Do you get annoyed by sampled Hammond?

[CyberGene]

(Moved from another thread)

I've been listening to a lot of Pink Floyd recently (including Gilmour's solo albums) and thought I would like to create a similar sound in some of my compositions for a project. I've noticed there's often some rather mild Hammond organ sound in the background but to me it doesn't sound like something very prominent, rather soft with no solos or melody lines, only chords that either support/double the other harmonic instruments or playing solo chords (still no impros or solo lines) for a brief moment with Leslie on and off. I don't have a clue about Hammond sound and specifics and since I see people here are really after serious Hammond emulations, my question goes: if I just used my Yamaha CP88 Hammond with the rotary effect on and off, would you be annoyed? 😀 I mean, I have no ears or knowledge about the Hammond sound at all and to me the sampled Hammond sounds good enough but was wondering when/if some of you Hammond gurus heard the CP88 Hammond (or any other rompler Hammond for that matter) in a context similar to that of Pink Floyd, would you think: ughhh, that's unacceptable/nasty/cheesy/ugly...? 😱

[Stokely]

I'm no Hammond expert, having only played a real one (with leslie) a few times, way back when.  It's a favorite sound of mine in recordings though.

I think the first level of people preferring the real thing is the same as with guitarists and their big amps--there's no comparing being right next to the thing.  Many guitarists say playing a modeller is like playing a recording of a guitar, I think that is the same with organ.   That's just a laws of physics I think.

So the real comparison is between recordings of a miked leslie and an organ sim.   I think the sounds have been quite good for quite a while now, for rock and roll at least and especially in a busy mix.   I'd put my ipad playing b-3X up against a real miked leslie, I'd be really interested if, in trying to match sounds, there was a great deal of difference.   (And it must be said that the microphones and expertise of the engineer come into play with miking anything!)

The player makes a bigger difference than the sound I think.  John Medeski could solo using the organ sound from my JX-10 (an analog 80s keyboard) and it would sound great I reckon because he knows how to phrase and is just a killer player.

 

[pinkfloydcramer]

IMO Yamaha succeeded in their goal of making the CP88/73 organs as crappy as possible.  I have found one in my CP73 that is somewhat ok as a pad, but only in the midrange. Fortunately there is just enough room on the top right of the board to put an HX3 module.

 

I don't hate all sampled organ. Loved my EMU B3. The sampled C/V and fast leslie was a little rough solo but was great and ballsy in the mix. In the early 00's I preferred the EMU to the Korg CX3 and Roland VK7 for realistic tone and girth- both of which were much more playable but their sound never did it for me. 

[ProfD]

The short answer to the topic title is "no". 

 

We've been playing and listening to sampled sounds for several decades now. 

 

Some sampled sounds are cheesier than others but a facsimile sound in the hands of the *right* player works just fine.

 

Own and play that sampled sound with a sense of purpose and other musos will follow, like and subscribe.😎

[Steve Nathan]

Yes.

[mate stubb]

Yes, yes, a thousand times yes. Aside from the harmonic beating between notes inherent in sampler engines, percussion and CV will be completely wrong, as will key click.

[skipeb3]

Yes...

[ElmerJFudd]

😂

 

I’m in the mood right about NOW to hear a cover band do Foreplay/Long Time with a Roland U220.  <sigh> takes me back to yesteryear.  Time to hit up eBay to quench my nostalgia for vintage ROMplers.  
 

Where does one go in 2023 to find bands’ wanted ads?  With the World Wide Web it can’t be a printed copy of the local musician’s rag on the desk at your local shop… can it still be?   I feel dated. 

[EricBarker]

Sampled Hammond is totally fine... sampled Leslie is crap. About 50% of all the goto hardware and software B3s out there now run on mini-samples from tonewheels. More advanced ones sample all 9 drawbars, basic patches just sample a few different registrations. Honestly, the result isn't qualitatively much better/worse, it's just more-or-less control over the sound (whether you want drawbars or not). But from the early-90s onward, you get some at least passible Leslie simulators, and that's where the meat lies. Don't sample a Leslie as part of your organ patch, that's just tasteless and pointless. My Alesis QS8 had an actually damned-good Leslie sim in the mid-90s. If they could do it, anything today should be running circles around that low-end rompler.

[Theo Verelst]

Sampled isn't easily satisfactory and has become synonymous with a certain mind set which invites to take sounds for making money and not so much for the pleasure of sounding good, or expressing feelings accurately or in a grand way. Since '90 sampling hasn't been incredibly upgraded, even when computers have the ability to play 10,000 96kS/s samples simultaneously, and a moderately cheap Roland from the era probably wouldn't use more than 16 bits and early "loops".

 

Algorithmically, making an accurate electronics simulation of an e organ is far more involved than sampling the tone wheels, and that is apart from the sample reconstruction issue which puts down many a sampler's tonal quality. Maybe a clone wheel could have been made to work with 9 separate contacts per key when I was still a student, and possibly really smart engineering with the necessary science back then could create some good organ tones when done (scientifically speaking) professionally. Nowadays every effort I've witnessed is scientifically weak or seriously kept dysfunctional in most cases. Maybe muical instrument manufacturers and studio equipment planners do not receive enough funding for certain types of perfection, or some people find the challange lacking.

 

For musicians preferring blondes, maybe times are hard, possibly deeply grand and highly sexy machines are receiving special care, who knows.

 

T

[cphollis]

As above, sample Hammond sounds like sample Hammond, not entirely bad.  A sampled Leslie sounds like angry mud.  A sampled Hammond played through a decent Leslie sim masks many of the sampling artifacts, so better that way.  Note: not dissing ROMplers here at all, I use plenty of samples in my live sound.

[Dave Bryce]

Yes.

 

dB

[GovernorSilver]

I have a couple of keyboards with  Hammond samples.

 

I don't get annoyed by them, or otherwise get emotional over them..  I either have a use for them or i don't.

 

I like the Hammond-like presets on my Korg M3.  I don't claim they will please hardcore clonewheel aficionados.  But for some musical contexts, they're fine.  I was in a band that used a tweaked version of one of those presets because the songwriter/vocalist liked them.

 

As an aside, we had another song that used a modified piano preset.  The songwriter took one of the factory piano presets and played around with the M3 sliders until she got a sound that she liked, because it sounded like one of the heavily processed piano tones on a Nine Inch Nails album.  Her slider manipulation basically introduced quite a bit of LFO modulation and did something to the envelope settings, to get this twisted horror movie piano sound.

[The Real MC]

I'm a Hammond player since 1981.  Sampled Hammond... yeeuck!!!

[Bill H.]

8 hours ago, CyberGene said:

(Moved from another thread)

I've been listening to a lot of Pink Floyd recently (including Gilmour's solo albums) and thought I would like to create a similar sound in some of my compositions for a project. I've noticed there's often some rather mild Hammond organ sound in the background but to me it doesn't sound like something very prominent, rather soft with no solos or melody lines, only chords that either support/double the other harmonic instruments or playing solo chords (still no impros or solo lines) for a brief moment with Leslie on and off.

It's all about context, and in this case I don't think it would annoy me. But you really don't know until you hear it. What Pink Floyd tracks are you listening to that are mixed like this? There's a lot of Pink Floyd experts in this forum, but that's definitely not me!

[RABid]

Put me in the camp that thinks it is the sampled Leslie that kills the sound. For me it is the distortion that is so hard to mimic correctly. 

[Ledbetter]

Hammond emulations are the way to go. Hammond SK or Nord.

[CyberGene]

Thank you for the answers. For info, the CP88 has a rotary simulation effect, so the Leslie is not sampled, though I don’t know whether the effect is any good. I’m not even sure the Hammond sound is sampled in the regular sense. It’s AWM2 underneath, so it’s possible they use clever programming that approaches the sound better through e.g. layering of separate drawbar mini-samples or whatever…

[niacin]

Rick Wright hit a preset key or pulled a few drawbars and left them there, but he spins the Leslie up and down frequently in support of emphasising phrases and dynamics, listen to the vocal sections of Shine on You Crazy Diamond, so even if you have a great sample this is where it’s going to fail you.

[CyberGene]

1 hour ago, niacin said:

Rick Wright hit a preset key or pulled a few drawbars and left them there, but he spins the Leslie up and down frequently in support of emphasising phrases and dynamics, listen to the vocal sections of Shine on You Crazy Diamond, so even if you have a great sample this is where it’s going to fail you.

Yes, that's a good description of what I have noticed about his Hammond playing. I think I may have worded it too lengthily in my first post. So, if I use a rompler Hammond patch with a good rotary effect simulation and I play like Rick Wright, i.e. mostly chords with fixed registration and only spinning the Leslie simulation up and down, is it going to be audibly worse than a proper clonewheel? I mean, Rick isn't known for any organ virtuosity, he's not using jazz organ licks or rock-organ fireworks. And most of the time the organ is there in a pad role.

[niacin]

when you say 'good rotary effect simulation' I think you're at Ventilator or bust: Rick's sound involves some tasty overdrive and spreading the mikes on the top rotor pretty wide, I don't think anything except a Ventilator will get you there, imo, ymmv.

[CyberGene]

21 minutes ago, niacin said:

I don't think anything except a Ventilator will get you there, imo, ymmv.

How about VB3m on an iPad? I see it’s relatively cheap. I also have Apple MainStage and I’ve read its Vintage B3 is not bad either, any opinions?

[niacin]

I’ve always liked VB3 except for the overdrive, definitely better than a rompler. But if you’re prepared to go software there are some really good options.

[Stokely]

B-3x overdrive sounds pretty outstanding to me.    Again, comparing it to a recording of a miked leslie, not an experience in front of a whirling monster.

I picked up a Lester K and I like the overdrive on that too.  Much cheaper than a Vent and maybe not as good, but way better than my Forte's leslies.

I'm guessing that by "sampled" the OP really meant "simulated"?  I don't know of any keyboards or software that sample the leslie as part of the sound anymore.  That doesn't mean the leslies are good by any means on many of them!   On the other side, people seem to think acousticsamples B5 is pretty decent and it uses samples to make the organ tone.  I personally don't get hung up on the tech involved, it just has to sound good and be fun to play.  B-3X makes me want to play it.  If I dial in any organ patch on my Modx, I don't want to play it. 

[Michael Wright]

Yes.  I hear the real thing, and then mine and it's 😐.  The player probably has a lot to do with it also. 

[Dave Bryce]

I frequently find that the most useful ROMpler organ programs are the ones intended to make them sound like a processed organ coming out of a set of studio monitors, typically with a specific tune in mind.  It can be fairly disappointing and revealing to hear what they sound like with the effects stripped away.

 

dB

 

 

[mate stubb]

Warning, long winded post.

 

"Sampled Hammond" can mean several things (let's leave the leslie sim out of the conversation for now.)

- single drawbar sampled

- single tonewheel sampled

- complete organ registration sampled

 

Then you have the sampler engine playback technology itself. 

- general purpose rompler engine

- optimized organ playback engine

 

These can be combined in a few ways.

- single drawbar sampled on GP rompler engine

- complete registration sampled on GP rompler engine

- single tonewheel sampled on optimized playback engine

- modelled tonewheel on optimized playback engine

 

A real Hammond reuses the same tonewheel generator multiple times with different drawbars and note octaves. This means that for every individual pitch that the organ produces, there is no phasiness between multiple uses (example: middle C with an 8' drawbar pulled, and C one octave above with 16' pulled.) The only way to avoid this is to have an organ engine optimized to sample or model individual tonewheels, and reuse those the same way as a real organ.

 

A general purpose rompler engine will play back the example above using two separate notes of polyphony, and depending on the varying start times can produce phasing. When you have a complete organ registration sampled the effect can be even worse, as now the tones are out of tune between the notes. That's because a tonewheel organ does not use strict equal temperament tuning (it's slightly different because each tonewheel has an integral number of notches and the gearing between the different wheels which makes them turn different speeds have an integral number of teeth. The designers didn't have complete freedom to fine tune the temperament.)

 

It's been my experience that playing sampled full organ on a GP rompler engine can produce horrible beating, especially as it interacts with chorus vibrato.

 

So this would be my list in descending order of desirability:

1. virtual tonewheel bank (modelled or sampled) on an organ optimized playback engine. This is what almost all modern organ clones use. The 91 virtual tonewheels are always producing their tones, and are keyed on as needed. This avoids all phasing issues. With this setup, sampled tonewheel vs. modelled tonewheel is a moot point. It's all just code pulling numbers from wavetables (sampled) or calculating points on the fly (modelled). 

 

2. single drawbar on GP rompler playback engine. This can have phasing issues but at least you can create and control your own drawbar settings, subject to the playback engines layer capability. I would want a minimum of 6 layers to reproduce a decent variety of registrations.

 

3. complete registration on GP rompler playback engine. Greatest danger for phasing/beating, no tone sculpting with drawbars.

[CyberGene]

^ Thanks, that's very enlightening for me, I just realized how complex a Hammond organ is indeed. Well, coincidentally I just purchased the VB3m for my iPad since it's so dirt cheap and it's apparent it sounds much more complex and advanced than whatever sampling is used in my CP88. There are some random noises and clicks and whatever that are kinda alive (for lack of understanding what I'm actually hearing...). And I connected it with a single USB cable to the CP88 for MIDI and audio between the two, so it's almost trivial to use it for Hammond duties and so I can consider this discussion finished for me 😀 I see people on this forum praising B3X but it's too expensive (and runs only on iPad whereas I can run VB3m from my iPhone too) and to my ears VB3m is so GOOD I just don't think I will ever outgrow it in any possible way. I believe it's physically modeled.

[mate stubb]

Yes, VB3 is modeled. 

 

If you want to delve into the esoterica of modeling what goes on in a tonewheel organ, look into these topics (most of which have been modeled by VB3 and other sims) :

- loudness robbing 

- resistance wires

- swell pedal behavior 

- key on and key off click 

- key contact bounce / multi contact key dip behavior

- proper mono triggered percussion

[analogika]

It really depends on what you’re doing. 
 

if you’re doing Virtuoso single-note noodling, that’s not going to be much more annoying with a sampled organ unless it’s a *really* shitty sample. 
 

and then, I’d really try to own it and work the fact that it’s *not* a real hammond. Flaunt the plastic, as it were. 
 

if you’re doing Rick-Wright-style pads, that guy’s main talent was really all about sound design and the modulation. A bad imitation will usually be terrible at this, but it can work if either masked well, layered, or, as mentioned worked to the point where it’s very clearly not a Hammond, but that exact sound is indispensable to the point where a real Hammond wouldn’t do it as well (think 80s Prince: lots of synth sounds that are actually more or less crappy “Hammond” imitations but are kind of the signature sounds now).