Quote:
Originally Posted by MetroMPG
Makes perfect sense to me: you're already extremely well-versed on the importance of carefully managed airflow! 
Congratulations! |
And, a lot of what I did (and continue to do on occasion) as an organ builder is voicing--the process of making pipes play. It's all about managing pressures and airflow through the foot, flue, and body of the pipe.
Organ builders have been voicing since the days of the Roman empire, but only recently have they become interested in things like metallurgic composition, CFD, historical casting techniques, etc. and learned how all these things interplay to create a specific sound. It's allowed the current generation of American builders to create "old" sounding organs by doing things like sand casting, which cools the metal much faster and results in a tighter grain structure that makes for both a stronger pipe and a more harmonically complex sound as the metal resonates differently.