Personal Stories

My name is Dan, I’m from Ontario, Canada, and I am totally blind. I started studying organ in 2004, when I was a student of the W. Ross MacDonald school for the blind. After graduation, I continued my studies with local organists.

I was always looking for a solution to practice at home but, it wasn’t until 2012 that I had heard about Hauptwerk from other organists. I finally had the opportunity to try a Hauptwerk setup in May of 2015 in the home of a local organist. I was blown away by the quality of the Hauptwerk sample sets, and was starting to think that it could be the solution I was after. In October of 2016, my father and I revisited the Hauptwerk setup, so we could start researching, and reading up on getting a setup of my own. My father ordered the parts, built the table and launchpad stand. I picked out the keyboard, pedal board, swell shoes, speakers, and subwoofer. I also worked with the Hauptwerk software and configuration.

The main thing to overcome was an alternative to the touch screen, as that’s what sighted users normally use to control Hauptwerk instruments. In reading the Hauptwerk manual, looking at your site, and reading what Jerry from Maine, another customer who is also totally blind, had to say, we decided to use Novation Launchpads in place of touch screens. Having Novation launchpads instead of touch screens is an excellent solution. However, at this time I would advise to make sure that the Launchpad S is the one you get, as the newer Launchpad pro, isn’t fully supported. I’d gotten a Launchpad pro at first, and was having issues with it.

My father and I looked around online, and were able to find a couple of Launchpad S’s, and we used a late 2012 21.5 inch iMac that I already had, to run the software. Since February of 2016 I’ve fully enjoyed my Hauptwerk setup, and it’s definitely the ideal home practice solution I was looking for. Attila at Classic Organs was very helpful in starting to acquire the hardware, keyboards, pedalboard etc. If you’re looking to get into Hauptwerk, I’d highly recommend going to http://midiworks.ca, and checking out what they have to offer.

We always like a good product "hack"! Jerry and Nick have done a great job of taking some basic products and customizing them by fabricating some new, innovative parts.

If you're in the Portland Maine area and need help installing MIDIWorks products or if you need some fine wood work done, contact Nick Orso Organ Service at (207) 774-2702.