Managing organ volume

[Max Walker]

(This is a cross post from the FB Group, LDS Ward Organists and Pianists: https://www.facebook.com/groups/1416804955264506/)

My chapel's organ speakers run across the top of the ceiling the length of the chapel, providing a consistent volume throughout the chapel. I love it. It is warm and enveloping.

But I think more chapels are like my Stake Center, where the organ speakers are front and center and push the sound straight out. We have discovered that the volume can be nearly overwhelming on the stand, but barely heard on the first overflow row in the chapel. I sat there for one fireside, and I could barely sing. I had to keep pausing to find and take a pitch from the quiet organ. That organist is a friend of mine, so I asked him about it afterwards, and he assured me that on the stand, it was a very strong organ sound. 

So, how do you others deal with that kind of characteristic? Do we pass out ear plugs on the stand so that we can still support the singers on the back row? I'm not talking about volume when the whole building is opened up for a conference. I'm just talking about that little ~6-row overflow area. 

What do you do?

[Dan Gawthrop]

This problem is extremely prevalent in the church and is a natural consequence of design decisions to prefer the delivery of the spoken word over music. There are few real cures for this, and those that exist would mostly increase the cost of the instrument.

A second set of speakers, installed either in the overflow or actually in the cultural hall would be one possibility. Such additional speakers would need to be controlled from the console so that they could be turned on only when needed. That, in turn, would require all organists to be trained to find and understand such a control and I’m not optimistic about that possibility. Worse, the cost of the instrument would probably increase by $1,000 to $1,500 once the speakers themselves were purchased, plus wiring, plus installation. I’m even less optimistic about this.

A more musically sensitive compromise might be reached in the area of acoustic design by removing some of the absorptive surfaces throughout the room and replacing them with more reflective ones. This could probably be accomplished with little or no additional cost to construction but is likely to be opposed by those who find the noises of children in our services to be a hindrance to their understanding of the spoken word. I do feel as though some experimentation in this area could potentially offer us an approach which would improve the music without unduly harming intelligibility in the room. Whether the will and the funding for such experimentation could be found is difficult to say—those in authority would have to be convinced of its importance and that seems a long shot.

Finally, one possibility for some minor improvement in existing chapels would be to go into the chambers where the speakers are currently installed and turn them around so that they are facing the wall instead of the congregation. This assures a better dispersion of the sound across that entire surface and, thus, across more of the front of the room. This improved dispersion, valuable for its own sake, may also offer some small improvement to its projection toward the rear of the room. It would require that the various channels of amplification on the organ have their levels increased somewhat to compensate for the losses inherent in “bouncing” the sound, but this has typically resulted in a less harsh effect than the laser-beam intensity of speakers focused directly forward. I have used this successfully in several chapels.

Dan Gawthrop
Third Auxiliary Ward Organist
Twin Falls 14th Ward
Twin Falls, ID

[Sunnyside Vet Clinic]

Another option is to approach the FM group about installing a feed from the organ into the building PA.  That way the organ will speak over the PA system in the overflow.  The speakers aren't great, but they are speakers, meaning that the organ will not sound very good in the overflow, but it will at least be heard.

There is a little switch that senses when the overflow curtains are open and closed, and it turns itself on an off as needed eliminating the need for the organist to remember anything.

If your FM group is anything like ours is, you would do well to plead your case to the Stake Music Chairman and ask him/her to plead the case to the Stake Music Advisor who will need to plead the case to the Stake President.  It will likely take a Stake President's request to get this to happen.

Mike Nield

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[Max Walker]

Very interesting, Dan. Agreeing with your conclusions for the first two options, how would one accomplish the third option? One like you may do it yourself, but one like me? 😀

Would this be a negotiation first in the stake and then with the ever-accommodating PM/FM group? How have you done it?

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Max Walker, MBA, PMP, CSM
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[Dan Gawthrop]

> On Dec 2, 2015, at 9:13 PM, Max Walker <maxw...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Very interesting, Dan. Agreeing with your conclusions for the first two options, how would one accomplish the third option? One like you may do it yourself, but one like me? 😀
>
> Would this be a negotiation first in the stake and then with the ever-accommodating PM/FM group? How have you done it?

I’ve always had the permission of the agent bishop. Neither of us ever felt the need to involve anyone further up the sanctity chain since the adjustment did not involve any actual changes to equipment and would be, in any case, easily reversible if there was need.

In the best of all possible worlds the original installation would have been made this way (as at least one major manufacturer recommends) but the truth is that the local dealers get a flat fee for LDS installations (rather than a profit on the sale of the organ) and they often send out people with limited knowledge and even less incentive. Consequently, most of them are installed as if they were a simple stereo system with the inevitable result that they’re very rarely ever heard at their best.