Avoiding the Organ Effect

One of the most fearead phenomenon by learning orchestrators is the so called "organ effect".

Basically, it means that the orchestra loses its instrumental definition and transparency and harmony sounds like it is played by a cheap organ. This phenomenon exists in the real and also virtual orchestra world but there is a higher danger of it happening in virtual productions.

The cause for this unpleasant sound in most cases is a harmonic overload in the middle registers, mainly in the two octaves above middle c. People who come from a piano background and have little experience with the orchestra just translate their right hand voicings (which are often placed in this register) literally to the orchestra. If you start to double this voicing in several instruments (e.g. horns play the same triad like trumpets, some woodwinds and higher strings), you have a guaranteed organ effect coming up.

What happens there are several things: firstly, through placing many instruments into this register, you simply overload that frequency range of the "nasal" middle register and create an imbalance over the range that you can hardly compensate. If you then translate left hand octaves as is into the low orchestra register, you have a prime example of organ effect. The other point is that as with mixing colours, if you mix too much, you end up with an undefinable gray. If you pile up too many pronounced (overtone rich (oboes, trumpets, strings) textures on top of each other, you will end up with the acoustic version of that gray, especially if your orchestration strategy is to double the "right hand" in all available forces. Which brings us to point three which is that inexperienced orchestrators often feel like they need to use all available instruments all the time which of course adds to the previous two effects.

Now while I expect most of my patrons to be aware of this issue and actively avoiding it, even more experienced orchestrators are not safe from occasional organ effect problems. Usually they don't happen in extremes but an unfortunate combination of instruments or a not too clever voicing might cause rather unpleasant "organy" sounds as well. However, in these situations, matter of taste plays a big role and what some people feel as "organ effect" others might find attractive.

If we look at the film music defaults, there is a stronger tendency to use relatively pure colours, which I personally prefer as well, as they are very often more punchy than their mixed counterparts and consequentially are also more edgy. On the other hand, in spite of adoring Gustav Mahler's music, I very often get "organ effect" vibes from his tutti writing, mainly caused by his extended woodwind section writing. So there is a degree of personal preference in this regard.

Nevertheless, it helps to be aware of this phenomenon and actively try to avoid it when it is not desired.