'Father' Henry Willis (1821-1901) is one of the most famous organ builders of England.
With the prospect of a cathedral 'Father Willis' organ, it is not surprising that many have looked forward to this sample set.
The reactions of many British and Americans about this set are: "excited", "gorgeous", "wonderful", "a feast" and so on.
In many churches the organ has a prominent position: center front or back of the church. Moreover, the organ often has a beautiful organ case.
In many English churches this is not the case: the organ is often to one side and the main case may not be that large or impressive.
Behind a relatively small and simple front a huge organ can be found - this is the case here.
The location of the organ and the relatively small front has major consequences:
It is difficult to choose a correct microphone position for recording.
In my opinion, the most striking feature in this set is the different character of the reverb for the four keyboards:
Swell: A nice reverb, the voices are a bit soft, this is also as it is on the real organ because the Swell is at the back of the case.
Solo: A lot of reverb.
Choir: Very direct, there is less reverb.
Great: Fairly direct, also here a small reverb
So there is a huge contrast between Solo and Choir, for the player it is nice if the recording is fairly direct: The stops are recorded in detail.
But if you want to create a (CD)realistic recording, I think that's less successful.
The producer uses the title "Hereford Cathedral Sample Set", therefore I expect a lavish cathedral reverberation, but that's not the case with the Choir and Great manual.
David Butcher of Lavender audio was well aware of this dilemma, he has described this in detail in the detailed manual.
Besides the good user manual the site of Lavender Audio also contains lots of information about the organ and sample set.
It is worthwhile to read the manual carefully, the explanations include:
All possible couplers (including octave: sub / super and a bass coupler: Ped-> Gr).
The manufacturer has tried to make everything as realistic as possible, so, for the couplers,
just like the real organ sometimes they are 'coupling through',
sometimes not (this is often quite useful if you use this 4 manual instrument on a 3 manual console).
The swell pedals on Swell and Solo, there is even the possibility of using a 'floating swell pedal'.
The behavior of 'Doubles Off' and the choice of 8 / 16 for the stops Orchestral Oboe and Tromba.
Registration recommendations.
The string combinations: Vox Angelica/Salicional and Viola da Gamba/Voix Celeste.
The aforementioned dilemma for the microphone location.
It is very nice that the Solo stops are also sampled with the tremulant enabled, now playing with tremulant sounds very realistic.
Unfortunately, this is not the case for the Swell tremulant - the difference is clearly audible.
English and American organs often have 'high pressure' reeds, which you can use as a beautiful solo voice.
Here, two are present: the Trumpet 8 (on the Great) and Tromba (on the Solo), you can use the latter at both 8 feet and 16 feet.
In the sample set, the Trumpet 8 from the Great is also available on the Solo: you can adjust (volume and brightness) separately on the Settings screen,
so you actually have an extra Trumpet 8.
This is an ideal organ to play with "solo voices", for example with the Swell strings as an accompaniment to the stops of Solo (e.g. with tremulant) or Great (e.g. Claribelflute8) as solo stop.
The pedal stops sound very pervasive, this is also true on Salisbury sample set, so it seems to be normal, but in my living room it is a little too much.
The user interface screens are both realistic and practical.
A small oddity: When you click the 'L' button pressed dark (the light turns off), in my opinion this button works the other way around.
On the 'Settings screen' you can turn on/off the sounds for: keys, tremulant engine and wind engine.
The wind engine is really rushing (noise) on this set, so I disabled that.
When you pull a stop while playing, it takes a short time before it is active.
This is simulated in the sample set with the 'Stop Action Delay - you can disable this option on the Settings screen should you wish.
This set is available in various versions:
Although I'm not as exuberant as the aforementioned British and Americans, it's really a delight to play this versatile instrument, but do not expect 'cathedral-reverb.
In my opinion it is a beautiful, affordable and high quality set with a lot of opportunities for (mostly) romantic music.
Gert, september 2011
