
“Hearing” the Hammond Organ - mr_golyadkin
https://nmbx.newmusicusa.org/hearing-the-hammond-organ/
======
filoeleven
I was surprised by the article. I thought it would be about at least one of
two things: the Hammond B3 tonewheel organ, or the Leslie rotary speaker that
it’s been almost invariably paired with for half a century.

The B3 itself lets a player adjust the harmonics of the sound on the fly,
shifting from a thick meaty sound to any number of thin reedy or subdued
sounds with a single half-instinctual shove. The B3 is all over the place,
from gospel to rock to radio plays. You’ll know it when you hear it even if
you can’t name it.

And the Leslie. Oh, the Leslie. I heard it referred to as “a uniquely American
design,” with a woofer aimed downward at a curved wooden wedge and a treble
horn for the high frequencies, each piece rotating in opposite directions,
throwing sound around a room and affecting the volume and frequencies of the
organ in pleasing and interesting ways.

Lots of people have spent lots of time trying to recreate this sound in
software, with varying degrees of success. My favorite example (real or
simulated, I don’t know) is in Portishead’s “It’s a Fire”[0], since the organ
is the main instrument and they put it through its paces: flipping the Leslie
between its fast and slow modes while pulling the drawbars, and the tonal
structure is wonderfully complex as well.

I think discovering the mechanics of these two things in tandem was part of
what sparked my love of synthesizers and how they can be used to create and
shift musical moods. The tools are a bit different but the fundamental idea is
very similar.

[0] [https://youtu.be/7Y26KpgZknY](https://youtu.be/7Y26KpgZknY)

~~~
jeffwass
Just thought I’d point out that pipe organs do a similar thing about
controlling harmonics.

But the corresponding control for each drawbar on the Hammond is basically a
binary switch instead of a quasi-continuous control.

Further each individual pipe has its own harmonics and timbre while the
Hammond tonewherls produce nearly (but not exactly) sinusoidal waveforms.

Fancier pipe organs had multiple pipes at each harmonic. Eg, pipes that
mimicked brass or woodwind instruments. This is why pipe organ consoles can be
huge and cluttered with tons of switches. The Hammond simplified all that and
let you adjust harmonics directly with a quasi-continuum via the drawbars.

With the onset of jazz and rock in the 60’s, the Hammond’s unique sound became
highly sought after. The so-called “Hammond Growl” through its tube amps, it’s
own analog chorus and vibrato unit, the external rotating Leslie speaker’s
effects, and even the “key click”.

When the 70’s came along, pop tastes shifted to newer synthesisers and the
last of the B3’s from the assembly line languished at organ dealers.

------
phasetransition
As someone who has nearly two decades moonlighting experience as a live sound
mixer, stories like this remain a reminder at how bad humans are in general at
hearing.

These two instruments are both great, but the Hammond is no analog for a pipe
organ. Neither in tone nor the way it interacts with room acoustics. It's
fascinating that this could even be a plausible discussion.

You can improve your hearing markedly with practice. I didn't start with
"golden ears" but have improved a great deal even as my ears age. But many of
my worst days behind a mixing desk got the most positive response from the
general audience.

~~~
tirrit
What do you mean, humans are bad at hearing? Most humans have great eardrums.
Isn't hearing subjective, and dependent on the goal you are "hearing for"?

What do you mean with golden ears? Do you mean perfect pitch? The ability to
hear what is not intended by the sound source to be there?

~~~
phasetransition
I'm not speaking of the sensor, but rather the meat computer interpreting it.

Things you can train for include: being sensitive to minute changes in
level/frequency/time, picking one source out of many, precisely placing items
spatially in stereo, listening for specific types of audio artifacts.

Golden ears could include perfect pitch, but in the production context pp
might be translated to a specific frequency, rather than a note.

~~~
mojomark
> I'm not speaking of the sensor, but rather the meat computer interpreting
> it.

I don't know what rock I've been living under, but that's the first time I've
heard the brain referred to as a 'meat computer'. What an image! In any event,
a quick search surprisingly didn't turn up any Wikipedia page, bit mostly
pages (e.g. 1) denouncing the idea of the brain as a meat computer,
associating it with the flailing concept of phrenology (designating regions of
the brain as controllers of specific tasks).

I'm not a neuroscientist, but based on all of the pieces of evidence
describing brain function I've consumed over the years, it seems obvious to me
that the meaty neurons brain to appear to be 'computing'.

1\. [https://mindmatters.ai/2018/08/the-brain-is-not-a-meat-
compu...](https://mindmatters.ai/2018/08/the-brain-is-not-a-meat-computer/)

------
dpeck
You have to watch Booker T Jones Tiny Office Concert,
[https://www.npr.org/2011/05/02/135840639/booker-t-jones-
tiny...](https://www.npr.org/2011/05/02/135840639/booker-t-jones-tiny-desk-
concert), if you want to see what a real master of the Hammond can do.

~~~
innocentoldguy
Keith Emerson made a pretty good name for himself playing and stabbing knives
into his Hammond organ as well.

~~~
KozmoNau7
Specifically he used the knives to hold down keys for sustained tones. At
least one of his knives was a Hitlerjugend knife, given to him by Lemmy
Kilmister.

~~~
jeffwass
A common trick with jazz organists back in the day was to slip a matchbook
between the top of depressed keys and bottom of underpasses keys as a sustain,
usually done on a high octave of the key as a drone.

------
fuzzfactor
You can tell a lot about a culture by their instruments.

It helps to really look deeply.

When Hewlett & Packard were strongly involved with the design & production of
their legendary instruments these were some of the most well-designed,
advanced, high-performance, purpose-fulfilling, and amazingly reliable long-
lasting electronics in history.

When Hammond was strongly involved with his it was even better.

I've got a Hammond amplifier built in 1948, sounds like heaven. There's no
need to repair or replace any components yet since it's only 2019.

Seemed inspired like Edison or DaVinci.

And a benevolent capitalist not a greedy one, after starting a growing company
based only on an insignificant amount of one's potential IP there can be a lot
of confidence when there's plenty more where that came from.

Chapter X - The Tickless Clock, Teleview, and the "Classified" Patent
[http://thehammondorganstory.com/chapterx.asp](http://thehammondorganstory.com/chapterx.asp)

------
8bitsrule
I was amazed when I first heard about the existence of the seldom-heard-of
Hammond Novachord. First produced in 1938, it's one of the earliest polyphonic
sound synths ... 25 years before the first (mono) Moog appeared.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novachord](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novachord)

[http://novachord.co.uk/](http://novachord.co.uk/)

Of course that was in the days before transistors ... and so it used 163
vacuum tubes (and 1000 capacitors). VCAs, bandpass filters, LFOs and on....
Only 1000 were made before the war shut down production; there are only a few
dozen left it seems.

------
throwaway8879
Great read. I love the Hammond sound. Joey DeFrancesco[0] is an amazing organ
player, whom I instantly fell in love with while listening to him featured on
Pat Martino's "Live at Yoshi's"[2] record. I think it's my favorite live album
ever, or at least up there. Martino's playing is on another level.

I think Martino is still touring. His 70s jazz-fusiony records were amazing.
My favorite are probably his post-break records in the late 90s. Those licks
are impossible to play. And forget about improvising that way...

[0] -
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uhFIupVoVKc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uhFIupVoVKc)
[1] -
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oyJJltEhvkc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oyJJltEhvkc)

------
dano
Lest we forget the Queen of the Hammond Organ, Ethel Smith, playing Tico Tico
[1] in the film Bathing Beauty (1944).

1\.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tXrnuwZreHg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tXrnuwZreHg)

------
ggm
Love leslies. Wish more bands were using them.

Al Kooper "like a rolling stone"

Billy Preston.

Miles Davis/Cedric Lawson "rated x"

and of course, "green onions" Booker T and the MGs...

------
nitrogen
I wonder if the sound of the pipe organ can be reproduced from the harmonic
plot: [https://nmbx.newmusicusa.org/hearing-the-hammond-
organ/figur...](https://nmbx.newmusicusa.org/hearing-the-hammond-
organ/figure-16a/)

~~~
eric_jankowski
The harmonic content of a sound is a big component of how we hear it, but the
articulation over time of the sound also plays a significant role. This is
referred to as the ADSR (Attack Decay Sustain Release) envelope. I would also
imagine that each harmonic of a sound has its own slightly different ADSR
envelope, so that harmonic profile would change over the duration of the
sound.

~~~
TheOtherHobbes
Not just that, but every note has a different spectrum, and the spectrum
evolves in a different way.

Instruments with dynamics - not a pipe organ, unless you include the swell
pedal or some of the dynamic effects, like tremulant - the spectrum also
varies with dynamics.

So generally, no, you can't accurately reproduce a sound with a single plot of
the harmonics.

I'm more curious about how the physicist worked out a spectral plot by hand
before sampling and FFTs were invented and oscilloscopes were barely a thing.

I'd guess he sketched the waveform from a scope plot, broke it down into
points by hand, and performed a manual DFT - which must have taken quite a
while.

~~~
jeffwass
Frequency Analyzers have been around nearly as long as oscilloscopes.
Basically they’ll sweep a band pass filter and plot amplitude vs frequency on
the screen.

Also - you can reproduce a sound by the frequency domain IF you look at the
time progression of it.

Some Hammond Organs intentionally had a percussion control where the 3nd or
3rd harmonic would decay over time, giving the instrument timbre a bit of a
pop.

------
exabrial
Ironic these things go for quite a bit of money now and are sought after by
musicians.

~~~
adrianmonk
Well, certainly unexpected, but some things are just good and become a
classic. And yes, they do go for thousands of dollars.

In the case of the Hammond, it seems to be mostly by accident. They were just
trying to create a cheaper version of a pipe organ, in effect.

The tone wheels made it possible.

The drawbars allow changing the timbre in a lot of ways, which makes the
instrument expressive and configurable. You can adjust the timbre while
playing a note! Sort of like using a mute on a trumpet, only more
combinations.

The keys make a satisfying percussive click when played, which is also
expressive. A Hammond player told me once this click was not intentional (the
designers viewed it as a bug), but it helps give the instrument a nice attack,
which helps make the starting of the notes apparent to the listener and allows
the instrument to be used rhythmically.

The Leslie rotating speaker was an attempt to create some of the acoustic
ambiance of pipe organs. (Which is amazing, by the way. The instrument
literally surrounds you in some cases. It's like centuries-old surround sound.
Not to mention the rich acoustics of a church hall, which is built to
encourage reverberation so that the audience could hear an orator in the days
before amplification.) But the Leslie speaker's rotation adds not only spatial
effects but also doppler. And the speed of rotation can be changed, so you can
make the sound tenser or more mellow by varying the speed. So it's great for
expression as well.

Incidentally, a lot of other instruments achieved greatness by accident.
Resonator guitars (Dobro, National Guitar, etc.) were made in an attempt to
get more volume, but they ended up having a unique sound. Electric guitars
were made for more volume too, but they opened up an entire new world of
tones, as well as different playing styles due to lighter strings. The
stereotypical distortion effect on electric guitars (that give them their
aggressive "bite") came about because guitar amplifiers just didn't have
enough power. The vocoder was developed for speech synthesis and telecom, but
it found use in music as a way to give a radically different timbre to a human
voice. (Or is it to modulate another instrument's sound to follow the volume
of a human voice? Maybe those mean the same.)

~~~
KozmoNau7
Don't forget the Fender Rhodes electric piano, which doesn't really sound like
a piano at all. It has its own mellow sound, which has become iconic and is a
cornerstone of several genres.

~~~
adrianmonk
Oh yeah, also a good example.

Coincidentally, I just recently discovered Marcin Grochowina's channel
YouTube, where there are several nice Rhodes videos:

[https://www.youtube.com/user/jazzijazzful/videos?flow=list&v...](https://www.youtube.com/user/jazzijazzful/videos?flow=list&view=0&sort=p)

------
kazinator
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q-hl8Xv0MPk&t=2400s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q-hl8Xv0MPk&t=2400s)

------
block_dagger
On my way to see Mad Skillet now. Medeski is an incredible B3 player who
brings out a lot of character from the instrument.

------
anta40
Jon Lord was a big Hammond fan. Love his sound.

