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electronic organ (dict)
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Electronic Organ An electronic organ is an electronic device designed to imitate the sound of a pipe organ. Although many musicians hotly debate the sound quality of electronic organs compared to actual pipe organs, many churches that are unable to afford costly pipe organs have turned to less-expensive electronic organs as a viable alternative. Like the piano, it is a member of the keyboard family. Early History Electronic organs were pioneered by the Hammond Corporation in the mid-1930s, and the Hammond Organ quickly became the successor of the harmonium, or reed organ, an instrument that was very popular in homes and small churches in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Reed organs were usually small instruments of limited tonal quality that generated sound by forcing air over a set of reeds by means of a bellows, usually operated by constantly pumping a set of pedals. From the first, however, electronic organs operated on a radically different principle. In the place of reeds, Hammond introduced a set of rapidly spinning magnetic wheels, called tonewheels, which served as transducers that generated electrical signals of various frequencies that were fed through an amplifier to a loudspeaker. The organ was electrically powered, replacing the reed organ’s twin bellows pedals with a single swell (or "expression") pedal. Instead of having to pump at a constant rate, as had been the case with the reed organ, the organist simply varied her pressure on this pedal at will to change the volume as she desired. Unlike reed organs, this gave her great control over her music's dynamic range, while at the same time freeing one or both of her feet to play on a pedalboard, which, unlike nearly all reed organs, electronic organs incorporated. From the beginning, the electronic organ also had a second manual, also very rare among reed organs. While they meant that the electronic organ required greater musical skills of the organist than the reed organ had, the second manual and the pedalboard along with the expression pedal greatly enhanced her playing, far surpassing the reed organ's limited capabilities. The truly revolutionary difference in the Hammond, however, was the huge number of tonewheel settings, achieved by manipulating a system of drawbars located near the manuals. By using the drawbars, the organist could combine a variety of electronic tones in varying proportions, thus giving the Hammond vast "registration." In all, the Hammond was capable of producing more than 250 million tones. This feature, combined with the three-keyboard layout (i.e., manuals and pedalboard), the freedom of electrical power, and a wide, easily controllable range of volume made the first electronic organs far more flexible than any reed organ, or indeed any other musical instrument in history except for the pipe organ itself. In the wake of the Hammond Organ’s invention, later models--especially those of competitors--used various combinations of oscillators and filters to produce electric tones. Today, however, modern electronic organs use high-quality digital samples to produce as accurate a sound as possible. The heat generated by early models with vacuum tube tone generators and/or amplifiers led to the somewhat derogatory nickname "toaster"; today’s solid-state instruments do not suffer from this problem. Electronic organs were once popular home instruments, comparable in price to pianos and frequently sold in department stores. After their dbut in the 1930s, they captured the public imagination, largely through the film performances of Hammond organist Ethel Smith. Nevertheless, they initially suffered in sales during the Great Depression and World War II. After the war they became more widespread, peaking in popularity in the 1950s and early 1960s, but undoubtedly undercut by the rapid growth of television and high fidelity audio systems as home entertainment alternatives during that same period. Home electronic organ models usually attempted to imitate the sounds of theatre organs and/or Hammonds, rather than classical organs. The 1950s and 1960s The spinet organ Following World War II, most electronic home organs were built in a configuration usually called a spinet organ, which first appeared in 1949. These compact and relatively inexpensive instruments became the natural successors to the reed organs. They were marketed as competitors of home pianos and often aimed at would-be home organists who were already pianists (hence the name "spinet," a small upright piano). The instrument's design reflected this concept: the spinet organ physically resembled a piano, and it presented simplified controls and functions that were both less expensive to produce and less intimidating to learn. One feature of the spinet was automatic chord generation; with many models, the organist could produce an enture chord to accompany her melody merely by playing the tonic note, i.e., a single key, on a special section of the manual. spinet organs the keyboards were typically at least an octave shorter than is normal for organs, with the upper manual missing the bass, and the lower manual missing the treble. The manuals were usually offset, inviting (although not requiring) the new organist to dedicate her right hand to the upper manual and her left to the lower, rather than using both hands on a single manual. This seemed designed in part to encourage the pianist, who was accustomed to a single keyboard, to make use of both manuals. Stops on such instruments, relatively limited in number, were frequently named after orchestral instruments that they could, at best, only roughly approximate, and were often brightly colored (even more so than those of theatre organs). The spinet organ's loudspeaker, unlike the original Hammond models of the 1930s and 1940s, was housed within the main instrument (behind the kickboard), which saved even more space. The spinet organ’s pedalboard normally spanned only a single octave, was often incapable of playing more than one note at a time, and was effectively playable only with the left foot (and on some models only with the left toes). The expression pedal was located to the right and either partly or fully recessed within the kickboard, thus conveniently reachable only with the right foot. Such an arrangement spawned a style of casual organist who would naturally rest her right foot on the expression pedal the entire time she played, unlike classically-trained organists. This position, in turn, instinctively encouraged her to pump the pedal while playing, especially if she was accustomed to using a piano’s sustain pedal to shape her music. Her expressive pumping added a strong dynamic element to home organ music that much classical literature and hymnody lacked, and would help influence a new generation of popular keyboard artists. The chord organ Shortly after the debut of the spinet the "chord organ" appeared. This was an even simpler instrument designed for those who wanted to produce an organlike sound in the home without having to learn much organ (or even piano) playing technique. The chord organ had only a single manual that was usually an octave shorter than its already-abbreviated spinet counterpart. It relied more heavily on automatic chord generation than other models; it also possessed scaled-down registration and no pedalboard or expression pedal (volume being determined by a knob near the manual instead, an inefficient arrangement that effectively eliminated the dynamic playing that an expression pedal allowed). As was the case with the spinet, the loudspeaker was housed within the kickboard. The console organ On the other end of the spectrum were larger and more expensive home models, known as “console organs” because they resembled pipe organ consoles. These instruments had a more traditional configuration, including full-range manuals, a wider variety of stops, and a two-octave (or occasionally even a full thirty-two note) pedalboard easily playable by both feet in standard toe-and-heel fashion. (Console organs having thirty-two note boards were sometimes known as "concert organs.") Console models, like spinet and chord organs, had their speakers mounted above the pedals, though the classic Hammond design of the 1930s and 1940s made use of free-standing loudspeakers, usually manufactured by Leslie, that produced a higher-quality sound than a spinet organ’s small built-in speakers. With their more traditional configuration, greater capabilities, and better performance compared to spinets, console organs were especially suitable for use in small churches, public performance, and even organ instruction. The home musician or young student who first learned to play on a console model often found that she could later make the transition to a pipe organ in a church setting with relative ease. By the 1960s, electronic organs were ubiquitous in all genres of popular music, from Lawrence Welk to acid rock. In some cases, Hammonds were used, while in others, very small all-electronic instruments, only slightly larger than a modern digital keyboard, called "combo organs," were used. The 1970s and 1980s saw increasing specialization: the jazz scene continued to make heavy use of Hammonds, while various styles of rock began to take advantage of more and more complex electronic keyboard instruments as Large-scale integration and then digital technology began to enter the mainstream. The original Hammond tonewheel design, phased out in the mid-1970s, is still very much in demand by professional organists, and the industry continues to see a lively trade in refurbished instruments even as technological advance allows new organs to perform at levels unimaginable only two or three decades ago. The modern electronic organ professional electronic organs have reached a degree of sophistication, complexity, and expense surpassed only by the pipe organ itself. The consoles of some of these instruments, at first glance, may be almost indistinguishable from those of pipe organs (although a closer examination, as well as the obvious absence of pipes, will quickly reveal the difference). Electronic organs are still made for the home market, but they have been largely replaced by the digital keyboard or synthesizer, which is not only smaller and cheaper than typical electronic organs or traditional pianos, but also far more capable than the most advanced electronic organs of earlier years. Modern digital organs, by the same token, are far more advanced in design and capabilities then their ancestors. Today’s instruments incorporate digital sampling, MIDI, and Internet connectivity for downloading of music data and instructional materials, as well as making use of floppy disk and media card storage. While electronically they are radically different from their predecessors, their basic appearance makes them instantly identifiable as the latest generation in a long line of electronic organs that now reaches back more than seventy years. The very best digital organs today have a number of features which distinguish their sound from that of simpler instruments, including the following. - Multiple digital-to-analog converters, to prevent degradation of sound quality as multiple stops are used (simpler instruments multiplex one or two DACs for all stops at once).
- Each note in each register is sampled from that actual pipe, as opposed to simpler instruments in which one sample has its frequency shifted digitally to generate different notes.
- Long samples allow a more realistic envelope, as opposed to repeating a short sample.
- Sampling is done with 24-bit or 32-bit resolution instead of CD-quality 16-bit resolution.
- Sampling is done at a much higher frequency than the 44,100 samples per second of CD-quality audio.
- At least four independent amplifiers to provide a more spacious sound.
- A dedicated high power woofer for the low frequencies of the sound; the best digital organs can thus approach -- though not yet quite attain -- the physical feeling of a real pipe organ.
- Simulated changes of windchest pressure -- when many notes are sounding at once, the air pressure of a real pipe organ will drop slightly, which changes the sound of all the pipes; some electronic organs can simulate this effect.
A digital organ with all the above features can be difficult to tell from the sound of a real pipe organ. Of course, such digital organs will cost more than simpler ones, because such an organ may need to store the equivalent of 40 hours or more of sampled sound. See also External links
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