Dirty Organ.....

joeyowen

The organ sound at the start of this (annoyingly catchy) song is awesome... any guesses to what it is modelled on?

Or is it just organ through gain?

dogload

At the risk of sounding stupid, I'd guess it's a Hammond (or emulation) running into a hot amp and Leslie. That is listening to it on my crappy laptop speakers.

It sounds exactly like the kind of thing you can do with Native Instruments B4 plugin.

randomhandclaps

Actually I don't think it is a Hammond (although same ballpark) I think it's a distorted (almost certainly software) church organ - just slightly softer attack.  Any sound between a Hammond B3 and a church organ, or best of all the funky patch they always imaginatively call 'Gospel organ' will get you there or abouts.  Then add guitar amp sim of choice.

Danny1969

 

I can get those kinda sounds with the free DB-33 that comes with Protools. Whever it is that I dunno, there's so many ways to achieve the same thing

dogload

Well I've had a look on t'interweb and it says that it is a church organ, but I'm not convinced it's a 'proper' one. It's not a pipe organ. As the only information about the tracking lists 'Programming' I'd vote for a soft instrument.

The 'hot' Leslie also appears to be running behind the main organ sound, so it's presumably either double-tracked or the plug-in has a pretty dry mix. 

Or something like this! 

randomhandclaps said:

Actually I don't think it is a Hammond (although same ballpark) I think it's a distorted (almost certainly software) church organ - just slightly softer attack.  Any sound between a Hammond B3 and a church organ, or best of all the funky patch they always imaginatively call 'Gospel organ' will get you there or abouts.  Then add guitar amp sim of choice.

Nomad

The Hammond was originally intended to be an emulation of a pipe organ, but smaller and cheaper and thus an attractive option to small churches that couldn't afford the full-building monsters that came before. There are plenty of drawbar combinations that sound like church organ rather than the classic 'Hammond sounds'.

ICBM

Nomad said:

The Hammond was originally intended to be an emulation of a pipe organ, but smaller and cheaper and thus an attractive option to small churches that couldn't afford the full-building monsters that came before. There are plenty of drawbar combinations that sound like church organ rather than the classic 'Hammond sounds'.

In fact almost any of them really, if you run it through a clean amp with no Leslie. It's the overdriven Leslie that makes what we think of as the 'Hammond sound' to a large extent.

A friend of mine has an original 1937 Hammond model E that was salvaged from a disused church - it sounds amazing, with or without a Leslie.

Nomad

There are some settings, like 888000000 with percussion on, that are considered classics but don't really emulate a pipe organ (or a pipe organ's emulation of a real instrument). They're just selections from the thousands available that happen to have a particular voice and became popular outside of the church organ setting.

The Leslie doesn't need to be overdriven - you can get some amazing swirlies with a clean sound, with a chorus or vibrato on the organ, and running that into the Leslie. A lot of the feel comes from the transitions between slow and fast Leslie. The above drawbar setting with only slow Leslie gives a lovely mellow tone, then flick the Leslie to fast and switch on the chorus or vibrato, and it turns into goosebump stuff. It's like a tonal crescendo.

Personally, I think the Leslie is essential. When I first got my A-100, I didn't have a Leslie, but used the Korg G4 into a pair of stereo speakers. The organ's built-in speakers sounded a bit bland and tame in comparison. Then, for some reason, I decided I didn't like it and the shop kindly agreed to take it back and refund me. I then when through a few weeks of serious remorse until I saw the same organ advertised again, this time with a Leslie 145. I bought it a second time, they changed all the electrolytics, and kindly sent it back to me. With the real Leslie, it's just no contest. My default setting is to route through the Leslie only, but add some reverb from the organ's built-in thing (two of the 12" speakers are for the dry sound, and the third has it's own dedicated amp with reverb, which isn't switched off with the speaker routing thing). The Leslie has deeper, smoother bass, and the subtle modulation on slow adds something that just isn't there with the organ on its own.

Sassafras

Casio?

joeyowen

SO general consensus, is that it's most likely a hammond esq vst, with the preamp kicked for the gain

Poss a wet/dry combo of clean and dirty?

I'll have to download a free vst and have a look!