Motown Hammond sound - Need help!

[musicbysterling]

A week from today, I have a sub gig with a band that features 3 ladies in front all dressed up to imitate the Motown vibe. I’ve got the charts, .mp3s and set list in place and now am spending my time creating the sounds as best I can on my rig. What’s stumping me is trying to approximate the drawbar setting that I’m generally hearing in a majority of the tunes they’re doing. All I’ve got so far is a no Leslie sound with what I believe is some sort of vibrato setting. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

[musicbysterling]

Oh, I forgot to mention that my organ sound is  coming from my Nord Stage 3C

[nadroj]

That’s a fairly broad question! Would be helpful to have a couple of audio examples via YouTube 

[Jim Alfredson]

Yes, specific tunes would help.

[SamuelBLupowitz]

As stated above, it's hard to know without hearing specific tunes. What may or may not come in handy is the Al Green drawbar setting, which I find myself reaching for with a lot of soul-oriented material: 880000880 (the first two and last two dark-colored drawbars). Throw a little reverb and maybe some C3 chorus on there and you've got a warm, hollow, funky, almost spooky organ sound.

[Docbop]

Motown had two basic sound eras the Detroit sound with Earl Van Dyke organ then the Hollywood era using lots of studio musicians.   

[musicbysterling]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UGJQPkfwlAc

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A9MwPMHEjNM

 

[musicbysterling]

One more...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7bw9xSwibLI

 

[mate stubb]

For starters, not no leslie, rather a stopped leslie.

[mynameisdanno]

I'd keep the Leslie sim on, but stopped.  If you don't do a stopped Leslie, at least use one of the amp sims.  You'll want some high end roll off for sure, the uncut organ engine will be a little too brutal.  

 

C3 vibrato, and some reverb.  Spring reverb would be ideal if you wanna get ambitious and route the organ to a separate output to run it through a spring reverb pedal.  

 

For drawbars, I'd start with something like 670000003, or 667800003 as a starting point.  Pull out a handful of higher drawbars for the punchier hits; the Cmi-Dmi hits at the end of each chorus sound pretty close to full organ to me.  Just monkey around with 'em, don't worry too much about finding "the" "right" setting.  What sounds right will vary depending on how the other instruments are sounding, the room, etc.

[obxa]

Did the legends of Motown revue for a while and some serious homework for the 25-30 songs in the show with songs by all the girl and guy groups. 

One of my go-to patches was a vibes -piano-wulir layer thing on the bottom board, and strings/organ/bells glock  combi on my Nord stage compact.  I'd mix layers as needed.  I use similar patches for girl group stuff with the Crystals and Marvelettes (who I still work with).

 

RE organ:  Usually had a split Bells/strgs on RH  organ on LH side, and  with basic 680 kinda thing on the 3 lower bars with some top bars pulled out to taste,  C3 or C2 vib  and not too  heavy on leslie  or none at all  (except for some of the Temptations stuff or "Dancing in the streets"  which was more heavy organ stuff).  On stuff like you posted-   I used less of the 1st drawbar to have a little less bass than normal, and treat the organ more of a pad on some songs.  Even though I always cram with original recordings- I tend to always adjust patches with live band it always ends up  sounding different.  I was happy  they did that show in the original keys. 

 

Docbop can correct me- I think Jack Ashford was the Motown vibes tambourine guy?   After dissecting those songs, Vibes ended up being most crucial part of keyboard parts on a ton of that stuff. 

 

edited for spelling!

 

[TommyRude]

Just an observation - the OP is getting some excellent advice in this thread!  Shout out to MPN and the great KC community!

[Analogaddict]

I did a couple of Motown gigs some years ago. I agree with everyone above, the Vibes are very important, Hammond actually not so prominent. Check out “Shotgun” if You haven’t already.
In the ‘old’ Motown era, they had very limited monitoring in the studio and I believe many of the arrangements are the way they are so that everyone could hear themselves and everybody else clearly. Here’s a link to a great documentary on The Funk Brothers..!   

 

 

[skipeb3]

Yes... Jack Ashford on Tamborine. (Tambo with a head) Haven't seen the film "Standing In The Shadows..." in a while, but I believe he was also on vibes.

[stoken6]

Standing in the Shadows is a must-see for any musician. 
 

Cheers, Mike

[yannis D]

You can start from some classic 88800000, 00865000 settings and improvise.

After all, Hammond drawbars are one of the few freedom(s) left to keys players in cover bands-i think you could take some liberties and move them accordingly to your taste and the band loudness

Just my two pennies 

[Jim Alfredson]

My understanding is that they had a B3 in Studio A. I don’t know if they had a Leslie or not but those YouTube examples either have the Leslie on stop or the organ is played through a tone cabinet.

As far as drawbar settings, my guess would be they are using presets. Look up the standard factory presets for both the upper and lower manual of a B3 and try them. I think you’ll find one that fits perfectly. They probably did this for replication purposes. Easier to replicate a sound if its just a preset.

For example, on Stop! In The Name of Love, that sounds like preset A on the upper manual (Full Swell) with Vibrato 1. Whereas Set Me Free sounds like preset A on the lower manual (Full Great; pretty much the same but slightly more upper drawbars) with Vibrato 2 on.

The Mary Wells track is using two different sounds. At the beginning my guess is Johnny Griffith is using the Upper manual with preset A again. During the verses, he switches to the Lower manual and it sounds like preset Gb, Open Diapson. Both have Vibrato 2 on.

 

[KuruPrionz]

I spent 2 years playing in a Motown cover band. We had 2 male lead singers and 2 male backup singers, no female singers. So we probably did a different set of songs than you get to play. 

It's fun, people love Motown, some of the best "ear worm" music ever written. 

 

When I passed the audition, the keyboard/BL gave me a complete list of sets in order with all the songs - lyrics and chords. First gig was 10 days later so the book was very helpful, I kept it on a music stand stage right and it got me through as I learned. 

 

The first serious thing the BL told me was "We will never sound just like the records, we have 4 players in the band and 2 singers up front. Just learn the signature licks, play what you think sounds good and we'll be fine." Spot on and pretty "real world". Unless you have percussionists, multiple keys and guitars, a MONSTER bassist (we did have that!), a choir, strings, horns, etc. you won't get the sound on the records. Catch the groove, sing the choruses and you'll fill the dance floor with happy people. That's what we did and it worked every time. 

[Bill H.]

1 hour ago, Jim Alfredson said:

My understanding is that they had a B3 in Studio A. I don’t know if they had a Leslie or not but those YouTube examples either have the Leslie on stop or the organ is played through a tone cabinet.

Yeah I can't remember ever hearing a Leslie spin on those early Tamla-Motown 45s, and as a kid a devoured these things because they were 10c in jukebox cutout bins. I always assumed it was hooked up to a PR-40. Love to be proved wrong though. 

[AWkeys]

I play in a Motown tribute, and a lot of my organ stuff is on stopped Leslie (or Ventilator)  with C3 vibrato. Then you wind it up into fast for dramatic effect. Sounds great!

 

[obxa]

By sad irony RIP Mr. Lamont Dozier, who passed away last night.

  Of Holland-Dozier-Holland , who penned so many Motown hits. 14 number 1's.!

[skipeb3]

Jim, the pics I've seen of the Snake Pit show a B with white Leslie switch enclosures...two if my memory serves me correct. One for a main/echo, and one for speed I'm assuming.