones and Kimball Swingers. Expect your grandma's organ to be in here.
- Reed - Several million free-reed organs and melodeons were made in the USA and Canada between the 1850s and the 1920s. They were the staple of in-house "sings", made popular by protestants settling in the American South and Midwest.
- Combos: The stops in the first 5 directories with additional stops "added".
An example file name of a stop:
Great - 8' Open Diapason.wopl
- Not every organ treated every foundation stop the same. This is especially true with regards to electronic organs.
- Mutations and resultants will be included - eventually.
- For convenience, mixtures will be included as their own stops.
- No Crescendo pedal. How would you even implement such a thing?
- No dynamic stop modes.
- NOTHING PROPERLY SUPPORTS THIS. There is an Android Synth app that uses OPL3 synthesis and requires a MIDI controller to use, but not many phones and MIDI controllers support this.
The ultimate set-up for this would be a dedicated instrument, with one OPL3 chip per manual, but I have no idea how to design and fabricate any sort of board that would allow this. This is just a fun little exercise. Maybe if the voices were done, it would be enough inspiration.
File format for each instrument/stop will be in WOPL, which is the file format for FMBankEdit and the ADLMIDI fork (See my DMXOPL project for details). I have no idea if any VSTs use this format, sorry!