My First Time On Organ!

[Theo Verelst]

You'd never get the tube+analog pedal+amp+cabinet at all at the level of simulation of the Nord I suppose is at hand. Then again, a lot of organ players to me don't sound like they should IMO.

 

The new digis can do steady sine waves with power in the amps, that interesting, but those blessed full Hammond sounds don't even come from the most elaborate emulations out there, except a bit, so it's a bit difficult to say what's right and wrong, I'm affraid. On a good home organ, or decent theatre organ from the right time/brand, you'll know when you used the pedal right, it's obvious once you learn not to pump., and have musical feelings enough. But on most modern stereos and PAs, they don't sound good to begin with, neither do a lot of Hammond recordings, so I don't think it's right to directly compare.

 

T.

 

[MushMusic]

The accents are more of a product of articulation. When the notes of a melody are held longer than the others, the line pops right out.

 

An old rule of thumb, for every 3 hours of practice on the piano, do 1 on the organ.

 

For those that are right handed, using your left foot on the swell frees up your good foot for pedal playing.

 

Another drawbar setting combo is to set both sets so each keyboard plays an octave transposed apart, gets you a little more range.

 

Use one of the settable preset keys to find what setting you like. Then save it to one of the other preset keys by moving the jumper wires inside to the screws that match the drawbar setting you found.

[WesG]

With the jazz organ vs. piano thing -- may I suggest that you may simply not yet be experienced enough to perceive all of the nuances.

 

That pretty much describes my entire life. Every year I spend practicing, I discover that I have more to learn than I did a year ago.

[WesG]

PS - listen to some tracks by McDuff, McGriff, Groove Holmes, Jimmy Smith, Joey D and Dr. Lonnie Smith.

 

Lonnie Smith is possibly the most interesting for the purposes of this discussion. The man is the Master of Timbre.

[Jazzwee]

With the jazz organ vs. piano thing -- may I suggest that you may simply not yet be experienced enough to perceive all of the nuances.

 

That pretty much describes my entire life. Every year I spend practicing, I discover that I have more to learn than I did a year ago.

 

As I expected, I will be misunderstood. I'm hoping that even now I can hear nuances.

 

Being pianists, I do expect that we're trained to listen to the nuances of dynamics, touch, tone, phrasing, etc. So at least I'm not starting from scratch here.

 

I can understand that a beginner on piano will bang because he (a) doesn't have the control yet, and (b) can't hear the difference.

 

On organ, I can hear the nuances because I just translate the intent on piano with phrasing and articulation. I'm just observing what can be done. For example, in jazz piano, there's accenting on notes. And controlling dynamics even within a short phrase to increase the legato effect.

 

I can see that in organ it's a different animal but not as difficult technically speaking. Again, I'm talking neuromuscular control here.

 

I was just practicing using the percussion and I can see how one can vary the effect by playing staccato. It's really cool and I have to train my brain differently to choose from a collection of effects. As an example, it doesn't take any extra skill on my part to switch from legato to staccato since that exists on both instruments and something hopefully one practices.

 

Now picking what's tasteful for the moment, and picking the right tone, percussion style, swell effect, etc. is obviously a daunting task but seems more intellectual than physical.

 

In other words, my sense is that a B3 is more Math and a piano is more Philosophy....something like that.

 

Of course many of the physical elements are the same since you have to play the same notes. But I'm only focusing on what I perceive to be differences.

 

 

 

 

[CEB]

....

And as far as the piano being harder (or not), I'm talking specifically about neuro-muscular control. From a "thinking" point of view (responding with the ear to shape the sound), I understand that both are equally complex but the response on one is controlling the machine, vs. controlling your own nervous system.

 

Again, I'm not speaking of this as if it were a negative. I'm just analyzing this as a positive because it becomes more attainable and not something you have to develop from 8 years of age.

 

I agree with a lot of this. I find a lot of organ stuff more difficult because I've played piano since I was itty bitty little guy. Never played a Hammond until I was 20 or 21. I spent a lot more years honing piano. Once I was out of college and gigging real developmental practice dropped a lot as gigging became a larger piece of the allocated time.........But around here I am considered a Hammond guy. I guess because there are few of us around here.

 

However I'm with you, If someone wanted to be a jazz pianist and that person's clone wanted to be a jazz organist I think the piano student is presented with more challenges. Due to things like you say....

 

- Using touch to try to "play between the cracks". How you alter the sound of piano voicings and character by playing individual notes with different velocities/pressure within the SAME chordal structures. Especially if you compare that to playing a Hammond clone without the individual key contacts Even with the key contacts the speed of your keying only creates very subtle changes when compared to altering piano velocities.

 

- Jazz Piano vocabulary is super huge. To me Jazz organ vocabulary seems to be ultra heavy on the blues. If you want to be a general Jazz Pianist with a complete repertoire there is a lot more to learn.

 

[Jazzwee]

Whew CEB! Someone agrees

 

Now fortunately, I don't have to be intimidated by learning Jazz piano. So that portion is being handled.

 

I just have to concentrate on developing the skills that are different.

 

In line with this, what does a B3 player have on the woodshed list, particularly related to technique skills? (I already know about LH bass work but it's not big on the list since i have a bass player). So far, I haven't noticed too much difference in voicings other than possibly less notes.

 

Articulation, rhythmic stabs and such, and phrasing seems to be a very big thing. Though I don't know how to organize this into a woodshed plan yet.

 

I can't imagine that I have to concern myself with things like scales and Hanon and such since that's part of piano practice.

 

So far, my practice on the clonewheel has been to just actually play tunes. But it's not a very organized plan. When I practice jazz piano, I always have a specific thing I'm working on.

 

And for the Jazz organists here, am I obligated to play the organ is a blues style?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[TrapperJack]

JazzWee, both piano and organ will take all the time, thought and energy you can give them.

 

Jim Alfredson is in the best handful of organists out there today, and, at this stage of your playing, I encourage you to give some thought to what he wrote in this thread, particularly about "thin out voicings" and about articulation and the swell pedal (how to use dynamics to give life to your playing).

 

Many other good insights in this thread, so come back to it every couple of months and re-read it.

 

Excellence on an organ or on a piano takes a lifetime.

[steve campito]

Jazzwee,

There is a technique to using a swell pedal, turning up for a solo, making it softer when needed and also using it for expression when needed. It is something you will get used to and I suggest watching other players and see how they use it. There is no right or wrong, I just find it frustrating when you hear a great solo but the player is keeping tempo with the swell and you can't hear what he's trying to do.

[Theo Verelst]

A thing that comes to mind when talking about generalities, is that most organs use tonewheel or a more or less equivalent "top oscillator+dividers" idea, which, very contrary to the piano, means the phases of the tones are fixed and continuously running. So you press a chord down, you essentially are to deal with it that that will happen somewhere in the turning cycle of the tonewheels. Some listening, and you can recognize it, especially in the lowest regions where a third still works. The effect of this could be you're forcing the band to play "in phase", as in motoring along with the tone-wheel phases, which is something playing style, drawbar settings in lower an upper manual simulation (if the synth can do this differently), percussion and expression can escape a bit from.

 

It's like when putting chords down, the dynamics of the tube amp are influenced by how much "click" you are causing with the keys being struck (i.e. what is the actual point of the wave per key in terms of the amplitude of the signal compared with the maximum amplitude). That's a part of the difficulty of finding out jazz and blues chords+timing that come across as "working", and it also influences how scales sound.

 

if the machine pretty much has a simple tube amp simulation, and the connection with the pedal isn't direct, it isn't all too useful to try to find a great blues sound to begin with, it isn't expressive enough to just have added sines, all the more if they sound a bit wee. I mean that's like waiting a lifetime for what's not possible to happen... There are some demos from the big clones that appeared here and can be found on youtube that show what cunning players can do with those, which is ok, but even the big clones aren't very juicy-sounding in the blues register. Some examples (like from Jim) with an actual analog organ, preferably the well known Hammonds, will make easily clear what sound not to expect all too much, or you're being managed into a disappointment.

 

T.

[Brettymike]

JazzWee, both piano and organ will take all the time, thought and energy you can give them.

 

Jim Alfredson is in the best handful of organists out there today, and, at this stage of your playing, I encourage you to give some thought to what he wrote in this thread, particularly about "thin out voicings" and about articulation and the swell pedal (how to use dynamics to give life to your playing).

 

Many other good insights in this thread, so come back to it every couple of months and re-read it.

 

Excellence on an organ or on a piano takes a lifetime.

 

Of course , you don't really have to wait till the end of your life to excel at anything , far from it. Otherwise all the best artists worth hearing or seeing would be aging dinosaurs.

 

Brett

[JMcS]

With tongue firmly in cheek:

 

Hammond B3:

Arrange 2 sets of drawbars for each manual and set pedal drawbars.

 

Set Percussion, Leslie speed, C/V

 

Start playing - 1 and possibly 2 feet on pedals, one foot on Expression pedal, left hand on lower manual playing chords or bass (along with pedals) right hand on upper manual playing melody, comping etc.

 

While playing melody with right hand plan and adjust upper and lower manual drawbars with left hand (while playing bass with pedals) change Leslie speed. turn Perc./ C/V on/off. All while keeping train of thought on melody and don't lose the beat.

 

While playing chords/bass with left hand and emphasis bass with feet, adjust upper and lower manual drawbars, change Perc/C/V etc. All while maintaining train of thought and don't lose the beat.

 

While everything is set, play left hand bass, switch to LH chords, pedal bass or tap pedals, right hand melody, right hand chords on upper or lower manual. Plan next setup adjustments. All while maintaining train of thought and don't lose the beat.

 

And so on.

 

Playing piano:

 

Sit down

 

Bang on keys.

 

[Michael Wright]

Playing piano:

Sit down

Bang on keys.

[Jazzwee]

With tongue firmly in cheek:

 

Hammond B3:

Arrange 2 sets of drawbars for each manual and set pedal drawbars.

 

Set Percussion, Leslie speed, C/V

 

Start playing - 1 and possibly 2 feet on pedals, one foot on Expression pedal, left hand on lower manual playing chords or bass (along with pedals) right hand on upper manual playing melody, comping etc.

 

While playing melody with right hand plan and adjust upper and lower manual drawbars with left hand (while playing bass with pedals) change Leslie speed. turn Perc./ C/V on/off. All while keeping train of thought on melody and don't lose the beat.

 

While playing chords/bass with left hand and emphasis bass with feet, adjust upper and lower manual drawbars, change Perc/C/V etc. All while maintaining train of thought and don't lose the beat.

 

While everything is set, play left hand bass, switch to LH chords, pedal bass or tap pedals, right hand melody, right hand chords on upper or lower manual. Plan next setup adjustments. All while maintaining train of thought and don't lose the beat.

 

And so on.

 

Playing piano:

 

Sit down

 

Bang on keys.

 

 

LOL!!!

[Jazzwee]

 

In addition, vintage Hammonds also had the drawbar tones drop a little in volume when Normal Percussion was on to give the percussion thwack more prominence. Hammonds (and others) have the ability to set that volume drop at on or two levels or not drop at all.

 

McGriff and others modified their Hammonds to bypass that drop. It's nice you can do this on a per-patch basis on the Hammond digital organs. I've been trying to get the McGriff tone on my SK the last couple of days and I'm getting close using a combination of EQ / overdrive / the percussion mod.

 

Just want to understand differences here. On my clonewheel, the drop happens on 3rd harmonic. No drop otherwise. So that's the typical unmodified behavior on a real B3?

 

BTW - now that I understand this, it's really nice how I can use it to change articulation. Been playing with it for a bit today.

[mate stubb]

Jazzwee, it sounds like you don't quite have it yet.

 

On a real console Hammond, if you set the percussion to Soft, the volume of the REST of the tones stay the same.

 

If you set the percussion volume to Normal, the volume of the REST of the tones drops, thereby making the percussion sound relatively louder.

 

Many organists don't like their drawbars wimping out when using loud percussion, so the mod the organ to prevent this.

[Jazzwee]

OK Moe, I think I get it. On the NE4, the volume drop is not so noticeable especially on the 2nd harmonic (couldn't hear it at first). And slightly more pronounced on the 3rd harmonic. So I guess this clonewheel is designed not to wimp out.

[Jazzmammal]

And for the Jazz organists here, am I obligated to play the organ is a blues style?

 

Absolutely not but I'm sure you know jazz is blues based. You can play anything you want on organ. Every jazz master anybody can name will play the absolute crap out of the blues if they need to. Joey D is the best modern example of that. He certainly can wail on the blues with the best of them but lots of his stuff is pure East Coast jazz.

 

Barbara Dennerlein is another. Check this, she is tearing this up and there's several good shots of her feet, this time don't watch the bass pedals watch her right foot, you can see lots of expression pedal work:

 

 

Mike LeDonne is another one. He's pure jazz, I've not heard him do any blues. I didn't know he was a killer organist until he did some organ Real Tracks for Band In A Box a few years ago. He's very well known as a pianist so there's another one who's a master of both instruments. Here's a couple clips of him:

 

 

 

I really dig LeDonne the second clip is amazing, not much blues there. I suspect he decided to do some organ stuff because jazz organ has definitely made a comeback in the last ten years. I don't know his history but he sounds like he's played B3 his whole life.

 

Bob

[zephonic]

Timely thread.

 

I have never paid much attention to the organ side of things, and even today I'm not all that hot for Jazz organ.

 

But since I have started doing church gigs, I am really falling in love with Gospel-style organ. I am yet to lay hands on the real thing, though. For now I'm just trying to approximate the sounds on my humble Fantom.

 

Church players really approach harmony differently. It is not as deep as Jazz perhaps, but man, they make it sound rich. I really want to get on top of that.

 

[MorayM]

Playing piano:

 

Sit down

 

Bang on keys.

 

 

Open lid?

 

Being a Hammond noob I really don't have much else to add to this thread, except that it's given me some major inspiration to work on my organ chops!

[Threadslayer]

Now this is a good thing as far as I'm concerned as getting that refinement to control each note like Keith Jarrett below is obviously beyond the reach of a lifetime for me.

 

A beautiful rendition of a lovely tune. Just to crosspost for a moment (Why Americans don't like jazz thread), I wish that Jarrett would play straight ahead stuff like this more often. I think it would make his music more attainable to a wider audience.

[Jim Alfredson]

Larry Goldings and Sam Yahel both eschew obvious blues influences in their Hammond playing (for the most part).

 

Another is Dan Wall.

 

[Jazzwee]

Larry Goldings and Sam Yahel both eschew obvious blues influences in their Hammond playing (for the most part).

 

Another is Dan Wall.

 

 

Awesome Jim! Thanks for revealing some new names. I've been watching the more often mentioned names and thought there was some stylistic limitation tied to the instrument.

 

I can relate to modal.

 

I've been hunting down Larry Goldings since yesterday but he doesn't have a lot of organ videos on YT. At least one showed his use of expression pedal and it was surprisingly subdued.

[Jazzwee]

And for the Jazz organists here, am I obligated to play the organ is a blues style?

 

Absolutely not but I'm sure you know jazz is blues based. You can play anything you want on organ. Every jazz master anybody can name will play the absolute crap out of the blues if they need to. Joey D is the best modern example of that. He certainly can wail on the blues with the best of them but lots of his stuff is pure East Coast jazz.

 

Barbara Dennerlein is another. Check this, she is tearing this up and there's several good shots of her feet, this time don't watch the bass pedals watch her right foot, you can see lots of expression pedal work:

 

 

Mike LeDonne is another one. He's pure jazz, I've not heard him do any blues. I didn't know he was a killer organist until he did some organ Real Tracks for Band In A Box a few years ago. He's very well known as a pianist so there's another one who's a master of both instruments. Here's a couple clips of him:

 

 

 

I really dig LeDonne the second clip is amazing, not much blues there. I suspect he decided to do some organ stuff because jazz organ has definitely made a comeback in the last ten years. I don't know his history but he sounds like he's played B3 his whole life.

 

Bob

 

Again, appreciated. I don't play much blues when I do jazz. Separate realms for me so I can't relate necessarily to the overuse of blues cliches among the more familiar B3 players.

 

I think this also means some organ techniques/licks are not common in non-blues styles. Correct me if I'm wrong here. Well slides are obvious but the more common one I hear are those licks in thirds.

 

 

 

[mate stubb]

Think of using the expression pedal for crescendos, sforzandos, and decrescendos within lines - like a horn player uses breath control.

[Jazzwee]

Think of using the expression pedal for crescendos, sforzandos, and decrescendos within lines - like a horn player uses breath control.

 

Thanks Moe. Instinctively I knew this. But what is not clear, from lack of experience, is the range. I'm noticing that the A-List players aren't going from 0-100. Maybe 20%? Am I observing this right?

[mate stubb]

Right, keep it subtle.

[Jazz+]

Just for fun, Don Pullen doing his multi-swiping (1:15) on organ while playing off of a "Charlie Chan" chart the whole time. (John Scofield guitar). "Charlie Chan" based on the changes of a famous Parker tune.

 

[video:youtube]

[Jazzwee]

LH and foot were burning with that bass line. Wow. Too much to think about.

[Jazz+]

I assume the left foot was just thumping on the same drone note while the LH walked. 'Confirmation' chord changes.