Native Instruments B4 II - Manual (Page 76)

76 – B4 II
Practice
Now that we’ve reviewed the technical and historical aspects of the tonewheel
organ, let’s use this information to create some useful sounds with the B4.
We will use the upper manual to experiment with the organ sound, although
all of the following concepts will work equally well with the other manuals.
The only exception is pedalboard programming, as the drawbars provided for
the bass pedals are missing the highest three drawbars.
Let’s start with a very basic setting. Select the Manual view, and turn off all of
the effects (the Percussion, Rotator and Vibration switches, and the Drive dial).
This will allow us to hear the pure tone generation without any interference.
Now, “push in” all of the drawbars, and pull out the 8’ bar (which is the
fundamental tone). You can now hear the pure frequency of a note.
The white programming drawbars provide octaves above the fundamental tone.
If you pull out the white bars, you will hear tones one (4’), two (2’) and three
(1’) octaves above the basic tone. Notice how the drawbars act like a mixer,
allowing you to add the harmonics tones to the output sound.
The first brown drawbar (16’) will also give an octave sound, but below the
fundamental tone. Using the octave drawbars alone, and especially the higher
octaves (2’ and 1’), you can produce “cheesy organ” sounds popular with
60’s and 70’s bubblegum pop, and also useful for adding a bit of humor to
modern dance mixes. The following setting is a good example of a typical
cheese organ sound: