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Pressing a key on the keyboard makes the instrument produce sounds—either by mechanically striking a string or tine (acoustic and electric piano, clavichord), plucking a string (harpsichord), causing air to flow through a pipe organ, striking a bell , or activating an electronic circuit (synthesizer, digital piano, electronic keyboard).
The key action is independent of the stop action, allowing an organ to combine a mechanical key action with an electric stop action. A key action in which the keys are connected to the windchests by only rods and levers is a mechanical or tracker action. When the organist depresses a key, the corresponding rod (called a tracker) pulls open its ...
Organ pipes are physically organized within the organ into sets according to note and timbre. A set of pipes producing the same timbre for each note is called a rank, while each key on a pipe organ controls a note which may be sounded by different ranks of pipes, alone or in combination. The use of stops enables the organist to selectively turn ...
On a mechanical-action organ, a coupler may connect one division's manual directly to the other, actually moving the keys of the first manual when the second is played. Some organs feature a device to add the octave above or below what is being played by the fingers. The "super-octave" adds the octave above, the "sub-octave" the octave below. [1]
Other organs positioned the black keys on the same level and depth as the white keys. The first pedal keyboards only had three or four notes. [ 3 ] Eventually, organ designers augmented this range by using eight notes, an approach now called a "short octave" keyboard, because it does not include accidental notes such as C ♯ , D ♯ , F ...
The earliest known keyboard instrument was the Ancient Greek hydraulis, a type of pipe organ invented in the third century BC. [2] The keys were likely balanced and could be played with a light touch, as is clear from the reference in a Latin poem by Claudian (late 4th century), who says magna levi detrudens murmura tactu . . . intonet, that is "let him thunder forth as he presses out mighty ...
In music, the organ is a keyboard instrument of one or more pipe divisions or other means (generally woodwind or electric) for producing tones. The organs have usually two or three, up to five, manuals for playing with the hands and a pedalboard for playing with the feet. With the use of registers, several groups of pipes can be connected to ...
The Hammond Organ Company produced an estimated two million instruments in its lifetime; these have been described as "probably the most successful electronic organs ever made". [40] A key ingredient to the Hammond organ's success was the use of dealerships and a sense of community.