From obxwindsurf@yahoo.com Wed Nov 05 06:09:16 2003
Subject:Re: Drawbar Registrations - HUH?!

Actually, we will agree to disagree on this point. The footage
voicings do indeed have their roots in the pipe organ which is where
the footage notation originated long before the Hammond was even
conceived.

My intent was not to dumb down the power and elegance of the
drawbars, which have taken on a life of their own since the invention
of the Hammond organ. I don't think many musicians who play a
drawbar organ even think of pipes any more. While the Hammond can be
voiced to >>approximate<< things like clarinets or strings, so can a
pipe organ by the same acoustical reasoning (see the references I
posted on this). However the references are quick to indicate that
this is an approximation of the character of those instruments, and
not a synthesis of the instruments themselves.

Myself personally I only use the shape of the drawbar settings as a
visual reminder of where I would like to be BEFORE I sound any
notes. There is nothing more annoying from another musician's
standpoint to have the keyboard player between songs do the drawbar
equivalent of the mike users "testing 1, 2, 3....blah, blah, blah".

The shape gets me in the ball park. My ears fine tune when I start
playing, as nobody is sitting there and grading me asking "did he
start the first chord of the song with the exact drawbar registration
as so and so?"

If it's clarinets, or strings, or other instruments besides the organ
I'm looking for, I'll fall back to my sampled keyboards for those as
they are the best reproducers of non-organ sounds. Likewise I won't
rely on my sampled keyboard to do what the B4 is best at.

I was only providing the pipe references in what I discovered were
some very good answers to the list of questions that a beginner to
drawbar organs might pose. If you visit those links you'll see what
I mean - they are some very good references :)

Best regards,
Kevin
> >
> > Many of the questions you have will be answered from within rather
> > than from analysis.
> >
> > Regards,
> > Kevin