INNOSOUND · Innovative Methods and Tools for the Sound Design of Organ Pipes

The main objective is to solve practical problems concerning the voicing of labial organ pipes, and to develop innovative methods and tools for helping the voicing adjustments and sound design work of organ builder SMEs. The project is based on the precognitions of the successfully completed “DEMORGPIPE” CRAFT project (G1ST-CT-2002-50267), which has resulted in a scientific explanation of the scaling rules of labial organ pipes and has induced additional areas of interest of organ builder SMEs. Therefore new SMEs have joined to the present proposal. Thus the degree of dissemination to countries with different technical and cultural tradition of organ building is large. A better scientific understanding of the voicing steps on the attack and the timbre of labial organ pipes would be necessary to develop innovative tools for helping the work of the voicers though a scientific model of the voicing adjustments is not available yet. This goal could be achieved by scientific investigations of the effects of the voicing steps on the pipe sound by laboratory experiments and scientific analyses. The main objectives are as follows: • Better sound quality of labial pipe ranks of pipe organs with optimization of the voicing methods and steps, • Reduced costs of voicing adjustments by a scientifically based optimizing of the voicing procedure • Reduced costs of pipe manufacturing through innovative methods and tools: a user friendly design software based on a scientific sound design method, These objectives will be achieved by targeted research carried out by the RTD partners of the project. The SME partners will contribute to the project by designing the pipes for the investigations, by providing organ pipes and voicers for the laboratory experiments, by evaluating the results in their workshops. A cost reduction of about 15-20% and a better quality of the sound of the pipe organs may be expected.