inside an organ

have you ever been inside of an organ?  i hadn't until reilly took me up into the huge organ at national presbyterian.  with 7000 pipes, this multimillion dollar instrument is over three stories tall and about twenty feet deep.

^^reilly poses with some of the metal pipes^^

^^once you climb inside, there are mazes of planks to access different areas but no real walkways that would obstruct the sound^^

^^reilly pretends to lift one of the massive low register pipes :) ^^

after my tour, reilly climbed back down while i stayed to hear something played from the inside.  then something really cool happend that i wasn't expecting.  when we listen to live music it always comes at us from one direction.  even if you stand in the middle of an orchestra while it's playing, it's still not quite three dimensional.  but when you are inside of an organ, pipes are all around you in every direction, some close and some far, so the sound comes at you from every direction and from many different distances.  it's kind of like the first time you heard dolby surround sound in the movie theatre and it gave you chills.

i'm not especially into organ music, but this was moving.  it was surround sound, but live.  and loud. and the vibrations actually move your body.  this video kind of gives you an idea of it.  it's dark in the organ so you can't see anything in the vid.

 
inside an organ from Katie Gill on Vimeo.