CHAPTER IX.
VOICING AND TUNING.
The time has now come when we may bring our little organ into musical order, and reap some of the fruits of our toil.
If the processes described in previous chapters have been steadily carried out, the instrument is now complete (so far as the manual only is concerned) with the exception of the draw-stop action, which we intentionally reserve, and the external case.
We shall insert here, therefore, a few pages on voicing, the important and delicate operation by which the correct speech and distinctive tone of organ-pipes is imparted to them.
Let us warn the reader at once, and with emphasis, that the process of voicing metal pipes is so complex that a complete mastery of its practical details is by no means uniformly attained, even after years of steady practice under skilled guidance. A very sensitive and educated ear, a delicate sense of touch in the handling of fine tools, and a thorough familiarity with the tonal quality, or timbre, of the best examples of the many varieties of pipes—these gifts are essential to the successful voicer. Hence we cannot counsel beginners to attempt the voicing of metal pipes, unless they are fortunate enough to find themselves in a position to obtain lessons from some clever operator willing to give them, or unless they can gain permission to attend at some first-class factory, for the express purpose of watching the pipe-makers and voicers at work.
We shall not be deterred, however, by these considerations from describing, to the best of our ability, the business of voicing and regulating an ordinary metal pipe, pointing out specially, as we go on, all that may be necessary for the removal of defects and faults in pipes already voiced by other hands. But we must acknowledge our own obligations to the little treatise on voicing and tuning mentioned in the preface to this work. Those who obtain and peruse this thoroughly practical little tract will find all the information which they can require.
Figs. 40, 41 show the well-known forms of metal organ-pipes as seen in the Open Diapason, Principal, &c. Figs. 42, 43 give details. The languid, Fig. 42, is a little enlarged. It will be seen that the essential features of wooden pipes have their counterpart in those of metal—the language, or languid, answering to the wooden block, the conical termination to the wooden pipe-foot, the cylindrical body to the rectangular wooden tube.