The Great Hammond B-3

You NEVER pass up an opportunity with that smilie, do you?

Oh, my God, that sounded wrong. Hopefully you'll understand my true intent, and not the sick way that reads.

And BACK to the subject of the great Hammond B-3...I checked at my church, and that's not what they use. I wonder, how applicable are techniques learned on different organs to others? I know this may sound stupid, but organs seem a bit more complicated than standard keyboards, and I don't know how standardised they are.

Just got the 'sick' way...

Anyway, I took it the right way... don't worry.

A lot of different organs have pre-set tabs, to get the right sound you want (and to mimic other instrument's sounds). Hammond and Vox organs are the only ones I have seen with drawbars... the rest seem to have these tabs.
I'm pretty sure that anything you learn, you will be able to play on any organ. It might depend on the kind of sound you want, however. You obviously can't expect to get the kind of versitility that drawbars give you from an organ with tabs.
Anyway, I hope this answered your question to some form...

I see...it kind of threw me when I noticed all those tabs on the church organ. I rather stupidly thought they all had drawbars.

I am rather encouraged to hear that (with the exception of the drawbars) the technique would probably carry over.

Yeah, it should be easy if you don't get confused by all those tabs...

The sight of rows and rows of those things sure confuses the hell out of me!
Anyway, the technique should probably carry over.

As for learning the organ, the basics aren't really that hard. I have found that most of the organ playing I like is simply chords (that's how you make the typical Floyd 'atmospheric' sound). Notice that the organ on "Us and Them" is just playing chords... and it sounds so good!
Chords aren't hard at all. You just have to memorize them. I know all the major and minor chords, and beginning to learn some 7th chords right now.
The hard part is 'technique', or playing a melody of single notes. I find that to be pretty hard, myself. You have to have nimble fingers and all that stuff...

my fingers hate seventh chords. but they sound so good.

Interestingly, some of that single-note stuff is starting to come to me, and just in the past few weeks or so. I would not say I am GOOD, but that I am definitely getting better all of a sudden. All I have is a keyboard with some organ-derived sounds (MIDI...so you can tell it's not THAT good), but with the touch-sensitive setting switched off, I can at least work on that kind of thing.

Is it fairly easy to play the bass pedals?

I wouldn't know about the bass pedals. I have your kind of setup, FloydWright.
Sounds terrible, but it's good enough to practice on, eh?

Yeah...good enough for practice!



(Random note. This band is lacking a couple of important instruments...)

...like a cherrywood B3 with a pair of Leslies?

They also need a bassist. It'll thicken up the sound, like.

And since this is a PF forum... they also need three backup singers and a saxophonist...

Anyway, I still can't figure out why the drummer has that odd piece of headgear on. And just why that singer is mouthing his words so fastly...

Oh, yeah...the Hammond needs to be there. DEFINITELY. (Beautiful imagery...)

And a bassist--one who will get along with the keyboardist.

I wonder if it's supposed to be a punk band. And if he's lip-synching to something!

Yeah.... if the Hammond is going to be there, why not a Fender Rhodes electric piano... and a Farfisa console...
And maybe the new bassist won't "stomp around, scowling and making faces"... and maybe stop pissing off our keyboardist...
Isn't that funny... I thought our smiley band was punk, also!

Hm...I noticed your little smiley.

"Get your filthy hands off my keyboardist!"

R. Waters (mocking): "What'd he say?"

SCCCHHHHHHEEEWWWW...BOOOOM!

(Sorry, don't know how else to write that fighter noise!)

So I'm assuming Guy Pratt will be the bassist for the smiley band, correct?

That would probably work best for the sanity of the whole smiley group, especially the cherrywood B3-playing keyboardist smiley.

I think so.

That way, the smiley playing the cherrywood B-3...really WOULD smile!

A shy little smile like this...



...but a smile!

(I know what this smiley is really called. But I think it fits. Check the following pics for comparison...!)

http://home.no/allwright/pic/p208.gif

And most of all, THIS one...

http://home.no/allwright/pic/p205.jpg

Yeah... good 'ol Rick always seems to have that little smile...

Also, if I were playing a cherrywood B3, I would certainly be smiling, kinda like this:

So, I guess we have a PF smiley band. It would be really cool if someone could actually make it a reality... I think that would look really cool...



Of course, if the REAL Floyd would get back together, than that would be bliss...