Counting Crows' organ sound??

[Silvertone]

Originally Posted by peanutismint

I've always LOVED the sound of the organs on a lot of Counting Crows' records - especially the way the organist cranks up certain harmonics to create this awesome undulating cyclical feedback kinda sound......


Does anybody know what the hell I'm talking about?! :-D You can hear it at the beginning of pretty much any version of 'Round Here' taken from the time around their 'Across A Wire' live CDs (i tried to find a sample on youtube but no luck....), it's also used a lot on their 'This Desert Life' record, hear it in the background at the beginning of this song:

Counting Crows - Amy Hit the Atmosphere.wmv - YouTube


I'm just wondering if there's any techniques to amplifying certain tonebars to the point of feedback/distortion etc.... And if so, is that a sound you could only get on a real life organ rather than a software-emulated one??

In reality only a real Hammond Tone Wheel Organ (B3, M3, A100, etc...) through a Leslie, with a GREAT, GREAT organ player is the only way to achieve this sound. Yes, on this song they are processing it through some kind of filter but you need the basic sound to start.

I own an M3 and can play it a little bit but my friend Tony who plays B3 for a living (with many of the great Southern Rock bands) is who I call when I need the real deal. Just doing a simple gliss on a Hammond involves as many moves as a golf swing!

[paulmoak]

I too went on a long quest to figure this out. I found an article in the 90's when recovering the satellites came out. Charlie has a guitar level effects loop in his organ before the Leslie amp and has several pedals(overdrive, delay, vibrato). He is truly a master at making the organ a living breathing sound. Working the drawbars into the overdrive is such an awesome sound.

[bgrotto]

Although it's true with all things to varying degrees, when it comes to Hammond organ, the sound is ALL ABOUT the player. Where he or she sets drawbars, works the Leslie, rides the volume, and of course, the actual notes being played. It almost doesn't matter how you mic the thing, provided you use common sense.

[peanutismint]

Thanks for the info guys - I was afraid of that! :-) I guess I'll just have to buy a Hammond.....!!

[Kiwi]

I think clone-wheels are as good as the real thing, as far as generating the raw tonewheel and drawbar sound. Hammond-Suzuki, Roland - as long as they have true phase locked tonewheel generators you are fine. Ordinary synths and samplers cannot pull this off, because the laser-sharp purity of a tonewheel only happens because the sinewaves are locked into a fixed phase relationship via the common shaft. This resolves any beat note problems. A synth or sampler is at the mercy of chance - you are layering lots of sinewaves together, and some will randomly null and/or cause ugly beating ... which really sounds like shit when you distort the signal.

Real Tonewheels are a backache and maintenance problem. Nothing wrong with a good digital replacement. But don't use the digital distortion or reverb or rotary emulation. Use real analog amp or distortion, a real Leslie or equivlent rotary speaker.