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Organs are even harder because it isn't just speed of sound. There is often mechanical delay before the pipe even gets the air after the key is pressed. In some organs the pipes are "slow" to speak meaning that rank of pipes won't make a sound for some time after the air arrives. Skilled pipe manufactures can minimize this (called voicing, though voicing covers other areas of pipe fine tuning), but in some cases that involves other compromises that aren't desired.

Organs have gotten better and worse in this regard several times over the hundreds of years since they have been known.



My point is that if you put the drummer far enough behind the organist and have the organist track the drummer by eye instead of by ear, the speed-of-sound-induced delay will match the organ's mechanically-induced delay and everything will sound right.

Another option would be to place the organist next to the drummer, but keep the organ itself far enough in front of the drummer such that by the time the sound comes out it's in time with the drummer. I don't know if there are any organs that work this way, though (I'd imagine it'd have to be either mechanically complex or electronically controlled; the latter, though, gives an option for a synthesized "monitor" that the organist can hear, which should hopefully make the delayed sound of the actual organ less of a mindscrew).

This all assumes you have a large enough stage to be able to pull this off, and (in the case of fixed organs) have actually built the organ such that the sound does emerge from in front of the drums.




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