Hello All,  It has been almost 15 years since I started to read
articles in the MMD.  Over the years various members have discussed
hundreds of topics, some of general interest and some of interest to
a small group of members.  I have asked many questions when a problem
arose and answered a few when I had some experience in that area.

Among the many friends whom I have met through MMD is Dr. Christian
Greinacher, a long time collector and talented restorer who lives
in Germany.  Some time ago, I asked him to help me translate some
information about organ pipes because the text was in German and,
as you may have noticed, the translation tools on the web are rather
limited.

Did I mention that I don't speak German?

It turns out that this was not as simple as I had hoped.  Not only
was the text in German, it was in _Old German_.  It was also written
in words that were familiar to people who lived in a certain area of
Germany and unique, technical terms related to organ building.

The reason that I wanted to read this text was that it is about one
particular type of organ pipe -- the pipes with free reeds and tuned
resonators.  This type of pipe was used in the 1840 Damian Dufner flute
clock organ that I have been restoring.  My organ has 14 pipes with
free reeds but it is missing 6 of these pipes.

I have contacted a number of organ pipe builders.  They all have
experience with beating reed pipes (as in band organ and theater
organs) but none of the builders in the USA can make free reed pipes.
I understand that one builder in Europe can make free reed pipes but
I am concerned about sending two of the remaining pipes for them to copy
-- and the cost.  So, I am going to make the pipes myself.  This is
where the translation comes in.

There is only one text that has a detailed, practical discussion
about free reed pipes.  It was written by Ignaz Bruder, one of the most
famous makers and inventors of pipes for organ clocks, orchestrions
and band organs in the early 1800s.  He left a notebook of information
about organ and pipe construction to his family.  This notebook is now
in a museum on Germany.

Fortunately, about 50 years ago a man named Karl Bormann gained access
to this unique manuscript and copied some of the book. He then added
his own comments and produced a book titled, "Making organs and organ
clocks, commented notes of the organ and music work maker Ignaz Bruder
(1829) and the development of the barrel organ".

I wanted to translate the section of this book that tells about free
reed pipes.  Ralf Smolne kindly scanned the necessary pages of this
rare book for me and I converted it using an OCR program by ABBYY.
This produced an editable MSWord document in German.  I tried to
translate the text to English using language tools by Yahoo, Google
and others, but I was not very successful.

I had almost given up when Dr. Greinacher offered to help.  He and
I worked for weeks to translate this section of the book.  Many
discussions were needed to understand what Bruder and Bormann were
saying in old German and to decide on the words necessary to explain
it in modern English.

It was very helpful that both Christian and I have restored antique
organs so we were familiar with the parts of the organ and the modern
terms used to describe them.  In addition, Christian is familiar with
German technical terms and his wife is familiar with the dialect of
the Black Forest area of south-western Germany where the notes were
written.  We had many interesting discussions while we were trying to
decide on the most correct word or phrase to use in English.

When we finished, we wanted to figure out some way to share this
information with others who might find it useful or interesting.
We first thought to publish it in a technical journal like the MBSI
Journal, "Mechanical Music", but it is rather long (21 pages) and
not of general interest.  So we decided to offer it on Lulu.com, the
self-publishing web site.  That way, all who are interested can
download it or get a hard copy sent to them.

If you are interested, go to  http://www.lulu.com/  and type in
"Greinacher" and check the booklet entitled "How to Make, Tune and
Voice Reed Pipes".  You can buy a hard copy but it is also available
cheaply as a download if you click the link on the right.

Craig Smith

 [ "How to make, tune and voice Reed Pipes", by Christian Greinacher
 [ and Craig Smith.  Paperback: $13.23, Also available as a download
 [ http://www.lulu.com/product/paperback/how-to-make-tune-and-voice-reedpipes/6284039 
 [ -- Robbie