Using Organ in a Rock Band

Video Transcript

In this clip we're going to be talking about the right time to play an organ in a rock and roll band. And I think the answer to that question is just about any time. Because a Hammond is a big heavy thing, to get a real one out there is difficult. To get one on stage and to be able to play, like I said, unless you have roadies who are going to carry your pianos as well. But when you get a Hammond out there, it just sounds so good and so real and so just, it just fills up the room so much. You can't go wrong with playing it. Like you know, I said that, the electric piano is the workhorse and this kind of the special, you know, this is kind of the diva of rock and roll keyboards. And the beautiful thing is you can get, it's almost difficult to get a bad sound on the Hammond. So you can just sit there and play chords, play real pad chords and a lot of times that will fill out the sound so much that, you know, you don't even need to do anything. And people think you're a genius and all you're doing is just holding a chord down. So we talked earlier about using the Leslie and speeding up the Leslie speakers. Speeding them up and slowing them down to add some drama to the sound. So you know, you can just pull down a chord and speed up and slow down the Leslie. You know you can get a lot of drama out of that with just playing a few notes. And remember what I said before about simplifying what you're doing. If you're going to be just playing one note you can do a lot of things with the draw bars and that adds even more drama. So let's say for example you're going from like a really big chorus down to the section right after the chorus where you want everything to get really quiet. So you can go from all these, I'm going to push up these draw bars so. All of the sudden you get a lot of drama out of it. You don't, you only need to play that, those few notes because everybody else is doing enough that that fills out your part of the sound. And you just helped make that drama happen through using those draw bars. Now even if you don't have a real Hammond and a real Leslie you can get, I mean there are Hammond and Leslie simulators out there all the time. It's just a matter of knowing, you know, how to use the different controls on that. And you know, with a little bit of practice and a little bit of you know just playing around with how this stuff works, you know, it will almost be like there's a real Hammond on stage.

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