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Jim Miller in his company's tuning room. "T o design pipe organs, you need to know a little bit about absolutely everything," says 65-year-old Jim Miller, owner and designer at the Miller Pipe Organ Co. on Glenmore Industrial Boulevard just east of Louisville International Airport. "You start with a box of whistles, but what you are creating is a sacred space in which music touches people in a profound way." In 1972, the day after he married his wife Ruby, Miller arrived in Louisville to study music at the Southern Baptist Teological Seminary. Tree years later, he started the company that bears his name and is now responsible for the design, construction and service of roughly 350 organs in nine states. "I start planning as soon as I see the space," Miller says, "and then do what my ear and heart tell me to do. Our goal is to help people worship better. Trough music, individuals will become a community, and by granting permission to sing and praise louder, we can turn design into faith." A pipe organ is a complex animal. To begin with, there are hundreds of pipes in four musical families: futes, strings, reeds and principals — the principals being the "organ" sounds that everyone knows. Tere are also percussives such as chimes and xylophones. Pipes may run in height from four inches to 16 feet. Tey can be brass or lead or wood and may come from Louisville or Germany or France. Tere are bellows the size of a refrigerator, and cranks and gears that are a steampunk's dream. Tere is the console and keys and pedals and stops. Each pipe has its own "voice" and "lips" and "mouth." Silent dummy pipes are just for show, exploiting the mechanism's majesty. Te organ can play thousands of musical combinations and mimic instruments from piccolo to tuba, all housed in fne woodwork and cabinetry that afords access for tuning or repair. And that is just the beginning. "It's a puzzle," Miller says. "You are thinking about both sides of the keyboard, and it must last for generations. Good construction honors the makers before us." Louisville has a storied history of pipe-organ manufacturing. Te famous Henry Pilcher's Sons organbuilding company was based in the city from 1874, moving here from Chicago after its Great Fire of 1871. Te shop made some of the world's grandest organs until it closed in 1944. Te design process begins by addressing the fundamental needs of a congregation. A designer like Miller considers a church's acoustic makeup and space availability, addressing the placement of pipes and console with an ear toward the best sound blend within the construction. Te instrument will be built twice — once at the factory, allowing Miller to tune the instrument and work out any bugs; then, after the organ is dismantled and shipped, it is painstakingly reassembled on-site. Tis age-old process explains why there are no nails in pipeorgan construction, which also explains the organ's longevity. If there were ever a need for demolition of the site, the organ can be disassembled and saved. About halfway through the proceedings, Ryan Gof, the woodworking foreman for Miller, begins integrating the organ into a church's architecture. "You are building for a faith; be it Baptist or Catholic, the job will be a little bit diferent," Gof says. "And this construction needs to appear that it has been a part of this building forever. Tese churches place their trust in us to do just that." Te fnishing touch is what is called the "fnal blend." Miller fastidiously tunes the organ for timbre and sound, creating the instrument's unique tonality. "It is the most wonderful moment," he says, "like 15 orchestras coming together. It is when I know my job is done." He tells me that what he wants most is for the organ to embolden a congregation to rise up to their feet and sing loudly and with joy in worship and song. "When you design a pipe organ," he says, "your inspiration is quite simple. Even birds were made to sing to the glory of God." 12.13 LOUISVILLE MAGAZINE 85