The Lord works in mysterious ways.
This is my story of how a genuinely stoned thought is slowly becoming a reality.
I went camping at Kroeger Campground, Site 5, San Juan National Forest (8880ft. elevation) on May 11th. It was pretty cold, I'd planned on staying two nights but could only tough out one. No bother. After having drunk a few beers and eaten a weed gummy on the night of May 11th, I was sitting by the fire keeping warm, starting - mostly - at the stars. I remember pondering just how connected we can be to our ancesters, they looked at this same sky with these same stars.
I was thinking about work (obsessing, even, maybe) after another rather stressful week. This is the year, FINALLY, when I'm going to build a proper choir. COVID has been such a drag but the vaccines are rolled out and things are settling a bit, the mask mandate is gone, the time is neigh! But where the hell am I going to put them?
That DAMN organ takes up so much space, two thirds of my choir area! The stupid thing sounds like a toaster oven, the speakers are in the wrong place, all my Principal stops don't even work, it's just a big fat mess!
And then, in my open-minded (read: stoned) state, the crucial thought came: I've just gotta' get rid of the damn organ!
That was it, in my mind it was done. And once I'd let go of that albatross around my neck the creativity started to flow.
What is a digital organ anyway? It's a couple of keyboards, and a pedalboard, and a computer! I've seen the inside of an Allen CF-17, it's three metal boxes with network cable connecting them. Why can't I do that? Yeah, just get a couple MIDI keyboards and a MIDI pedalboard...? Do they make a MIDI pedalboard? Surely someone makes one! And hook it all to a computer and find an organ soundfont and then I'll have to find someone to write a program for me to tie it all together but that's not really /that/ hard is it? I mean it won't /look/ like an organ, but it'll sound fantastic, and definitely better than the toaster oven.
I pondered that for a while and when I had thought through every angle I finally let my mind drift to something else. Eventually sleep (and cold) came and I tucked in for the night.
The Lord works in mysterious ways.
When I got up the next day, MIRACULOUSLY, I still remembered all my pondering from the previous night. I wrote about it extensively in my notebook, and though my technical details were /severely/ off-mark, the big idea was still /very/ on-target. The rest of my day was uneventful (at least in the context of this story). I ate, I went for a lovely drive, I came back to camp and had /such/ a chill that I decided to pack it up and come home early. You gotta' know when to hold 'em, know when to fold 'em, know when to walk away, and know when to leave camp early and go back to your nice, warm, heated house.
I got home and did the regular post-camping chores: laundry, a nice hot modern shower, more laundry, etc. I also carried this newfound obsession of exploring all things digital organ, and the more I poked around online the more exicted it got! It turns out that I don't need to write the software to do this, someone already has, *AND IT'S OPEN SOURCE* (https://github.com/GrandOrgue/grandorgue)! There aren't just organ /soundfonts/ but there are *entire sampled pipe organs*, many of which are also free to use!
That's when Mom blew up her computer. I got a phone call on a Saturday morning, it was Dad: "so this screen came up on the computer and it said the computer was infected and not to shut it down and it said 'Apple Support' at the bottom so we called the number and we've been on the phone with the guy for 45 minutes or so." And then I heard Mom in the background say "I just don't know if we can afford $300 right now." Anyway, I told them to hang up on the guy, not say goodbye, and *UNPLUG THE COMPUTER, NOW!* until I was there on Wednesday. Crisis averted (for the time being), I started thinking about how this was a 2012 Mac Mini and it was old and slow and didn't get the most recent security updates anymore and, long story short, Mom and Dad got a brand new computer. I flew home for a week just to see the folks, installed the new computer and all that jazz, and shipped the old one home. That 2012 Mac Mini is unpached and, thus, unsafe with MacOS on it, but it's a perfect candidate for Linux ... and GrandOrgue! So now I have this perfect little Mac Mini to be my syhtesizer. Things are coming together!
Over the next few weeks I started looking up YouTube videos of this software being used in real life. It sounds *fantastic*! After "The Algorithm" picked up on that it started showing me virtual organs using a piece of software named Hauptwerk. Hauptwerk is the worst kind of software: closed source AND subscription-based; "software-as-a-service" as the cool kids would call it now days. Basically, you pay a monthly fee for the privledge of continuing to use their software and if you stop paying it stops working. I despise the very idea of software-as-a-service on moral grounds. But I digress. Hauptwerk appears to be a slightly more dressed-up version of GrandOrgue, and they both sound fantastic. Then "The Algorithm" showed me a video from a channel called "Hauptwerk hardware" called "Converting the Wyvern Exeter organ." I watched a series of videos in which a chap from England (who happens to be an electrical engineer) converted an old 1970s vintage electronic home organ (the kind your grandma probably had in her den) into a MIDI instrument to use with Hauptwerk. I'll be perfectly honest, I thought it was a neat project but didn't think any more about it.
The Lord works in mysterious ways.
Pentecost Sunday came a couple days after I saw the "Converting" video series, and for Pentecost Fr. Kevin and I agreed to sing the prayers of petition using Michael Hay's "Trilingual Intercessions," which I always play on the organ. It was during those very prayers at the 8:00AM Mass that it suddenly hit me: dummy, you have a perfectly good organ console right here, why are you trying to re-invent the wheel? And so the idea solidified in my mind. No longer would I build a mish-mash of keyboards and pedalboards and stands; I was going to convert the crappy old electronic organ into a fresh, new *digital* organ! Moreover, once the conversion was complete and all the old electronic parts were gutted, I could cut the console down by at least 2/3 in size. The digital equipment consists of wires (*lots* of wires, OMG *SO MANY WIRES*), a small circuit board about the size of my phone, a wee little mixer, and Mom's old Mac Mini. Truly this was the inspiration of the Holy Spirit at work, praise God!
Upon further research, the chap who posted the "Converting" videos apparently makes and sells these "Universal MIDI Controller" boards. I began to put all the pieces together in my mind. None of the electonic-to-digital conversion seems /hard/, tedius sure (*OMG all those wires!*), but not hard. But it's been /so/ long since I've done an electronics project, at least 10 years since I've held a soldering iron. So I started looking for a cheap little organ to rebuild and I found one on Facebook Marketplace for $60. It's a Kimball Swinger 600, circa 1972. Perfect! I contacted the seller, and Sam and I drove down to Bloomfield, NM in his jeep to pick it up. The husband of the lady who was selling it is an electrical engineer himself, he told me "it worked at Christmas time but we turned it on a few weeks ago and it doesn't make any sound. It probably needs some new caps." That's when I spilled the beans: "I don't care, really," I told him, "I'm planning to gut it and convert it into a digital pipe organ, all I need are the keyboards and pedals." The lady selling it told me that she was glad it would go to a good home and when I offered her the $60 we'd agreed on she refused and gave it to me for free. Then I told her the rest of my story, how this was my prototype and I was going to then convert the church organ at St. Columba and invited her to come to Mass next time she's in Durango; she promised me she would.
Now I had my prototype organ, so I ordered one of those Universal MIDI Controllers from England, went to The Home Depot and got some tools (pliers, wire cutters, etc.), and waited. While I was waiting for the board to arrive from across the pond I stripped all the electronics out of the organ. Now the board has arrived and I'm about half done converting the Kimball Swinger 600, I did the wiring and soldering on the upper section of stops and the upper keyboard in about two days. I still have the lower keyboard and stops, and the pedals to get wired up; that'll probably happen next weekend. Stay tuned!
Now for the rest of the story. I started dreaming of this and kind of became obsessed with it. On a whim (and not at all expecting him to go along with it) I mentioned this crazy fantasy of mine to Fr. Kevin. Welp, he's totally on board, and we've allocated $5k from next year's budget (which starts July 1, donchaknow) for my organ rebuild project. Whoo boy, I guess I'm actually doing this. I don't think I can fully convey, though, how amazing it is to work for someone who really, truly /believes/ in me; all I had to say was "yeah, I can do it," and he was on board.
The Lord works in mysterious ways.