my new practice organ

Last updated on Oct 16, 2021

I thought I'd share a short little post today to show the practice organ here at the University of Minnesota!

It's what's called a "tracker organ." If it were a car, we'd call it a "manual." The only electronic parts on this organ are the blower (to push air through the pipes), and the light (to let you see your music while you play). Everything else is controlled by physically pulling knobs and pressing keys.

In brief, the "tracker system" works like this:

You press a key. The key acts as a lever.
The back of the key pushes or pulls on a stick (called a tracker) that pushes or pulls on another stick (also called a tracker) that pushes or pulls on another stick...
Once all the trackers are pushed/pulled into their new position, the last tracker opens a valve that allows air to go through a pipe.

Think that's complicated? Try building an organ using only tools available 1500 years ago.

Here's the best freely available image I could find showing the inside of a tracker organ:

And here's a really nice one on someone else's site (you have to click the link to see it since it's a stock image that I don't want to pay for):

Here's a gallery of some hand-drawn diagrams of a tracker action organ:

And here's someone else's blog post that tries to explain the tracker action:

I'm sorry this post was so short, but I really didn't have much to say! I'm having fun learning in a new school.

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