Laurens Hammond: The Non-Musical Genius Who Changed Popular Music | STUFF YOU SHOULD KNOW

[@thomasball3658]

This is the best podcast ever I'm obsessed with the Hammond organ you guys rock.

[@paulj0557tonehead]

I left you some neat Hammond organ stuff in my comment on this great talk about Laurens Hammond. 🙂

[@paulj0557tonehead]

For those who don't know, the Leslie was designed to imitate a Wurlitzer Theater organ Tremulent's Amplitude Modulation (AM) and Frequency Modulation (FM). As air is robbed from the pipe in steady pulses it lowers the volume (AM) and lowers the pitch (FM). Don Leslie reasoned that spinning the sound directionally with a baffle over the speaker and horn baffle over a horn driver you would get AM' from volume lowering and FM from the Doppler Effect. Laurens Hammond hated the Leslie Speaker. He wasn't stuck up, he just preferred the Harmonic Tone Building of draw bars to imitate instruments of the orchestra, and it was already a fragile system that didn't have the advantage of real pipes. And for all of the R&D and six years of Hammond organs being played without the not invented yet Leslie Tremulent speaker, we might be able to understand why it my upset his apple cart. After all, the church business was Hammond's number one PR. I imagine he probably called the Leslie speaker the devil box more than once. Laurens invented Spring Reverb as well. The first Fluid Column Spring Reverb units found in many of the first Hammond Tone Cabinets ( an amplified speaker cabinet in organ is called a tone cabinet). Look and read about these first reverb units ggl- *Ken Griffin Special Effects* There really is something very endearing about the non-Leslie animated Hammond organ music. Check out the great interview with THEE Radio organist, the great Rosa Rio playing a Hammond X66 and it's 11-77 matching 5 channel speaker cabinet. ( a 12 tone wheel fully transistorized flagship model of which 1,000 were made between 1967- 1973. I have a '72). Rosa is being interviewed by a familiar NBC commentator. The video title is, *"Broadcast Pioneers" Don Blair Talks With Radio Pioneer Rosa Rio* For an X66 Encore you'll love this little treat. STAR TREK THEME!! It's a simple title, just put *Steven Eaklor* in your KZbin search bar. (42krun ch) Watch- *Legendary Theatre Organists* and at the 40 minute mark, there is a great 1930's Paramount Film reel of the all new Hammond Tone Wheel Organ. You'll see a finger crank demo of a single Hammond tone wheel (actually demos a low pitch wheel and a higher pitch wheel). The wire wound electromagnetic pickup is exactly like an electric guitars pickup, and the spinning metal disc wheel next to it with raised notches can be likened to a guitar string, but unlike strings, the 91 spinning discs don't have an acoustic sound as they spin. And funnily enough, as you'll witness in the film, the tone wheel creates nothing more than a 'pop' in the speaker when a notch crosses the pickup. It's not until it's rapidly spinning and the "frequency" increases do we get an actual tone. As simple that relationship is, yes it is fragile. Nobody could make a fully electronic solid state tone wheel sound that sounded as good as the original electromagnetic one. Even _still_ some say. WURLITZER JOINS THE GAME IN 1946, AFTER WWII MAKING B0MBS THEY POST AN AD ANNOUNCING THEIR "ELECTROSTATIC REED ORGAN". Wurlitzer just never could get off on the right foot for big sales, but their electrostatic reed organs were and still are excellent "Always in tune" instruments. Like Hammond's electromechanical tone wheel organs, the Wurlitzer electromechanical electrostatic reed organs can still operate a thousand years from now with basic maintenance. The reeds are NOT used for their acoustic sound, but specifically for their _harmonic_ content. This is then filtered for authentic Flute, String, Reed (horn in organ is in reed family), and Diapason. I'm a Wurlitzer electrostatic reed fan. See the Wurlitzer Electrostatic Continuous Free Reed organ model 4600 along with the Hammond B3 Tone Wheel Organ and the Hammond X66 Organ, all in great animated tech articles at the NORTH SUBURBAN HAMMOND ORGAN SOCIETY - see Tech Articles Ken Griffin played the Hammond and the Wurlitzer 4600. On his TV show 67 Melody Lane episodes he plays the 1953-1963 Wurlitzer 4600 electrostatic continuous free reed organ. The "Continuous" in continuous free reed organ was the necessary component to make the reeds have instant attack. Wurlitzer 1946- 1952 electrostatic reed organs had a slow onset attack. Great for church, but for pop music Hammond was blowing Wurlitzer out of the water. So in 1953 Wurlitzer introduced the "instant attack" Wurlitzer organ ( all the reeds blow continuously in sound proof metal boxes in a big fiber board sound proof box. SO Yay! Wurli' did it! For one year. See in 1954 Hammond turned the music world on it's ear. They invented "TOUCH" KEY PERCUSSION and the Hammond B3, C3, RT3, and M3 were born. So yes instant attack made organ great for popular music, but Key Percussion made organ a jazz instrument in all it's iterations. You know the sound. Hey I have a Wurlitzer 4410 ( the spinet version of the 4600). It just occurred to me, there is nothing that's stopping me from adding 'Touch Key Percussion' to it! I've had this organ for 11 years and it never occurred to me I could make a Wurlitzer B3 out of it? Well Wurlitzer M3 (M3 is the spinet) In organs "console" is 61 keys x 2 keyboards and 25 or 32 pedals, and "spinet" is 43 keys x 2 keyboards (they are offset from one another) and 13 pedals. Ever the great inventor was Don Leslie too. Don invented the Dwell 'one screw' adjustment that silenced that Wurlitzer's reed box full of reeds from having a residual cacophony of dozens of electronically live reeds from being heard. Keep in mind the 310 volts on the reed has essentially turned it into a condenser mic...but it's not a condenser mic because those reeds have a sweeter flute tone than Hammond could ever hope for. You'll see, goggle *NSHOS Wurli 4600* for that tech article. 🙂

[@ashleyajuria5602]

Tesla's babe💚💚💚

[@ashleyajuria5602]

God frequency

[@ashleyajuria5602]

Huston we have a problem....lol

[@ashleyajuria5602]

Was it train are steamboat

[@ashleyajuria5602]

I think 1913