Getting that Hammond sound

[Angela Wakeham]

Hi all, my name is Angela. I’ve just signed up to Art of reggae. I’m so excited I could burst 🇯🇲 I have a little problem. I don’t have a Hammond organ. I use a Nord Electro 6D and a Roland V Combo VR- 09. I’m new to playing reggae bubble, chopping etc I’d be keen to hear any suggestions you may have for getting that Hammond sound using the settings and sliders I have on the keyboards I use

[David Perrin]

Hi Angela, you may have already found this older post in your travels that has drawbar setting ideas for reggae.

Reggae Drawbar Settings for Hammond

It depends a lot on what sound you’re after and what organ model you choose but 864202468 is a place to start. For a bubble, the upper-mid drawbars seem to often be pushed forward. I’m mostly playing just through Garageband and Logic Pro – the latter has a Reggae Organ instrument patch with “Vintage B3” and upper drawbars at 808600004, lower drawbars of 040805005, pedal drawbars of 83.

Interested to learn what you come up with!

[Matt Jenson]

Hi Angela,

Your Nord will sound pretty darn close to a real B3! I’m not going to go into a text description here because the Organ Course on A of R gets into this! You’ll see there are basically two bubble tones: the hi tone and the lo tone (as I call them). Very specific and easy drawbar settings.

Let me know if you have it figured out!

Matt

[Angela Wakeham]

Hi Matt and David. Thank you so much for both your replies. I hadn’t seen the Hammond drawbar settings on the website you mentioned. It will be fun playing around with all the variations for the many songs I have on my list.
Matt, I’m considering taking a second keyboard to gigs if there is a good enough reason to do so. I also play a saxophone and a second keyboard means I’m carrying a lot of equipment. I’m interested to know why you choose to use 2 keyboards rather than adding a split on the one keyboard? Does it make it easier and give a better sound when playing hi and lo tones if you have 2 keyboards?

[Matt Jenson]

Hi Angela,

As for two keyboards. To be honest, these days I mostly only use the Nord (I have a Stage 4) and use splits, sometimes even 3 way splits. Mostly I have the organ bubble sound on the left side and piano for chopping on the right side and that will cover what I’m doing. I have some splits where I have the left hand piano (chop) and various lead synth sounds on the right side. Some 3 way splits I have the piano in the middle, left side organ and right side lead synth sounds. I also have a bunch of dub pads with all kinds of effects programmed in on the patch buttons on the lower level so I can be playign the organ LH/piano RH patch and quickly hit the dub pad patch for dubwize/riddim sections and get back to the organ/bubble patch lightening quick.

However there are times where the music is a bit more complicated and it’s easier to have the main keyboard on the bottom with just piano, just organ, or with the organ/piano split while the keyboard on the top will have lead sounds, dub pad sounds, clavinet, and perhaps horn sounds. Also there are times where I will bubble with the right hand (and chop with the left) and often times I’ll put the organ bubble on the top keyboard for right hand bubbling….switching quickly to say horn parts, or lead parts….or dub fx stuff.

Make sense?

[Angela Wakeham]

Thanks for your reply Matt.
It all makes perfect sense. I’m loving the sound of your dub patches. Did you download them from the Nord website onto your Nord keyboard?.
I’m not sure about the sound of the horns on my Nord Electro 6D. The sound is too synthesised. I’d love to find a way of making the horns sound a bit more authentic.
I play sax and sometimes add it into a performance. There are times where that’s not possible and sadly the horn sounds are not cutting it on the keyboard. I’ll have to play around with the settings and see if I can get a better sound…more brass, less synth 🙂

[Matt Jenson]

Hi Angela,
The dub sounds I’m using are with the Line 6 DL4 (the new version) and just playing the keyboard (piano or e. paino) into it then messing with the knobs to get freakiness. No sounds downloaded from the Nord site.

The issue with synth horns is a long frustrating one. Bands switched to using them mainly for financial reasons back in the 80’s, cheaper to have a keyboard player do them. But the sounds are AWFUL, even with the most modern keyboards and plug ins. Why? Because what makes a real horn section sound great is 1) the merging of all the timbres of each instrument (trumpet, trombone and tenor sax usually). With synth horns you’re stuck with the same timbre (and a weak sounding digital, or even analog one). 2) it’s very hard to get all the nice dynamics, scoops, fall offs, etc. with synth horns. Yes, some new synths have crescendos and the ability to do fall-offs and some other horn specific expressions, but they don’t sound all that great and if you’re keeping a chop going with one hand you can’t engage some of these things because some of them take using the mod wheel or some other knob on the keyboard. I don’t know of any keyboard or plug in that is trying to resolve al these issues….for us reggae keyboards. But if you find something, let me know!

[Angela Wakeham]

Thanks for your reply Matt,
I’m a tenor sax player in an eight piece ska band. We have 3 horns. The sound is really big and full. Pretty awesome.
Playing on my Nord Electro stage 3 after playing in a horn section I can hear how awful the sounds are. I’ve been quite surprised by this, i expected more from Nord. I can hardly bring myself to use any of the horn settings.
The Line 6 DL4 looks really interesting. I may well invest in one.
Meantime, if I do find something that sounds awesome I will let you know
Many thanks

Angela

[David Perrin]

Re: horn sounds – Chicago Street from Studio Horns in MainStage or Logic Pro sounds better than most I’ve heard. It has some built in dynamics and allows you to select a version that will play a different instrument depending on the sequence you play notes (for a C chord, you might get C – trumpet, E – tenor, G – trombone). Good luck!

[Angela Wakeham]

Amazing! Thank you David. I’ll look into Chicago street from studio horns and Pro logic
Angela 🙂

[Matt Jenson]

Woah…I’ll have to check that out. That’s the biggest problem with synth horns; the timbre is exactly the same. A trumpet, trombone and tenor sax all have different timbres and when played together that’s part of the great sound. Sounds like this plug-in is attempting to remedy that. Of course, then you’re dealing with digital (or even sampled) sound sources, so it won’t be as good as the real thing.

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