Organ is both the name for the major, self-contained components of the body, such as the heart, liver, skin, kidneys, brain, as well as for a newspaper or periodical that serves as the voice of an organization. In addition, a number of music instruments have organ in their name, and this article will examine some of those.

Used without modifiers, organ usually refers to a wind instrument with a keyboard and foot pedals. Playing the organ activates pipework to produce sounds in a wide array of timbres, called stops, that are arranged in four standard families: flutes, strings, reeds, and principals. This is the kind of organ that is referred to in the term church organ and the type played in The Phantom of the Opera.

The barrel organ is a mechanical instrument that, in some of its incarnations provide the music in clocks. The barrel organ is usually a small pipe organ, with a pinned wooden barrel turned by a crank to both provide air to the organ and rotate the barrel and its pins across keys that are engaged and, depending on the placement of the pins, play a tune. The bird organ is a type of barrel organ meant to be used with cage birds to encourage them to sing.

The electronic organ is a pipeless keyboard instrument, designed to share many of a pipe organ’s features. They are able to sustain tones, play chords, and crescendo and decrescendo on sustained tones. Many have a choice of timbres, as to pipe organs. An electric organ is an electronic organ that is not completely electronic. It refers to organs in which acoustic sounds are combined with pickups or transducers.

A fairground organ is a mechanical organ that is used on carousels and merry-go-rounds. While the first organs of this type were barrel organs, a mechanism more like a player piano was developed. Reed organ is a generic term for instruments with a keyboard and a reed that vibrates freely. These include accordions, concertinas, and harmonicas, also known as mouth organs. A calliope or steam organ produces sound using a pinned cylinder and steam whistles. It was used on river showboats, and appears in the 1951 version of the movie Showboat.