How does hammond b3 work

Hammond was not interested in marketing or selling the speakers, so Leslie sold them himself as an add-on, targeting other organs as well as Hammond. Leslie made the first speaker in The sound of the organ being played through his speakers received national radio exposure across the US, and it became a commercial and critical success.

It soon became an essential tool for most jazz organists. Although his technique and arrangements were cutting edge, his music was embraced by the public in ways Jazz had not been previously, resulting in many best-selling albums. Even though Jimmy was a huge commercial success, he never compromised his art. There are few Jazz greats that Jimmy did not record or perform with.

You will not find many Organists who do not cite his influence on their playing, regardless of genre. He is perhaps the greatest of all Hammond Organists. He purchased his first Hammond organ, rented a warehouse to practice in and emerged after little more than a year. The original organs have nine contacts under each key.

Even this is insufficient, since they rob one contact from a harmonic when the percussion is switched on. For every key that is pressed down, at least nine individual frequencies must be passed to nine separate output mixers, and a signal must be passed to a percussion circuit.

This is the fundamental problem with any fully polyphonic organ — and all the best ones are. The output circuits are pretty straightforward. These harmonics are then mixed in the final output mixer before being amplified.

Getting this to sound like a B3 is a question of tone and technology — using tubes not transistors and so forth. The As are the only notes on the Hammond which agree exactly with the equal tempered scale. The notes which are the farthest off pitch in the first seven octaves are the G s. They are 0. Essentially, the gear ratios determine the note, whilst the number of teeth on the tone wheel determines the octave.

Hence all the tones in a single octave use wheels with the same number of teeth. The 91 frequency tone generator uses:. The last top octave is unusual, since Hammond could not cut wheels with teeth. Instead they used wheels with teeth and used the gear ratios from the F below upwards. This means the top half octave is farther off pitch due to the number of teeth on the tonewheel not equaling In the top half octave, the C is the farthest off pitch, about 1.

This is still less than the 6 cents that supposed to be the minimum discernible pitch difference. In the case of the 6th, 3rd and sub-3rd harmonics, this leads to them being slightly closer to the true value than equal temperament, and in the case of the 5th, slightly worse.

The differences are present, but very slight and probably not significant. Ignoring the top half-octave which is rather different, the results are summarized in the table below:. The bottom octave runs from These tones are the complex tonewheels and are only available on the pedals. The tones for the manuals run from The tone generator also generates harmonics another octave and a bit above this, to the C above This is the highest pitch in the organ.

Interesting article. I have been trying to match the information given to help with on problem on my Hammond SK2 digital clone. One note at the top of the keyboard 5F seems much louder than others in the same area. The SK2 has 96 digital tonewheels with editable parameters. Do you happen to know which tonewheel or wheels corresponds to this high F note? Then maybe I can adjust the parameters to soften the sound. I can then alter the amplitude values in the wavetable to suite.

This means that two consecutive cycles of a mixed Hammond waveform are not the same. Think about it: If you add sine waves at Hz and Hz, you get a shape that will be the same for each cycle. There are stories of him demonstrating all three techniques-solo, comp, and bass line-at the same time when asked about whether or not he used his left hand to play bass lines. He could do all three at once…but usually he did not! When you listen to the records, most Hammond B3 organists, including Jimmy Smith, often leave the comping for the guitarist during their organ solos.

This is because jazz organists generally play the bass lines primarily with their left hand and use the foot pedals to accentuate their left-hand bass lines.

Do jazz organ players play bass with their left hand? Do jazz organ players play bass with their feet? Keep reading. Joey also uses his feet throughout, but he does a great job of showing that the left hand can play either comp or a bass line, depending on the musical situation. This means that the simple bass line is being played by his feet in this case. This same video also helps highlight how left-hand bass can work for jazz organists at and At , you can see that Jimmy Smith is clearly using his feet.

A few seconds later, the shot moves to his left hand, which IS playing the bass notes you are hearing. Who was the first musician to unleash the creativity of the Hammond? That would be jazz organist Jimmy Smith. Before Smith, the Hammond had a distinctly more conservative role in chapels, theatres and for providing music and sound effects in radio plays.

Smith's dazzling virtuoso grasp of the pedals and drawbars of the Hammond led the organ to infect jazz, gospel, soul and blues, before crossing over and being mangled by rock.

So what was so great about the B3? It was the B3 that Hammond enthusiasts began combining with the Leslie speaker — a spinning horn, the rotation of which can be sped up or slowed down to create effects from tremolo to chorus.

Although Laurens was initially aghast at the pairing, it was the combination of the Leslie speaker and the Hammond that gave s jazz and rock its overdriven, scrambled organ tone. Production of the classic tonewheel organs ceased in the s, but in , with the reputation of the B3 towering over its odd siblings, "The New B3" was issued. A conscious attempt to mimic the sound and functionality of the B3, but with modern electronic rather than clunkier, motors-and-cogs components.