Recently our student Mihir visited the Meadowbrook Manor House at the Oakland University, as they have opened it for holiday lights tour, and came across this amazing piece of engineering. He was excited to experience this instrument first hand and shared the experience and photos with us. Behold, the Aeolian Pipe Organ!
This instrument is actually a wind instrument. There is actually a “pipe room” behind the walls across which the front-end of the pipe organ is visible. The attached video is a quick demo of how the pipe organ is engineered and operated. It even takes you on a pipe-room tour.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GzpZRV9Cmac
Here is a clip of a 140-years old Pipe Organ in Bengaluru and Indian National Anthem being played on it.
And here is a beautiful rendition on “Santa Clause is coming to town” on the ‘cross-over’ model of the same pipe organ. This one has electric connectivity and pipes missing as you can see in the video.
Like how I was telling Mihir, when there were no electronic keyboards, there were organs. Just like the harmonium, a pipe organ is also a wind instrument. There was a phase of Electric Organs before what we have today as the Electronic Keyboards. Here is the very popular (vintage) magnus electric organ.
You will hear electric organs in Bollywood songs of movies such as Karz, when even the multi-track recording was barely a thing!
I am not touching the ‘Piano’ thread here because piano, unlike Pipe Organ, falls under percussion instrument category because of its engineering of the hammers that produce the sounds.
Additional resources on Pipe Organ:
Wikipedia Article on Pipe Organ: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pipe_organ
The King of Instruments: An excellent “Show and Tell” video demo of Pipe Organ
Did you recently experience something awesome in music? Please be sure to share with us.
Kuldip Bhatt