With engineers and programmers often asked to recreate classic sounds, the sheer number of options available when recreating classic organ sounds can be huge. We name five famous songs and how to crack their organ sounds’ secrets.

For sixty years or so, classic organ sounds have left an indelible mark on western pop music. For many, the marriage of rock and soul’s transgressive spirit with something that sounds like it’s been wheeled out of church mid-service provides a delicious twist that has graced rock, soul, and pop records with anything from soul’s razor-sharp stabs to rock’s churning ethereal backdrops and beyond.

The ecclesiastical flavour of the Hammond organ (especially) was no accident, being developed in the 1930s as an accompanying instrument for small religious settings. Around the same time the Leslie cabinet was created by an entirely separate company with the aim of simulating the spread of pipe divisions found in large church organs. The two eventually found an awkward marriage of convenience (overcoming Hammond’s reluctance), with the rest being history.

With so much ground to cover, and so many sounds, in this article we concentrate on getting Hammond sounds (foregoing others such as transistor Vox and Farfisa organ sounds) upstream of the mics. Here are our five sounds with examples, and how to get them.

Organic Ingredients

The Drawbars Essentially providing a kind of additive synthesis, the organ’s nine drawbars (often calibrated in feet, relating to real pipe lengths) each add a pure tone to each note’s voicing. Each one essentially controls the level of a physical tonewheel rotating in a magnetic field.

The Leslie Many variants were produced, but the best known are probably the 122 and 147 models, built into wooden cabinets and driven by valve (tube) amplification. This can provide the characteristic overdrive when driven harder with the organ’s swell pedal. A bass driver fires down into a rotating baffle with a cutout in it. Crossing over at 800Hz, a mid and high driver points into a pair of rotating horns (one is a dummy to balance the mass of the other).

Slow and fast speeds of rotation are available, with an additional “brake” position on some systems. The high and low rotation happens in opposite directions, and speed changes are much more latent in the lows, making for a highly complex sound. The skill is in switching speed changes at just the right time to evoke the right emotion.

Percussion Not a built-in cheesy drum machine, but a pitched attack added to the onset of notes, with 2nd and 3rd harmonic available. Additional level and envelope shaping come courtesy of Soft and Fast buttons.

Vibrato/Chorus finding its way onto the most famous recorded examples was Hammond’s ‘scanner’ electromechanical vibrato found on the more expensive organs such as the revered A100, M100, B3, and C3 models. Favoured by jazzers and rock musos who like to press all the buttons…

1 - The Kick*ss One - Soul Sacrifice By Santana

Helped along by Gregg Rolie’s dramatic use of Leslie speed changes and swooping smears and glisses, this is a masterclass in power and simplicity. Santana’s latin-infused psychedelic rock, for many, represented one of the best examples of guitar, drums, and Hammond interplay coming together in awesome form. The sound is simple; lots of bars, and vibrato/chorus forcing their way through tonnes of glorious overdrive. The sound on this record is similar to that heard later on in Deep Purple’s Child In Time. Another instance of a similar sound highly worthy mention is Sly And The Family Stone’s Dance To The Music. Who influenced whom? When great minds think alike, perhaps no-one.

2 - The Cool One - Green Onions By Booker T And The MG’s

For many, Booker T And The MG’s were so much more than just a band. Breaking the mould, their bringing black and white musicians together helped forge the sound of an entire label as the backing band for Stax. Booker T’s Hammond organ sound was instantly recognisable, thanks to a subtle touch and sounds that trod a delicious line between clean and driven. How much of that drive comes from the recordings themselves is harder to quantify.

3 - The Kooky One - Dreaming Of You By The Coral

The Hammond is revered for the expensive sound it can lend to arrangements, but it can also take on the Voxes and Farfisas of this world when it flashes its counter-cultural credentials. This lesser-known British psych-classic from the early 2000’s features an organ sound that may well have been something other than Hammond, however we have recreated it using a Hammond B3 model nonetheless. This sound’s lop-sided grin is helped along nicely by just a few drawbars providing a bit of fundamental with an appropriate amount of dissonance further up.

4 - The Mellow One - Don’t Dream It’s Over By Crowded House

With the Hammond solo providing the perfect cameo in the middle of this song, this part is notable as one of very few big hits of the 1980s to feature the instrument. With the company ceasing production of the larger ‘console’ style organs in the mid 1970s, by the next decade the writing was on the wall for anything that needed four people to move… The sound on this record, along with its meandering overlapping notes is heavily influenced by Procol Harum’s psychedelic classic A Whiter Shade Of Pale.

5 - The Jazz Classic - The Organ Grinder’s Swing By Jimmy Smith

Jimmy Smith is synonymous with Hammond, and for some, his sound also encapsulates the jazz organ aesthetic. While rock sounds frequently rely on a complex, turbulent growl courtesy of the Leslie, jazz organ sounds can be more economical. In one of Smith’s most famous tracks, The Organ Grinder’s Swing showcases quintessential jazz organ tones, relying heavily on vibrato/chorus accentuated with some percussive chime.

Other Worthy Mentions

Other classics that lean on Hammond include much of Bob Marley And The Wailers catalogue (as heard for example on No Woman, No Cry, Three Little Birds, or Waiting In Vain), that of Pink Floyd, and notable progmeisters such as Yes and Emerson, Lake, And Palmer.

Around the mid to late 1960s, the Hammond had gained a reputation as the pros’ choice. Contrasting with its electromechanical valve (tube) powered tones and stable tuning came smaller, European transistor instruments. These quickly found friends among smaller acts, or those actively seeking something different.

Of these, the Vox Continental and Farfisa Compact are among the best known, providing the inspiration for many “Cheez Organ” style patches in workstation synths for decades afterwards aping a cruder, ‘fuzzier’ sound with less stable tuning.

Examples of Vox organs on record include Light My FIre (The Doors), and Pump It Up (Elvis Costello And The Attractions). The Farfisa can be heard leading When A Man Loves A Woman (Percy Sledge) and Elton John’s Crocodile Rock among others. In the 2020’s Lizzo’s 2 Be Loved (Am I Ready) kicks off in inimitable ‘cheez’ organ style…

Taming The Beast

Going back to the Hammond, having owned and used quite a few of these magnificent pieces of furniture, one thing becomes very apparent. With the passage of time, no two are the same. Different sounds will be produced on two different instruments even with supposedly matched settings, and for those programming virtual Hammonds, this can be taken as extra authenticity when sounds don’t quite match! Whether it’s IK Multimedia’s B-3X, UA’s Waterfall B3 Organ, Arturia’s B-3 V, DAW stock options, or hardware ‘clonewheel’ synths such as the Nord Electro used in this article, sounds that convince in a mix are never far away. For more information on Hammond programming tips, Gordon Reid’s excellent, bottomless tome on the subject can be found here.

What are your favourite organ sounds, and how do you get them? Let us know in the comments.