Corky’s VST Organ Tips and Tweaks Page 🎹

That will make this easier. Will have you a version soon. Stay tuned.

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@CologneKeys

Upper Set B drawbars 888800000
Upper Set A drawbars 888800000
Normal volume switch
Upper vibrato switch on…lower off
Vib/Chs upper on and set to C3
Key Click at 12 o’clock
Drive at 1 o’clock
Reverb at 9 o’clock
Volume at 2 o’clock
Bass and treble at 12 o;clock
Percussion off

Organ Page:
Generator - C3 1973
Vibrato Depth - 86
everything else on this page at default

Amp and FX page:
Spring reverb level - 0
Rotary Sim Cabinet - 127
everything else default

Adjust everything to your liking. Airey’s playing style is very aggressive and contributes to the sound.

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Hi Corky,
Thank you very much for your commitment and your effort! I’m looking forward to trying out your settings tonight - if you please could tell me how to play like Airey (or Lord) at last :wink: - just kidding
(nevertheless: if you can recommend a good rockorgan tutorial - please tell us)
Best regards - I am truly grateful to people like you
Christoph

The best thing you can do is study the many videos of Lord and Airey playing live. You can use the slow down function in YouTube to see and hear what they are doing. Being aggressive comes from confidence, and knowledge of the keyboard. Even after playing organ for over 55 yrs, I still spend much time learning licks I hear. I also teach myself things I make up in my own mind. A good start would be learning the Pentatonic scale, and combining it with the Blues scale in many different keys. Learning the use of some grace notes within those scales will up your game as well. Hand and finger memory is achieved through repetition. Rhythmic percussion type playing is another skill to learn in this style.

Regards

Corky

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I’ll start right away :+1: :slightly_smiling_face:

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I have used this to get into organ: https://www.musicgurus.com/courses/how-to-play-hammond-organ-authentically-joe-glossop-learn-tunes-techniques/

Assumes you know your way around on a keyboard, but are unfamiliar with Hammond organs.

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The greatest thing about organ is that being sloppy and fat fingered makes it sound better if you do it right! :laughing:

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I also used Joe’s course - lots of good tips for someone like myself who doesn’t have years of live Hammond performance.

Was on youTube looking for something else and stumbled across this guy

…shows we’re all NEVER TOO OLD to bring it. This guy’s got some chops. Not an easy solo by any means, from a band that doesn’t often get the credit it deserves. Jerry Corbetta’s keyboard work on the organ (especially on solos like this), or clav “Don’t Call Us”, and piano on “Lay Me Down” shows a solid body of work across all keys. That’s not to short change his lead vocal skills in any way. Considering he switched from drums in his late teens, very impressive to say the least. One of the late great talents.

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I LOVE Jerry! People used to say my style was just like him even though Sugarloaf wouldn’t be a band I’d cite as a major influence. I have a hunch we were both copying Rod Argent. I can’t wait to see this later.

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Wow - that sent me down a rabbit hole - never heard of Howard Wales but someone in the comments was claiming that he played the solo on the “record”. Another good player but I don’t think the style matches.

Doug…I’ve heard many different people played the solo, and saw a video of Corbetta playing the solo, and he was nowhere near the original solo. So, I guess we will never know.

Unless a ringer was playing live with them… and this version is, like twice as fast as the record :laughing: You can tell (or I feel I can) that yeah it’s definitely him, and he definitely gets that kind of tense slop going from (I suppose) cocaine and adrenaline and I can imagine that in later years, between getting older, technique going downhill and playing lousy freakin keytars that yeah, he probably wasn’t sounding like himself anymore. I don’t sound like myself either, that’s why I quit LOL

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They are pleading for me to quit, because I AM like myself. :joy::joy::joy::joy:

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So can a B-3X be made to sound like a Lowery Berkshire? I tried for a long time and this is as good as I could get it. Close but not quite a cigar in my book. But then it’s not realistic to expect to be able to do that in the first place I suppose…apples and oranges…

Anyone have ideas on a VSTi that could do this properly?

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As far as I know, there are none. There are Lowery Samples on the web, but never tried them. There is this: Organux: Antique, Classic, Vintage and Modern Virtual Organs VST VST3 Audio Unit (Cathedral, Baroque, Church, Gothic, Chapel, Farfisa, VOX, B3, Reed Organ) Windows and macOS (Universal 2: Apple silicon M1/M2/M3 and Intel), which claims a Lowery sound, but your B-3X sounds very close, so I would stay with it.

Thanks, I’ll check those options out. I normally don’t touch epic songs like this with a ten foot pole, but I’ve always loved this one and Top Gun Maverick has made it relevant again, so I’ll entertain the idea of making an exception if I can nail the sound design for whoever ends up playing the part…

I’ll also try layering in the high octave on top, which is weak with the Hammond no matter what I tried but very prominent with the Lowery.

I downloaded the “isolation” parts off of YouTube and did a full mix with them which allows muting either the original organ or mine, and there is no contest when compared that way. The high octave chime in the original is essential, mine without the chime sounds more like a carnival ride in comparison.

BTW, those isolation tracks are great for learning parts. The bass part in this song is insane, never realized it until I heard it in isolation!

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I think that sounds great. Really, a little tilt eq towards the bright side and I think you’d have it. The problem then is getting the repeater effect (sorry, I forget what Lowery called it). Someone had a freeware vst that emulated that. But if I went to a show and heard that intro I’d say yeah, that’s it!

Already tried tilt and its a no go. Tried all sorts of resonant EQs and the pedal EQ in B-3X is already cranked. The root problem is that Hammonds just don’t generate the same amount of upper octave per note that the Lowery does…tone wheel vs transistor tone generator. I also tried layering the highs and it got chorus-y and phase-y, so that’s a no go as well.

A/B with the original in context of the full mix and it sounds pretty bad, especially towards the end with all the high notes. LOL, I’m to the point of buying a Lowery and sampling it and then selling it afterwards. Fortunately people are saying the cheaper less desirable models can get the same sound. I suspect many of the 1970’s home organs with transistor tone generators can probably get this sound, so I might even check some of those since they can be had for $100. Heck at that price I’d be willing to gut it and put the tone generators in a box and midi enable it.

As a side note, the isolation tracks on YouTube claim to be the original tracks. All I know is when I lined them up and mixed them myself with modern stuff it sounds (to me) a lot better than the album mix. Which of course makes A/B with my organ sound that much worse.

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I had a PM requesting the recipe so I’ll post it here for anyone interested. B-3X preset attached and then the following plugins/settings in the order shown. The most important are the resonant lowpass (which wouldn’t be needed with a Lowery), the ladder filter and the tremolo. You could probably ditch the saturator and channel strip for live and not tell much difference. BPM is 135

Fooled Again.zip (1.9 KB)

Capture1

Capture3

I automated the ladder filter sweeps since apparently the original was done by hand twisting knobs. Putting it on a LFO made the peaks happen in the wrong places and wrong sweep speed in places. But to each their own.