The First Baptist Church of Riverside (FBR) Schantz Three Manual Organ has been a favorite Hauptwerk sample set for many years. With its recent price reduction, many more people will be discovering this organ. It is an “American Classic” style instrument with a small amount of reverberation (semi-dry acoustics).

My Expanded Schantz Organ recasts the sampled ranks from the FBR instrument into a larger specification that fills in some gaps in the original. There is, however, no unification in the resulting instrument. The new disposition is quite complete for a three-manual American Classic instrument. It retains a definite Schantz sound while not imitating any particular instrument.

New featrues are included for Version 1.2 of this organ. I have added a borrowed Basson 16' to the pedal to give the user a quieter choice of reed. By popular demand, I have added Swell and Choir Melody couplers. These allow stops from the Swell or Choir to be played together with the highest note played on the Great, providing some intersting possibilities. I also added a Bass coupler to the Great. For those of you who are not great pedalers (or who have to accomodate other organists with this deficiency), this takes the pedal stops and plays them from the lowest note on the Great.

The most complex new feature is full-blown crescendo pedal. Hauptwerk developers understand that the Custom Organ Definition Module (that I use to create my organs) does not currently have the ability to define a crescendo pedal. Luckily, Al Morse has developed software that adds crescendo pedals to already-existing Hauptwerk organs. My organ was too big for the software! The setter panel that it created went right off the bottom of the display. I worked with Al to understand more about his software and then wrote my own software to post-process the output of his. The result is a traditional (blind) crescendo pedal that is fully user-programmable on a nice display page.

The new "Expanded Schantz" organ has the following specification:

Some borrowing of ranks between divisions was used and this is indicated on the stoplist. The Vox Humana was moved from the Choir to the Swell. The 2’ Principal was moved from the Swell to the Choir. Several stops were created by combining pipes from two of the original ranks, transposing as appropriate, and carefully working the transition notes in amplitude. These new stops are the Swell 8’ Geigen and 4’ Flauto, and the Choir Gems Octave. The Choir 8’ Hohlflote uses the samples from the Swell 8’ Rohrflote. In order to keep them from sounding identical, I brightened the Choir stop and made it a different volume level. Since there is no unification, one can couple these two stops together to create a flute ensemble. I also added the remainder of the standard American Classic couplers.

Since my own touch-screen monitor is only 15” (a size which fits nicely above a side-jamb of a typical organ) all my screens are sized to fit. The resolution is 1024 x 768. Here are the console and stop views:

1. Download Hauptwerk Installation rar

This is a Hauptwerk standard installation package in rar format. Save it to your disk, start Hauptwerk, and then use its install feature to read the rar file as per the manual.

I have heard from some users (outside the USA) that you might need to disable the "wind model" for the organ to play properly. Since I am in the USA I cannot test this - but it sounds reasonable.

2. Download CODM Source File

This one is optional. I provide the source code for the Hauptwerk editor so you can see how I did all this and get ideas for your own projects. Since the CODM cannot generate the crescendo pedal, I included version 1.1 of the organ here (identical except for the crescendo pedal). You can add a pedal back using Al's software, but you wilol not get the same display I have used in Version 1.2.

This organ is an exceptional value. You get ~60 ranks for $100 (I get nothing - but I have great a day job.) The organ is very complete and makes no compromises. It works well with many different genres of organ music. The samples are "only" 16-bit so the entire organ fits easily into a 3 GB system. It runs very well on my MacBook Pro laptop woth no measurable latency whatsoever. Remember that Hauptwerk's internal arithmetic is much deeper than 16 bits so the ensembles are accurate to many more significant bits. These samples were recorded in a live acoustic, but the hall is very dry. I add some simple delay reverb to the organ - using my Rodger's own internal reverb. The total effect is wonderful.

You can hear some demo recordings of this instrument on my organ recordings page. I have chosen pieces that show off the many variations in tone color that this organ can produce.

Have fun with this.