# Spitfire Audio - Union Chapel Organ - RELEASED!!!



## Spitfire Team (Jul 6, 2016)

Hi VI-Control, Christian here, please to announce the imminent launch of a pet project of Paul and Stanley 's that started production in 2013! I've played it and the headline point I have to share is it's like having some form of optical MIDI cable attached to the thing. It is one of the most 'real' renderings we've yet achieved. Hats off to the Spitfire team for all their hard work!

*AVAILABLE TO DOWNLOAD NOW FOR £149 (€209, $229)*http://www.spitfireaudio.com/shop/a-z/union-chapel-organ/





A legendary Organ built by the master Henry Willis, in a legendary London venue; the beautiful Union Chapel. From angelic soft delicacies to roaring thunder, this instrument is one of the finest examples of 19th Century craftsmanship in the world, and gives you a Symphonic Orchestra of tones at your fingertips.



*AVAILABLE TO DOWNLOAD NOW FOR £149 (€209, $229)*http://www.spitfireaudio.com/shop/a-z/union-chapel-organ/

*OVERVIEW*


The Organ at London’s Union Chapel was built by Henry Willis in 1877 specifically to match the size and acoustics of the building and is undoubtedly one of the finest in the world. Willis also built the organs for the Royal Albert Hall and St Paul’s Cathedral. It was restored during 2012-13 by the other legends of the organ world, Harrison & Harrison. It has three manuals, Swell, Great, Choir, and a full pedalboard. The Organ has been used in gigs at the Chapel by acts as diverse as Bernard Butler and the Penguin Cafe Orchestra. The chapel itself has a beautiful acoustic and hosts artists such as Nils Lofgren, Ray Davies, Beck, Suzanne Vega, Nitin Sawhney, Ryan Adams, Lady Antebellum, Elton John, Ellie Goulding, Chris Martin, James Morrison, Amy Winehouse, David Byrne, Tori Amos, Bjork…



The Organ is presented with multiple mic perspectives, with Close, Stereo, Ambient and Outriggers, and included stops are SWELL - ContraGamba 16, Open Diapason 8, Salcional 8, Vox Angelica 8, Flote 4, Mixture; GREAT - Open Diapason 8, Stopped Diapason 8, Flautodolce 8, Trumpet 8, Principle 4, Clarion 4, Mixture 3, Principle 2, Fifteenth 2; CHOIR - Claribel Flute 8, Dulciana 8, Concert Flute 4, Clarion 4, Piccolo 2; PEDAL - Bourdon 16, Open Diapason 16

*BACKGROUND*

Spitfire co-founder Paul Thomson grew up sat on the organ stool. From playing in churches before he could reach the pedal board, to practicing at night locked alone in Worcester Cathedral as a teenager, he has always had a soft spot in his heart for this instrument. So after finding the perfect organ to sample this became a pet project.



The organ is like an orchestra, from charming flutes to trumpets and trombones, with many interesting harmonic mixtures and options for voicing. You can set up different sounds on the manuals and pass from one to another, or combine them for a greatly amplified sound character. “The humble organist can have an orchestra of a thousand voices” - Marie Alain



Paul and his colleagues at Spitfire waited a long time before selecting the organ they wanted to sample, and the timing was perfect with the restoration and the collaboration with the Union Chapel. They started the project back in 2013 and many hours were spent during the night recording! This instrument has bags of character and can go from extraordinarily soft and delicate to full thunder and power while never sounding slightly synthetic or brittle like some of the later instruments.



As an instrument, the pipe organ has featured in many films and on many albums over the years, a sampling includes most recently Interstellar, Rollerball, 2001 A Space Odyssey, many of Danny Elfman's scores including his two Batman offerings, Koyaanisqatsi, The Omega Man, Interview With a Vampire, Patton and The Godfather.

As a bonus feature Spitfire’s team of sound designers have created 10 eDNA presets using the raw materials of the Organ, which have most recently featured in the 2016 Paul Feig reboot of Ghostbusters, plus a Dev Kit for the user to create their own unique Synths, Basses, Atmospheres and Rhythmic pulsing patches.

*AVAILABLE TO DOWNLOAD NOW FOR £149 (€209, $229)*http://www.spitfireaudio.com/shop/a-z/union-chapel-organ/


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## synthpunk (Jul 7, 2016)

Is there a user eDNA engine included ?


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## Spitfire Team (Jul 7, 2016)

*ITS NOW LIVE £149*


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## Kejero (Jul 7, 2016)

Interesting. That sounds pretty stellar!


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## Noam Guterman (Jul 7, 2016)

Best in the category thus far IMO,
Great job as expected from Spitfire !


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## BlueStar (Jul 7, 2016)

Exciting release, for some reason it does not sound organic like the real thing 
But I'm sure if will find it's use in film compositions anyway.

Next stop choir? Would be so great to hear your approach to choir.


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## higgs (Jul 7, 2016)

Two things:
1) Are you SF chaps done with early-adopter/promo pricing incentives?
2) Please give my wallet a break...I mean, stop making good things for a minute...I mean, I can't afford the pace at which you're producing...I mean, but I'm still buying...but I mean, there's only so long I can hide the CC bill from the missus...


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## bbunker (Jul 7, 2016)

So many questions, and the walkthrough didn't really answer them for me:

How is the swell-box implemented? How many 'dynamics' of the swell are there? I'm guessing it's a tracker - are any of the fun pressure-changing effects modeled at all?

I don't know the Union Chapel instrument, but I'm assuming the choir is behind the performer - it wasn't particularly clear if the close mics are always close to the specific set of pipes, or if they're in a performer's position. It sure would be nice to have at least one of the mic positions provide the 'surround' sound that the Choir pipes provide - is that in there?

Is there no way to use any of the tremulants besides a fixed dulcian like the Vox Angelica? It's an 1877 organ, so there's got to be something fun and squirrelly on there, right?!?

I sure wish there was at least one quint and reed on the swell...I can't imagine balancing the divisions when the Great has all the reeds! Is there an expansion pack in the wings with some of those stops? I know you can 'selectively' couple down by just using one of the Great's stops, but having the 'real deal' would be fun.


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## Spitfire Team (Jul 7, 2016)

Heya bbunker.... I'll have to go back to the team with those questions! A bit beyond my knowledge as a humble Hammond B3 player! Needless to say the real life and reality of this organ is in the room mics. The whole chapel is the sound box for the organ so when I played with the mics up it felt like I was actually there. Extraordinary.


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## Anthony N.Putson (Jul 7, 2016)

Kejero said:


> Interesting. That sounds pretty Interstellar!



Fixed.


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## higgs (Jul 7, 2016)

Already put two hours into playing around with this one and couldn't be happier. Great work guys/gal! Two of my three favorite summer-release libraries are the quartet and the organ. Smiley happy days ahead!


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## kgdrum (Jul 7, 2016)

higgs said:


> 1) Are you SF chaps done with early-adopter/promo pricing incentives?



+1


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## synthpunk (Jul 7, 2016)

It s now called devalued GBP : )



kgdrum said:


> +1


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## higgs (Jul 7, 2016)

aesthete said:


> It s now called devalued GBP : )


-£


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## Spitfire Team (Jul 7, 2016)

Thanks Higgs et al, we're delighted too, truly a major effort that began in 2013, very proud of the Spitfire team.


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## Thorsten Meyer (Jul 8, 2016)

I have a smile on my face when I use the latest VI from spitfire.



Out of the box, I used only some mics that spitfire provided.


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## synthpunk (Jul 8, 2016)

It would be really amazing if this was inside your eDNA engine rather than just a few eDNA presets.


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## ClefferNotes (Jul 8, 2016)

Beautiful work yet again from you all at Spitfire. Congrats!


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## Spitfire Team (Jul 9, 2016)

Thanks Cleffer, always a huge relief when this amount of work comes together. We hope we do the Union Chapel proud, they are after all one of the coolest venues in London.


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## SymphonicSamples (Jul 9, 2016)

A beautiful libraries guys. I grew up around Pipe Organs and can hear this piece of history living and breathing within the samples you've captured. It would be like sampling Beethoven's piano in it's prime and being able to play it in Kontakt, it's about as close as it gets for an Organist


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## Spitfire Team (Jul 9, 2016)

Really touched by that comment Matt. I can thank my business partner Paul for being an organist himself so understanding what to capture, how to capture and what lumps to iron and which bumps to leave... An amazing effort by my colleagues, thanks for the recognition.


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## SymphonicSamples (Jul 10, 2016)

Spitfire Team said:


> Really touched by that comment Matt.


Your most welcome. Sampling an instrument like this is somewhat preserving it in history, a moment in time, heaven forbid anything would happen to the chapel. I guess especially since after reading about the organ some time back being the only remaining organ in England using a water powered blowing system, which in the future if it were ever to be converted to electric blowers then this will be a sound archive. It's a shame I didn't have access to this library when I did a mockup of Interstellar's Cornfield Chase, which kindly HZ gave the thumbs up on, now that would have been lovely. Spitfire Audio - Instrument Archivists


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## Rv5 (May 6, 2017)

Just downloaded and can't stop playing - it's amazing, the acoustic space is a delight. I did the sound mix on a documentary about the restoration of the organ some years back, well worth checking out:


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## higgs (May 6, 2017)

Rv5 said:


> Just downloaded and can't stop playing - it's amazing, the acoustic space is a delight. I did the sound mix on a documentary about the restoration of the organ some years back, well worth checking out:



Must have been pretty cool for you to play the thing that you no doubt know well from the sound mix. Really cool doc, btw. It would be great if this ended up on the SF site (ehhhmm).


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## Paul_P (Apr 26, 2021)




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## pfmusic (Apr 27, 2021)

Thought we were maybe getting an update on Spitfires Union Chapel Organ for a second there, when I seen the above video. 

NKS would be nice


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## Paul_P (Apr 27, 2021)

I just stumbled across the video as I've been installing the organ after getting it on sale last Christmas. I didn't realise this thread was in the commercial announcements forum. Just wanted to keep things related to UCO together in one place.

My goal has been to be able to play this instrument in real time just using my keyboard, but I quickly came upon the shortcomings that others have mentioned. I've managed to overcome most of them with Bome MIDI Translator (Pro) and a lot of programming. I use one Kontakt instrument/track/MIDI channel per organ manual and I've programmed buttons on my keyboard to activate the stops (sending ks note on/offs). This way a pulled out stop remains active until I press its button again. The keyboard buttons also light so I can see which stops are pulled out.

Issues :

1. With keyswitch control, you can't "push in" (ks note_off) a stop and have it take effect as the organ only updates its stops on a "pull out" (ks note _on). You can get around this by pushing in and re-pulling out another stop that is already on, but this is a bit awkward. I programmed this manoeuver by scanning the stops and then resending ks_off and ks_on to the first active stop encountered. However, this hit another issue, in that if the three notes Off 1, Off 2 and On 2 are sent at once, the organ loses them for some reason. I had to put 100ms delays between the three notes in the Off/Off/On sequence.

2. A related issue (and probably the cause of the previous issue) is that you can't have all stops in/off for a given manual. I've overcome this in two steps. First, I send all midi notes to all four manuals (so on four midi channels). Second, I programmed 4 drum pads on my keyboard to mute each manual. So to push in the last stop on a manual, I first hit the stop's button, then the drum pad to silence the manual. The drum pads also give me the functionality of coupling manuals, which is also missing from this instrument. Whichever manuals are not muted are effectively coupled.

3. I have not come up with a way to be able to pull out or push in a stop mid-note. This would require knowing which notes are currently pressed and resending note offs + ons for each one and there would still be a short break in between.

I'm really happy with this organ. It's like having a church in my living room.


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## pfmusic (Apr 27, 2021)

Paul_P said:


> I just stumbled across the video as I've been installing the organ after getting it on sale last Christmas. I didn't realise this thread was in the commercial announcements forum. Just wanted to keep things related to UCO together in one place.
> 
> My goal has been to be able to play this instrument in real time just using my keyboard, but I quickly came upon the shortcomings that others have mentioned. I've managed to overcome most of them with Bome MIDI Translator (Pro) and a lot of programming. I use one Kontakt instrument/track/MIDI channel per organ manual and I've programmed buttons on my keyboard to activate the stops (sending ks note on/offs). This way a pulled out stop remains active until I press its button again. The keyboard buttons also light so I can see which stops are pulled out.
> 
> ...


I like the process of what your trying to achieve. I wonder if Spitfire ever made it NKS, If it was possible to assign the various buttons on NKS Komplete Kontrol to do what your trying to do. 

It's a lovely sounding church organ. Really love the choral patch. 

@SpitfireSupport ?


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