Pro tip #1!

Pro Tip #1:  

Concerning Celestes

I had a little experience lately that I thought I would communicate in the interest of it being of use to another one day. It concerns the use of celestes on the organ.

If you happen to be reading this and don't know what a celeste is, well it couldn't be simpler! A celeste stop is a sound that is usually combined with another stop of similar sound quality, but the celeste stop is tuned a little bit off pitch from the rest of the organ. For instance, on my organ, I have an 8' Viole, a string stop. Right next to it is an 8' Viole Celeste, which is the same string sound, but it is tuned slightly sharp. When these two stops are played together, the alternating reinforcement and interference with each other's sound produced a gently undulating sound which imitates the sound of both an ensemble of instruments and a slight vibrato. It's a very nice effect. There's only one rule:  Don't use the celeste on its own. It only sounds properly if played along with its 'sister' stop. Otherwise, it's just an out-of-tune rank...

"Well there's your problem! This whole dang rank is sharp!"

Some celestes are sharp, some are flat, others have multiple celestes which are sharp and flat, or sharp and really sharp, or flat and really flat, etc... The celeste on my organ happens to be sharp, and consequently I ran into an exception to the one rule stated above. 

I recently recorded a CD of wedding music so that couples who wanted music but had no idea where to start, could just pick some tracks from the disc as a starting point. One of those pieces used the strings prominently through most of the piece and the end consists of mostly holding a single A-flat chord while reducing the registration down to the lowest possible volume. First I dropped the great diapasons, then the swell principals while closing the swell pedal until I was left with only the 8' Viole and the 8' Viole Celeste, and naturally I wanted only the quietest stop on the organ so I flipped off the Celeste. 

That was the wrong thing to do! At least in my case.   It wasn't apparent when I played it, perhaps because of the acoustics or my exhaustion from practicing all day, but I heard it plain enough on the recording. I flipped off the celeste and the pitch instantly sagged; the last sound you hear is much akin to hearing a soprano struggle to maintain a high pitch but not quite getting there, leaving you grunting and straining as if you were to push enough, you could get her back on pitch. 

It seems obvious now; when a sharp celeste is switched off, especially in this high register that I was playing, the resulting normal pitch sounds flat in comparison. What I should have done was to switch off the 8' Viole and leave the celeste going, in clear violation of the rule. This was the exception to the rule; it was the end of the piece so there was nothing to follow that would make the celeste sound out of tune, and in this particular instance, the normal pitch sounded out of tune in comparison. If this was a flat celeste then it might have been a different story, but as it was sharp. On the other hand, I suppose you could just leave the Viole/Celeste pair on together, but it seemed just a little too noisy to me. 

So Pro Tip #1? Every rule has an exception. 

P.S. That's a Tip, not a Rule. Don't look for exceptions to Tips.