Blog Page - where I share my NOT AT ALL HUMBLE OPINIONS

The True Sound of the Hammond - A B3 with a 122 Leslie

I recently read on some web page that, "The True sound of a Hammond Organ is the sound of a B3 with a 122 Leslie." Really? Are you sure about that? A Leslie speaker as originally developed was not even a Hammond product! And, a Leslie speaker can significantly alter all audio signals that go through it. Because it does that, how can anybody possibly say that the true sound of a Hammond organ is a B3 with a Leslie 122 speaker? Furthermore, why single out the B3? What about a C3? A BCV? A B2? Or the Leslie 122? What about a Leslie 222? a 251, a 147? There are quite a few different Leslie models that can be made to work with a Hammond organ. And the B3 is only one of several Hammond models that are musically, tonally and electrically either completely identical, or else extremely close. The Hammond C3 is, with the exception of a different woodwork or console style, exactly the same instrument as a B3. The A100 is likewise, with the exception that it has a built-in power amplifier and speaker system. So let's explore this question a little further and see what is really behind this widely held but erroneous opinion; that the true sound of a Hammond organ is a B3 with a Leslie 122 speaker.

When the Hammond organ first appeared, and for perhaps almost a decade after, there was no practical way to add a true, pitch-varying vibrato to this instrument. Hammond's patented, synchronous-motor powered electro-mechanical tone generator ran at an absolutely constant speed, and there was no easy, simple or practical way to vary the frequencies of the tones or signals that it produced. Indeed, one of Hammond's claims to fame was that his instruments would never go out of tune, and there are no tuning adjustments at all in the standard Hammond tone generating system.

The closest that Hammond could come to getting anything at all even remotely related to vibrato was to install a volume varying tremulant in his early instruments. This amounted to a motor-driven volume control that effectively turned the volume of the Hammond up slightly and then turned it back down and did so at 360 times per minute, or 6 times a second. Volume-varying tremolo is OK but it has none of the "richness" or especially the emotional appeal or the big "lush" sound that comes from true pitch-varying vibrato, but it was the best Laurens Hammond could do at the time.

Donald Leslie had purchased an early Hammond organ for his home but he had seen and heard many theater pipe organs, [this was in the 1930s, don't forget] and he wanted if at all possible to get the big lush theater pipe organ vibrato that these instruments had because theater organs all incorporated a number of special air-pressure varying devices that slightly cyclically raised and then lowered the pressure of the air, around six times per second, that sounded the pipes; and changing the operating air pressure to an organ pipe, as long is it is done in a carefully controlled manner, will make both the volume, and especially the pitch of the pipes vary with the pressure, and thus produce a really nice vibrato effect in these instruments. But how could Leslie get this to happen with a Hammond organ with its constant and immutable frequency tones?

After much experimentation, he devised a suitable rotary baffle that he placed in front of a conventional loudspeaker, and also a rotary horn that he used with treble or tweeter drivers, and when he spun these at around 360 to 400 RPM, they produced an amazingly good sounding very lush pitch-varying vibrato effect because they effectively added motion to the sound sources and this brought the Doppler effect into play. The Doppler effect occurs whenever there is relative motion between a listener and a sound source, and it makes the sound that the listener hears change pitch somewhat, the amount of change depending on how fast the motion is, and whether the sound source and the listener get closer together or farther apart. If the sound source is moving closer to the listener, he hears a slightly increased frequency, and likewise if the sound source is moving away from the listener, he hears a slightly lowered frequency. But the listener only hears these pitch changes while there is motion. Once the motion stops, the listener hears the same pitch that the sound producing device makes.

So after further experimentation and refinement of his design, Leslie developed a speaker system for Hammond organs that created effective motion between the sound source and the listeners, and the result was a very significant improvement over the anemic wavering of the early Hammond volume varying tremolo and the substitution of that with a very good and full-sounding pitch vibrato. Leslie demonstrated his new speakers to a number of musicians who were duly impressed and very pleased with what his Leslie speakers did for the sound of a Hammond organ which now could have a very similar vibrato effect that they were used to hearing from big theater pipe organs.

Needless to say, Leslie tried to get Hammond interested in buying the rights to his speakers but Laurens Hammond wanted no part of it. By that time, Hammond had started a network of Hammond dealers, and he ordered them not to stock Leslie speakers, but many did so anyhow because of the huge improvement that leslie speakers made to the early Hammond organs. But while Hammond was very anti-Leslie speaker, he desperately wanted to get that sound, or something similar so that he could have true pitch varying vibrato in his Hammond organs and not only not infringe on Leslie's patents, but he wanted to be able to make his vibrato affect the electrical audio signals in the Hammond consoles before they ever became sound at the speakers. If he could succeed in doing that, then he would have pitch vibrato, and no matter what kind of speakers he might use, the resulting signal would already have the vibrato added before it even became sound so that this vibrato would work with any normal speaker system and thus he did not need to buy Leslie's patented rotary speaker systems.

So Hammond got one of his close associates, an electrical engineer and musician, John M. Hanert, to develop a vibrato system [known as Scanner Vibrato] that finally did what Laurens Hammond wanted, and produced a true pitch vibrato in the audio signals in his instruments. Like the Leslie effect, Hammond's electrical scanner vibrato was also very full and lush sounding, and it had the added advantage of working with any speaker system at all with no need for special [and patented] rotary baffles and horns. So Hammond thereby could continue to market his own speaker systems, truthfully advertise that Hammond instruments now included real vibrato, and thus I make my rebuttal to the statement that began this article by saying that the true sound of a Hammond organ is not what you hear through a third party speaker system that uses rotary elements after the speakers to add vibrato, but rather that the true sound of the Hammond organ is what you hear when you play it through a normal stationary Hammond speaker system that is intended to reproduce the signals from the console as accurately as possible and does not try to alter them by means of rotating baffles and horns directly in front of the speakers.

A further advantage here is that you can take the electrical audio signal directly from a Hammond console and record it without using any microphones which can in many instances be decidedly advantageous as now you are in effect, when listening to such a recording, plugged directly into the Hammond's amplification system, and what could be a truer sound of a Hammond organ than that?

However, many people (myself included) like the Leslie "after the fact" vibrato effect, which Leslie erroneously referred to as Leslie Tremolo, so when the Hammond Company did finally equip its instruments with true vibrato capability, this did not adversely affect Leslie's speaker business, and it was now possible to have both effects if you wanted them. Also, Leslie's speakers significantly improved the sound of many competing electronic organs that had either no vibrato at all, or a rather inferior vibrato effect.

So a much more accurate description might be to state that the sound of a Hammond organ with a Leslie speaker is very widely known, but it is most assuredly not the true or genuine sound of a Hammond organ, B3 or otherwise. Eventually after Hammond retired from running his company, they began to incorporate various special smaller Leslie systems in many of their self-contained instruments. The Leslie effect does indeed sound very good. It is technically not the true sound of a Hammond organ (or of any other brand either) but it is a nice effect and while I do not see the need of using a Leslie speaker with a Hammond organ that has Hammond's scanner vibrato, I do think it makes a nice addition and if I am playing an instrument that does include a Leslie speaker, I will certainly use it. Regarding the use of a Leslie speaker with other makes of electronic organs, I would have to say that it is definitely an improvement over the vibrato that most of these other instruments produce, and this is also true of all of the various Hammond models that do not use the original Hammond scanner vibrato system that John Hanert had developed. The sound of Hanert's vibrato system is in my opinion definitely superior to the vibrato that you can obtain with the vibrato systems of most other well known electronic organs that I have encountered, and the only one, again in my opinion, that does not need to be either supplemented by or replaced by a Leslie speaker.

Attention - folks who play jazz on a Hammond

Howdy! I have a question for some of you. Actually 2 questions. 1. Why do so many of you not use Hammond's pedals and instead play just a "walking bass" with your left hands? 2. Why do so many of you only [or mostly] play in C and avoid the 11 other keys such as C♯, D, D♯, E, F, F♯, G, G♯, A, A♯, B? Sometimes I see some of you using fantastic displays of right hand dexterity, but why are you not using pedals? Pedals are one of the main features that separate the organ from all other instruments. My suggestion is for you to watch Barbara Dennerlein who does some of the most phenomenal pedal-playing that I have ever seen. OK, I'll admit that the stock pedal tones of a B3 or C3, (or a B2 or C2 or even an older CV or a BCV) aren't always the most inspiring pedal bass effects around, but surely you must have heard of the TrekII string bass, right? Install that on your B3 or other Hammond and you have no excuse for not using pedals.

And, regarding always sticking to the key of C, do you have any idea how boring it gets to listen to somebody who only plays in one key all the time? Why for that matter are so many pops keyboard players afraid of E♮, A♮, B♮, and F♯? This I have never understood, but at least couldn't you switch occasionally to F, or G, or maybe E♭? Anything other than staying in C for everything. And how about not using the Leslie on Chorale most of the time and likewise keeping the Hammond vibrato stuck on one of the three "chorus" positions? Actually, keeping the Leslie on Chorale for a long time is not good either. It's supposed to mimic the Celeste effect of a real pipe organ, but the problem with the chorale is that it is regular and repetitive, So with long sustained notes you get this slow wavering "Wow, Wow, Wow, effect. I think it would sound better if you pulled the plugs for the slow speed Leslie motors and played with the Leslie stationary if not on the trem setting. But what do I know?

Actually very little about many things, but it's just that I think jazz is supposed to be very varied and creative and it's largely improvising on existing songs, and part of being creative means doing different things. If you haven't learned how to play Hammond pedals, now's a great time to begin. It's really not all that difficult. And if you're stuck in the key of C all the time, try branching out to the next simplest ones such as F with only one ♭ to be concerned with, or G with only one ♯.

Years ago when I worked in one particular band, our band leader insisted that we must never play more than two songs in the same key in succession during any set, the idea being that even people who have no sense of pitch and know nothing about music other than how to turn on a stereo or stream something off the Internet will still be able to recognize when a number of songs follow each other in the same key. And they like variety and in a club; you don't ever want the patrons to be bored by what you are playing. And likewise, if you aren't going to play pedals, then you would, I think, be much better off by playing either a piano or a keyboard. Certainly moving and setting up a keyboard is infinitely easier than moving a Hammond Organ from one gig location to another, and some keyboards have reasonably good imitations of some of the more popular Hammond sounds. (Although so far, no Hammond imitation yet has ever been able to get Hammond's scanner vibrato effect right.)

Anyhow, I'd like to hear from any of you who play jazzz but do not use the Hammond's bass pedals, and likewise, if you only play in the key of C all the time (or any other key to the exclusion of all others) I'd be curious as to why that is so. Even confining your playing to just the three easy keys, C,F, and G, would be infinitely better, I think, than sticking to C all the time. And the same goes for those who play everything in the key of F♯. And I have seen people who do that. Presumably they are self taught and for whatever reason starting playing using as many black keys as possible which would put you in F♯ all the time. Interestingly I have read that no less a musical personality than the great composer Irving Berlin was self-taught and only played in F♯ and he had other musicians transcribe his songs into other keys before publishing them.

Anyhow, you jazz players out there, start using those Hammond bass pedals! And, once you branch out from playing in C all the time, you'll be amazed at how different keys will influence your improvisations and add a wealth of interest to your playing.

More coming soon;
I'm just getting started with this blogging business!!