You Don't Need No Stinkin WalMart...
Hi Judy,
You don't get the simulation programs at a store, silly...just google "virtual organs" on the internet and you will find all sorts of programs out there. There is so much talk o this site about My Organ, that I downloaded it myself yesterday, and had it up and running in two shakes. You can also go to Crumhornlabs.com (it might be crumhornlabs.uk) and download the demo version of Hauptwerk 2. They give you 2 months to play with it and it reproduces cathedral organs such as St. Stefan's in England (which is fab) and also an Open Diapapaison Organ that I really love. (I'm a window rattler when I can play a pipe organ). You can also get demo versions of theater pipe organs, such as the Miditzer from Miditzer.com. That one is way cool. In fact, I called my mom in the states and played some of the samples over the phone for her. All the stops work. If you have a cheap keyboard from WalMart, KMart or Radio Shack, such as a Casio keyboard, all you need to get is a package of MIDI cables to connect your keyboard to your computer.
For Hauptwerk, you'll need a relatively newer and powerful computer, my Dell XPS is a year old, dual processor with 2 Gigs of RAM and I have no problems. External speakers are also an asset. You can get the cables at a music store, Radio Shack or even on Ebay for about $10. Just make sure you get the kind that will fit into your computer. If you have a joystick port on your sound card, they you need one end of the cables to be able to connect to that. If you have a USB port available, then buy MIDI to USB. The MIDI cable end will have 2 plugs, IN and OUT. You hook the MIDI in to the MIDI out on your keyboard and hook the MIDI out to the MIDI in on your keyboard and the other end has only one connector (mine is USB).
If you are as crazy as I am, you'll have about 10 free virtual organs downloaded before you know it. Then you can download MIDI song files from the net for free and play them through these programs and they will sound like you are in a cathedral, a theatre, a ball park, jazz club, pretty much anything.
I have to admit, I'm very new to all this...have only been playing around with this stuff for about a few weeks, but now I started downloading sheet music from the web, most of it for free. The cool thing about MIDI music is, while the music is playing, you will see the keys moving on your computer screen. You can also change to "piano roll view" depending on what other free programs you have downloaded from the internet, and see the musical notes appear as the keys play and learn to play the songs that way. Some programs will even let you print out the sheet music from within the programs.
Just remember one thing...Google is your friend. There is Soooooo much available on the net for free. One example, when I was a little kid (long time ago) one of my favorite classical pieces was Mozart's variations on a theme of twinkle twinkle little star. It's actually called Ah, vous dirar-je maman. It's 12 variations starting from simple to quite complex. After downloading the pianoteq (pianoteq.com) demo version, I googled the song and downloaded it. Then I played it through the concert grand and started to cry as it was so beautiful. If you would like to hear it, I included the sound file.
If I can help you further in your quest, feel free to ask me. You may PM me if you like.
Have a nice night and keep on playing! Stephen