How to Build a Portative Organ

This page describes where to order instructions on how you can build a portative organ for less than $300 (US), including the cost of the instructions, in 50-100 hours.

A 22 note, two octave chromatic instrument with a keyboard

An 8 note, one octave diatonic instrument with a buttonboard

Listen!

A sample of music played on the portative, recorded in RealAudio. (67K)

Don't have a player for RealAudio?
Download it for free!

A Portative Organ (sometimes spelled Portatif Organ) is a small (usually 2 octave) pipe organ that is placed on the lap, pumped with one hand and played with the other. They first showed up about 1100 a.d. and flourished until about 1500 a.d.

Kits are available, but I found them to be far too expensive. This prompted me to do six years of research and build my own portatives based as far as possible on historical accuracy.

Then, to top it off, I "wrote the book". (I have put a short excerpt from the book on-line at http://www.thescholarsgarret.com/research/short_discourse.html)

The book is 60+ pages, with illustrations, and a complete set of measured drawings. It is comb-bound and will easily lie flat. It describes how to build two very different organs:

A 22 note, two octave chromatic instrument with a keyboard; and
An 8 note, one octave diatonic instrument with a buttonboard.

The book also details how to make the organ pipes out of easily available parts and where to order the hard-to-find items.

The book costs $22.90 (US Dollars) plus shipping and handling (calculated by lulu.com, see below). It will be printed and shipped to you by lulu.com, which accepts credit cards and PayPal. Lulu.com also prints in several foreign countries around the world, so shipping costs can be held to a minimum. (Due to lulu.com's pricing schema, the price may vary by a dollar or two either way. I've not been able figure out the full why of it all. Sorry if this price info isn't the same as what lulu asks for.)

In addition to the book, I also have a one hour video that you can download that details the construction and assembly of the organ. It was produced in 1993 and the quality is just a shade above what was (then) "home video", but it is sufficient to communicate the material. The format is "VCD", so you can either burn it to CD (where is should be playable in most recent DVD players) or you can watch it on your computer.

The cost for the video is $10 (US Dollars) payable to me via PayPal. Send me an e-mail at portativethescholarsgarret.com and we'll work out the arrangements.

This book is available through lulu.com's "Print on Demand" service, which accepts credit cards and PayPal:

Questions? Contact me