Corky’s VST Organ Tips and Tweaks Page 🎹

I never notice before that there is clavinet doubling in the right hand too. I love these isolation tracks on youtube.

  • Paul
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@bartok2112

Hey Paul

I love them too. I had a studio for several years. and learned a lot about mixing from the studios around town, checking out individual tracks. That was in my youth a few centuries ago. :grin:
I have sources for isolated tracks. Can’t get everything, but it is nice to hear what is available, and how things were really recorded. So many organ tracks lay way back in the mix, it is hard to hear what is really going on. One example is the Allman Bros tracks I covered in the Allman preset above.

Back to Gregg Allman for a quick post. Since I don’t have B and Bb keys (MIDI notes 35 and 34) it never occurred to me to somehow swap back and forth with a press of a key. I assigned a pair of buttons under the drawbars on my Axiom to them. Now that I’m trying it I’m noticing it’s definitely how Gregg played as Corky pointed out.

Here is a Stormy Monday from their Beacon Theater residency in 2013 where you can hear/see it happening:

Anecdote: A friend of mine is the WFUV event photographer, he got us tickets to their Holiday Party concert at the Beacon Theater. We sat next to a woman who attended all 238 Allman Brothers shows there. She had a few funny stories about Gregg and Dickie fighting.

EDIT: Here’s one with Eric Clapton with a camera at Gregg’s side:

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Allman and Winwood very reliant on the key switches, and so defines their style. Glad you found a good work around. C3 makes it so easy. I would bet I’ve played and sung Stormy Monday a thousand times in my time as a musician.

In a city where Blues and Gospel still reign, it still gives me goosebumps watching the local Hammond players pulling tones out of constantly moving drawbars.

Very cool. Dickie apparently acted in a manner synonymous to his name. Gregg’s addiction didn’t help matters either.

@dsteinschneider

Doug

Since you are also a Bass player, thought you would like a Memphis version of “Stormy Monday”. Blues/Funk style. I’ve worked with a couple of the guys in this version of the BB King Allstars. Doc Samba is a great Bass player.

Corky

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Hi folks,

I spent some time with my “MIDI Organizer” script for ReaJS today and updated it a bit. Now it is a full “drawbar preset blender”, i.e. you can define 2 sets of drawbar positions and blend smoothly between them using the mod wheel.

You put it somewhere in your song file or your organ rack and send a separate MIDI route to it.Then you route its MIDI out to your organ plugin:

grafik

Then you set your two drawbar settings in the plugin:

Now you can use your mod wheel to blend smoothly between the two settings. I like to use this as a kind of “Bb/B-Key on steroids”

Caution: this will overwrite any drawbar settings in your plugin, so be sure you lock your snapshots / presets.

The script midi_organizer2 will send drawbar values on CCs 12-20; to make things easy, I’ve also built another version (midi_organizer2L) that sends CC21-29 for the lower manual.

midi_organizer.zip (1.4 KB)

You can also use this as a simple preset switch with fixed controller values (just send it CC1=127 or CC1=0 via triggers or state changes) - maybe your organ plugin doesn’t have preset keys or two sets of drawbars, so this can act as a Bb/B key substitute.

Have fun with it!

Cheers,

Torsten

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Well will you look at this jewel! I can use on “a little help from my friends” where I do exactly this type of blend/morph between draw-bar settings. I have a clunky C3 version of it that functions but this is way cool …

Thanks much @Torsten for this contribution! :smile:

Dave

Just when I thought I began mastering linked racks… a whole new world just opened up.

I’m going to try this gem… realistically this would go into an expression pedal for me, but let me have some fun with my breath controller first :stuck_out_tongue:

Well. here goes another night of sleep… I’m not sure I should really thank you @Torsten :smiley:

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Funny, that was my reason to re-work this as well - going from the intro sound to a somewhat thinned-out drawbar setting for the “fill” sound that blends better with the rest of the arrangement… Previously, I worked with two presets and a bit of EQ and automated volume, but this is far more fun :wink:

@Torsten
Very nice!!! Are you now changing your Leslie speeds with sustain pedal instead of mod wheel?

mostly pitch wheel these days, or - when my hands are too busy - with my left pedal (CC66). But CC1 is still mapped to leslie speed as well going into my organ rack. I address the Organizer plugin with CC99 going into the rack and map it to CC1 inside the organ rack on the route to the Organizer.

But you know me and my setups - I use what makes sense in a song. E.g. in Green Onions, I use the mod wheel both to send CC1 to the organ rack and CC99 at the same time, so I can go from a slow leslie base sound for the standard organ part to a fast leslie and add a bit of the upper drawbars at the same time for going a bit crazy on the improvisation. In my “universal rock organ”, I use only the pitch wheel for leslie speed and the mod wheel (mapped to CC99) when I want to change the sound. In other songs, I automate the Organizer with State->OnLoad bindings.

It would be pretty easy to change the Organizer script to use any controller (e.g. CC99) directly in the script, but I tend to keep things simple - most of my scripts react to CC1, so I use Cantabile route wizardry to keep things nice and clean.

Cheers,

Torsten

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Funny Torsten shares his blend Bb/B-Key on steroids just when I’m concluding that switching via my two Axiom controller buttons is kind of jarring. I was using the expression pedal to smooth it out.

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Of course, you know Booker T would look at your settings, and say sh*t boy, just sit down and play the damn thing! :rofl::rofl:
Very creative Torsten!

Torsten is always quick on the draw…you were just quicker this time. :grin:

Just wanted to say thanks to Corky for sharing. I haven’t had time to check out the files yet as I am very busy on non music stuff at present. Once it is out of the way, I hope to download and try them out.

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Well will you look at this jewel! I can use on “a little help from my friends”

Talking of this song, I have a (not quite on-topic - sorry!) trivia question: On the Joe Cocker Live CD, who plays the Hammond intro? There are two keyboard players listed - Chris Stainton and Jeff Levine. I was wondering who actually played that version (which I’m currently trying to learn because of its utter awesomness!)

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Hey Phil,

My money is on it being Chris Stainton because of his prominent role in things at the time it was recorded but I do not mind being corrected by the organ aficionados of our site here … :grin:

Dave

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Which live CD? There were several. It is my understanding Stainton wasn’t with Cocker after the Mad Dogs tour. Levine was with him like in the late 80’s.

My favorite live version is from the Berlin 1997 concert:

I believe it was Ken Stange on Hammond on that tour.

Cheers,

Torsten

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Dear @Torsten

Thanks for your midi organizer script. I have been trying to run it, but ReaJs does not see it
I have copied the 2 scripts in my usual VST path underneath Reaplugins
C:\Program Files\VSTplugins64bit\ReaPlugins\JS\Effects\midi

But when I open reajs next it only sees the standard scripts, also after restarting Cantabile and rebooting the laptop

Am I missimg out something?
If you can help me on this one it will be much appreciated

Thanks

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Which live CD?

It was just called “Joe Cocker Live”. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Cocker_Live. It’s a lovely sound - just a hint of distortion - the B5/Amplitube can approximate it.