Whitershade preset does yours compare?

  • Thread starter Thread starter langleyt
  • Start date Start date
L

langleyt

New member
You guys are gonna think i'm crazy, but the other day i was listening to "Whiter Shade of Pale" and i started plunking around on the keyboard and picking it out. Then when i got going good i wondered how did they get that particular keyboard sound? I messed around with organs on my Alesis and lo and behold there was a preset called Whitershade. DUH!

Any way that was the crazy part, but the cool part is that the setting suggests that it *should* sound like the real thing and as i played along with the tune it *did* sound incredibly like it. I love my Alesis. :)

t
 
Well, the original was done on a hammond M102, I believe(which was later stolen). My Hammond C3 does a pretty good job of it. Not really as portable as yours, though..
 
I was pretty sure the original was done on a Hammond, which i know nothing about playing. I bet your Hammond C3 can really do a superb job of that song Bdgr. I guess i just never expected to get anywhere close to that song on my Alesis, and was excited when i found someone had already done it for me, hehe.

t
 
Hello to all
Great subject here. Brings back some mems. Saw Procol Harem at Filmore East late 60's-early 70? Been along time hehe. Also was a roady for a local band then and CAN remember loading the keyboard players B3 and 2 leslies. Nothing like that sound. It's just mesmorizing.
I have a question. I have a few keys, Roland Alpha Juno 2, Yamaha PSR550 and they all have a few hammond imitations, and have loaded alot of sysex patches and also use the B3 softsynth-native. On both the hardware and software, it seems that all the presets seem to have a kind of whoosh or sucking click when you let off the keys.It's hard to describe but I wonder if it belongs there. I'm wondering is this just all dsp or did the Hammond B3 have this sound also. During sound checks. I'd just hammer her down and was not paying mutch attention back then. Just a kid thrilled to be hauling it around for the band.
I know nothing sounds like the real thing, but is this commom to the B3 and maybe covered up by the spinning of the leslies? Still trying for the perfect patch....
 
Hello ZZWave, I am not really a good person to answer your question (I am much more keyboard dense than i like to admit), and I hope someone with more knowledge comes along and can give you an intelligent answer. But this question made me think of a problem i had with my Yamaha PSR6300, which is so ancient that most people haven't even heard of it. I posted a question (some time ago) about how i couldn't get the sound from it I wanted because it had that 'whoosh' or 'sucking' air sound that you are talking about. I couldn't really find a way to describe it either.

In my case I think it came down to the polyphony factor. I think my keyboard just couldn't handle too many chords and notes all at once. One guy defined it as 'chocking', which described exactly the sounds coming from my poor Yamaha. I am betting your keyboard is much newer than mine and can probably handle a lot more. So it probably is more of a whoosh than outright chocking. I doubt that Hammond B3 ever made a single chocking sound in its life because it was made when things were built for real and not with the electronic technology we use today.

Hehe, i bet loading the B3 and those Leslies was a real back breaker and you were the one doing the chocking instead. Just kidding. :)

t
 
ditto Langley

Thats funny Langley, when I bought a QS8.1 a few months back...I basically sat there for one night fiddling with every possible preset.....and when I came across the "whiter shade of pale" setting, started playing the song (I never played it before in my life). It was so amazingly close to the recorded sound used on the album that it seemed easy to learn the first time through.

As for the "whooshing sound", is that the vintage percussive sound the B3 is noted for?

I don't know much about keyboards....I am a bass player first.
 
Re: ditto Langley

Yadi said:


As for the "whooshing sound", is that the vintage percussive sound the B3 is noted for?

I don't know much about keyboards....I am a bass player first.
Click to expand...

Nope. No wooshing sound on the real thing. Many B3 and C3(they are the same organ, just more lumber around the C3, so it would look pretty in church) had a bit of a key click. This was a defect, and hammond fixed it at some point, and then people complained that they liked it, so they put it back.

Percussion is a totally differant story. Percussion is what seperates the B3 and the b2. It basicallyplays a short harmonic tone, kind of a blip, when you hit the first key. You have a couple of adjustments to the pitch and duration. The effect is emphisizing the first note. All notes played after that one, until you let up, don't have it. It only works on the B preset, and only on the upper manual. There are a couple of comapanies that sell an add-on percussion unit for B2s and c2s, so if you find a good deal on one of these(they are usually much cheaper), you can effectivly turn it into a B3.

I lucked into my C3. I had a friend whos mom played organ for a small town church. They had two of these old C3's sitting in a storeroom for about 20 years or so. They let her take one home so she could practice on it. I used to go over to thier hous and drool over the thing. One day they called me and asked me if I wanted to buy it. They said they had it appraised, and the organ guy said it was worth $750. I couldnt write the check fast enough(they regularly go for 2 to 3 grand, theres one a music store near me that they want 5 grand for, and its not in as good a shape).

Mine didnt come with a leslie, but I bought a Motion Sound R3-147 for it. It sounds reall close, and its internally miced so I just plug it into my board and go.
 
the b4 plugin has a whiter shade plugin that sounds pretty accurate. besides the b4 is a great replication of the hammond sound...way better than most boards out there.
 
Hello All,
Learned alot from all your posts. First, Chris, I think the Harem thing was just a Freudian slip.I guess I was subconciously dreaming of all the "fringe" benifits of being a roadie back then. hehe.
langleyt, the yamaha I have is 32 poly, so I don't think that is causing it. I just think it's the synthesis-dsp they use to try and simulate the hammond sound. I mean you're just not gonna get a B3 sound out of anything short of the real McCoy. Close, but no cigar. I've gotten close, but the patch always is missing the magic is some way or another. I don't even know if they even had any transistors in them back then. The leslies had the tube amps I think and the horns were mechanically ran by a motor and belt. It's pretty hard to match all that "old techonolgy" as far as the Hammond is concerned. Vintage sound in it's glory. And no I was not chocking when I was hauling the B3 and leslies. At 18, they weren't to bad at all. There were 2 of us, and dollies so the only realy hard part was the stairs. hehe
Bdgr, very good info on the percussion and keyclick. I went into the back of the B3 softsynth(B4 Native-Instruments) and played with a few knobs in the percussion section. By you describing how it works on the real thing, I understand how to tweak the B4 now and it even has a keyclick knob. It's great when someone explains how it works.Before I was just using the presets, but now I find myself tweaking the knobs to get more sounds. Man what a deal on your C3. Those kind of things dont happen too much anymore. I bet you were shakin writing that check! I remember a friend of mine a long time ago selling his PortaB, a 122, and a 147 for practically nothing. I wish deals like that were around these days.
Scriabin, I think you're right although I think alot of the presets are a little too dirty for my taste.(Probably due to my cheap SBLIVE,Audiophile 24/96 soon) But now I've learned how some of the knobs work!
Thanks to all for the feedback..hmmn.got a Dean Exotica Rse layin around..wonder what kinda keyboard I could get on a swap...
 
More about the old beast

Yeah the leslies were/are a tube amp with a rotating horn(there were actually two horns, but one was a fake, for counterbalance), and a speak firing straight down in to a drum. The drum rotated, on its own, and had a slot cut in it. When you would switch between speeds, they would slow down and speed up at differant speeds for kind of a wierd doppler effect. They still make them, by the way, but they cost....a lot.

The hammond sound is made by spining wheels adjacent to pickups of sorts, and there are a whole bunch of little oil tubs you hafta put oil in every year. The wheels create the notes and harmonics, which are cut in and out by the drawbars(when you use percussion, the last drawbar is taken away to make the percusion sound). Your B3/C3 has 91 of these damn things, IIRC. Since it would take 109 of them to create all the notes and harmonics, it reuses some of the upper harmonics at the high end of the manual(this is called foldback). Because of the way all this works, and the fact that you get some cross talk between the wheels, its a bitch to simulate electronically, and forget sampling it. This is also one of the reasons that you have to be carefull which hammond you buy. Just because it's a hammond, doesnt mean it has tonewheels, and just because it has tonewheels, doesnt mean it has the proper foldback for that hammond sound. Then you ad the percussion(there were a couple of differant kinds), the chorus and vibrato(a bunch of differant ones there), and you could wind up with a big ole dino only sutible for playing church music. Also, one dead key could mean a wiring nightmare, as there are thousands of wires in the keyboard itself.

Its really a bizzare electro mechanical contraption that was designed by a tone deaf clock maker. Hammond used to hire organists as secretarys so that he could ask them what sounded good. He hated the the Leslie sound, and tried to keep his dealers from selling them (Leslie was a seperate company), because he never wanted his organ to sound that way. Leslie orignally invented the rotating speaker to imitate the moving sound effect of the big pipe organs. He tried to sell it to Hammond, but no luck.

A really good alternative to the leslie is the motion sound line. What they do is take a solid state amp with a tube pre, feed it through a real leslie style rotating horn(complete with fake horn for balance), and then simulate the rotating lower. They even have a really cool keyboard amp that does both a straight, normal amp, and the leslie effect. It has an angled front for stero seperation. Motion sound is really close to the real thing, and much more portable/studio friendly.
 
Hey Bdgr
Geez, tou sure know alot about the workings of the Hammonds/Leslies. Sounds like you wrote a book or something. Very interesting info. I remember the leslies having the lower freq driver in the drum. I think it was a 15 inch and it was enclosed with a cloth surround of some sort. I also remember reading once that the dummy horn was for counterbalance but also had something to do with keeping the higher freq's in or out of phase? Not sure on that.
I never realized there were so many wheels,pickups and mechanical parts to it all. No wonder it's so hard to emulate.
Your excellent description of how it works has inspired me and led me to finding more sounds in my experimenting. I use an Roland Alpha Juno 2 as my softsynth controller. Picked it up at a pawn shop really cheap. I run it and all my sound cards and keyboards into a Mackie 1604. I used to just bring the fader down on the channel for the Juno 2 and just run the softsynth channel. I now have loaded a few organ patches for the Juno, brought up that fader some and combined that with the B4 softsynth to get some new sounds. I've also ran a Boss SE-50 on one of the sends and have added some chourus, phaser, verbs to it all and really punched up the Hammond sounds quite well.
This has also led me to experiment with every other sound I own and have created some pretty wild stuff. I used to play guitar and have just gotten back into music and recording in the last year so the keyboards are new to me. That's why the PSR-550, for the auto-accompaniment. Something to jam with.
If you hadn't explained the B3 so well in your posts, I would have never accidently stumbled on the adding of the softsynth with the hardware synth in my mixer, It was there all along, but I just never thought of it till you were explaining the percussive part of the B3. You have turned me into a mad scientist!!. hehe
I've got some freeware softsynths I tryed before that didn't sound so great, but now I can layer them with the hardware and they sound much better. Thanks for all the great info. You've inspired me! Off to the laboratory...
Please continue with your lecture...Fantastic stuff
 
well...I've always been fascinated by the way things work. Used take all my toys apart as child.

One thing, when your trying to duplicate those classic hammond sounds used in all the old classic rock and blues songs, 90%of the time the draw bar settings were just the first three or four pulled all the way out, and the rest pushed all the way in. The percussion set on the third, and on fast, and the c3 or c2 chorus(if used), never the vibrato. Some folk, like booker t prefered the clean sound, no leslie, no chorus. And its really hard to play it properly without a volume pedal.

I keep my a preset set to 1348 pulled all the way out, b preset
1234 out the rest in. the lower manual I set to 12 out, the rest in. The bass pedals are leaned up against the wall...Havent really gotten the hang of them yet. C2 chorus(when I use it), percusion on 3 fast. leslie on slow most of the time.


Ive got an old SE-50 sitting around. I need to dig that thing out and play with it a bit. You can a lot of cool things with that processor. I wish I still had the manual around.
 
Yeah, i've noticed that the best sounds are with the drawbars set as you said. The drive setting on the B4 Native is a little sensitive. If you leave it at the preset setting, it's a little too dirty for me. When you try to lower the drive a tad, you start to lose the punch. So much for B3 emulation...
Saw a post on another forum about a VST called daOrgan, but it seems they don't have the leslie part developed yet.
I have an older PSR270 that has a Jazz organ preset that I really like. It's somewhere between a B3 and the Booker T. sound you mentioned. Out of all the patches I've tryed and created I find myself always going to it when I need a certain Hammond type sound. I use it too much, but it always seems to fit. Maybe that's why someone recently commented that alot of my original songs sound the same. hehe.
Yeah I wish I had a manual for the SE-50 also. There are 2 alternate banks for it(128 presets each) at http://www.rolandus.com/SUPPORT/SOFTWARE/PATCH3.HTM .Although I don't have the manual, I do have the sequence of buttons to press to load them. If anyone needs this , just let me know. I have the SE-50 on a send and use it for vocals, keyboard and guitar effects. It is a pretty darn good processor. Nothing fancy, but has alot of good basic stuff. Got it hooked to a midi pedal to run through the patches when I'm using the Juno 2 and need to find some strange hoover or floyd type sounds.
Well I've got the new PSR550 with the XG, the older Yamaha with Gen Midi, the Alpha juno 2 for the analog/digital sound. Any other decent low budjet synths to look out for to add to my meager collection without spending a small fortune? Well. back to the laboratory..
Yeah, I know..sell em all and get a real one hehe..but me no got no Karma- Triton budjet..
 
The distortion on a real B3 is actually done by the leslie. You turn up the preamp on the B3, and it overdrives the amp in the leslie cabinet.


I used to have the manual. I bought the SE-50 in a pawn shop years ago. I traded to a friend of mine, he traded it back to me later, I traded it back to him, then I got it back somhow. I moved to Utah for a year, found a music store that had a tone of old roland manuals. I bought the SE-50 manual, and then when I got back to Texas, I traded the SE-50 back to the same cat, and he lost the manual before he traded it back to me. I need to replace the battery on mine now, and reset it. What is the sequence to press to load the alt banks?

Low budget synths....hmm..

My all time fav, when you can find it, is the Casio VZ1(or the rack version VZ10m). It was made back when Casio briefly tried to enter the pro arena, and it really kicked ass. It was sorta like an FM synth, like the DX-7, but instead of just having sine waves for your operators, you had sawtooth, square, triangle. It had like a seven stage envelope generator too. It was a bitch to program like the DX-7, but it did have a little graphic screen, and it was more flexible. Unlike my DX-7, its is on my list of synths I never should have sold, along with my Juno 60, Juno 106, my prophet T8, my micromoog, and my DW-6000.

Thats another one. The Korg DW-6000 or DW-8000, both cool little synths, and you can find them reasonably cheap sometimes. Also, the Akai AX-80 is pretty cool. I still have one of those, and it makes some neat sounds. I don't use it much anymore, because I have a Waldorf Microwave XT, and it just does the whole synth thing really well.
 
Whoops........The salvation army by my house has an old organ for sale for $130.00 - I don't know what kind it is...it has all of these funky drum beats and orchestral sounds. The only writing I can make out on it is "mello...." the rest is scratched off. It also has some funky type of tape deck inside it with a tape.....starnge. Does anyone know what this thing can be??
 
Gargamel said:
Whoops........The salvation army by my house has an old organ for sale for $130.00 - I don't know what kind it is...it has all of these funky drum beats and orchestral sounds. The only writing I can make out on it is "mello...." the rest is scratched off. It also has some funky type of tape deck inside it with a tape.....starnge. Does anyone know what this thing can be??
Click to expand...

Hmmm...There were a lot of wierd home organs out there. By tape deck, do you mean like cassete tape?

THe first thing that comes to mind when you mention mello is the mellotron, but that was another wierd keyboard that had this huge rack of tapes inside it and played all its sounds off of tape(kind of an early sampler). But these this wouldnt really fit the drum beats thing, and I doubt thats what you mean by tape.
 
Yeah, it had 2 or 3 8 track tapes inside it.....I never saw any thing like it.
 
Quick post for the SE-50..
TO LOAD A PATCH..

1) Press Utilty button 2 times to get to the midi channel screen.
2) Use the Value button to select midi channel #1.
3) Press the Parameter "UP" button 4 times to display "MIDI BULK LOAD WAITING".
4) Play the DATA (patch is a midi file) from media player or a sequencer.
5) The display will indicate "RECEIVING".
6) "IDLING" will be displayed when transfer is complete.

TO RESTORE THE FACTORY SETTINGS...

1)Press the PARAMETER "UP" button AND the VALUE "UP" button at the same time AND then press the POWER ON BUTTON.

NOTICE: not resonsible for any white smoke. hehe

Also got mine from a pawn shop real cheap cause it showed a scrambled screen when turned off and then on again. Was just a dead battery.
Boy, a Mellotron for $130. Wouldn't that have been a nice find! Keep huntin!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top