Music Before the Money

(Diagram compliments of http://clonewheel.ashbysolutions.com)

There is no other instrument in the world like a Hammond B3. You don’t turn it on, you start it up. You have to warm up the tone generators by holding a switch down, which is reminiscent of starting a ‘52 Ford 1/2 ton. Then there’s the oily smell and the whirring sound as the spinning Leslie speaker and horn cranks up to speed.

So, have synthesizers copied this sound? Well, first, like a violin or any other instrument, there is no one sound to the famous organ. The Hammond B3 organ has a myriad of tones because of the percussive attack and the tonal drawbars.

Then there is the Leslie speaker. This combination of a rotating horn and lower speaker not only has a sound of its own in rest mode, there is a Doppler effect in fast motion. The sound waves also change as the speaker and horn start to accelerate and then, afterward, the sound “floats” as the twin speakers slow down. So in a synthesizer you would have to have about 5 patches (tones), one for for each operation. And that is just for one organ tone. For every movement on the many draw bars multiply each sound by those five variables.

In 1979 Korg, an upstart synthesizer company, rose to the challenge of creating a portable B3 organ and for 30 years the world saw the Korg CX3 organ synthesizer as the heir apparent of the B3. At first the CX3 and its big brother, the BX3 (double keyboard), took the world by storm as keyboard players left their huge, back-breaking cabinet organs at home. However, even this marvel fell out of favor when digital synthesizers swept the neighborhood. As FM synths pushed the CX3 aside it sat on the sidelines with the B3. There weren’t enough purists left to care about the many tonal qualities of either.

In the late ’90’s the “retro era” began and MiniMoogs and other analogue synthesizers were suddenly in demand. The Korg CX3 was another keyboard that experienced a Renaissance but working models in good shape were hard to find. So Korg relented and began releasing an updated version of their famous keyboard, right to the wood-grain finish.

The new CX3 now uses digital technology to model the original B3 sound. In addition, new breakthroughs in digital sound modeling have allowed Korg to include hundreds of traditional Leslie speaker and amplification quirks in its repertoire. To accomplish this feat the new CX3 is designed with 91 virtual oscillators that can be used simultaneously for a dual 61-note polyphony. The sound is extremely realistic and, in addition, the keyboard can produce other sounds through MIDI technology.

The new boards are around $2,000, which is pretty good for all that punch.

I was in Arizona about 13 years ago and a few of us were sitting around the pool on night when I guy came out with a strange-looking instrument that featured a guitar’s neck and a triangular body like a shaved balalaika. The guy started playing and it sounded something between a ukulele and a banjo - although not an unpleasant sound at all. The bottom end was missing but there was a pleasing mix of other tones which made up for it. And then, it was just an informal sing-song around a swimming pool.

The Martin & Co. Backpacker Travel Guitar , as it is called, has a solid spruce top with a solid mahogany back and sides. It uses two different type of wood for the fingerboards. The first type is a reddish-orange, African wood called Paduak or Paduach.The second is Morado, a Bolivian Rosewood which has various shades of brown stripping. Weighing in less than 2.5 lbs it has a rich and loud tone but can fit into the storage cases on an aircraft.

Although the front strap hooks onto the body many owners suggest that you hook it to the head for better stability. The guitar was made to pick up and go and has been on the space shuttle, to the top of Mount Everest and to the North Pole.

Whatever your reasons for buying the guitar you won’t be disappointed. It is a party in a little black bag.

If the 50’s and ’60’s is exemplified by the 45RPM record then the ’60’s and ’70’s was the 12″ long play gramophone record or LP. In technical terms it is a analogue storage medium utilizing a spiral groove which ran from the outer edge to the center of the disk but we just called them “albums.” The disk itself was made from vinyl and replaced the 78 RPM disk which had, in turn, replaced the cylinder.

LP’s enabled stereophonic reproduction before the 45’s had them but it wasn’t popular. My first LP, Got Live If You Want It by the Rolling Stones, was monophonic because it was $1 cheaper at $4.29. But then I got a stereo record player for Christmas and I started buying stereo LP’s. (That was Come Home by The Dave Clark Five)

Without getting into too much technical detail (you can go to Wikipedia for that stuff) let’s just say that the LP went commercially into the ’90’s and now is still has a cult following. The purists claim that the analogue sound of the vinyl is “fatter” and warmer.

I wanted to expound on the social aspects of the LP record, or album:

• When you got a new album it was cause enough for a party (The Cheech and Chong party was the one I remember best.)
• The LP led to mass, socially-acceptable theft of plastic milk crates because your albums fit exactly into them (Then metric came along and the milk companies never had to worry again).
• When you and your girl friend broke up it was called “splitting the record collection.” (This never happened to us. We never lent our records to anyone let alone women and never would have joined them with a woman’s collection. However, as the boys got married - and divorced - this may have happened. Mine are now mixed in with my wife’s. Hey, what’re you gonna do?).
• You were judged by the quantity of records you had.
• You were judged by the number of great titles and bands you had (Wishbone Ash, Fleetwood Mac - **way before the girls messed them up** - and early Pink Floyd Umma Gumma.).
• You were an immediate outcast if your girlfriend’s David Cassidy record ever touched your turntable.
• Your were judged by the brand of turntable. (Dual was good, Thorens was better and BSR was crap. I had a Kenwood “Rock” and still wish I had it. The marble base was not conducive wow-and-flutter)
• Your were also judged by your stereo: Sansui, Harman Kardon, Technics, Kenwood)
• And last: Your LP’s were a soundtrack of your life for the period of time that you collected them.

I still have my LP’s and I won’t sell them although I never get a chance to play them anymore. They are a soundtrack of my life from 1966 to 1981. That’s when I stopped buying them (I was more mobile and had tapes - waste! Then I got CD’s)

In 1986 I bought the Holy Grail of sequencers, the Roland MC-500 for $2195. I got the MKS-7 sound module to go with it (Half price $1200) and set down to learn how to program songs (I add a Yamaha drum module with Latin percussion sounds for $495). In a few days I had my first sequence down, a rough version of Stand By Me.

The MC-500 held the data for around 8 normal songs in its ram. The storage was on the fairly new 3.5″ floppy disk that MacIntosh computers used but, believe it or not, was 6 years old at the time.

In 1980, the 3.5 inch floppy drive and diskette was introduced by Sony which - while fighting its losing battle supporting the Betamax video format against the VHS - fought off challenges from 2.0, 2.5, 2.8, 3.0, 3.25, and 4.0 inch formats. Although a dying technology today’s standard 3.5″ diskette hold a formatted capacity of about 1.5 megabytes while still using the same basic technology of the old 8″ drives.

My producer friend Van Wilmot got me into the Roland system and I’m still there. (No kidding! I have floppies all over the place but I’m too old and cheap to move along to flashdrives) He sold me 2 Sony diskettes for the amazing price of $10 each from a stock that was sent to him from Toronto. In the stores they were selling for $12-$15.

It’s hard to believe that the double-sided (DD) 720 kb disks went for that much but that’s what they cost. But then an IBM XT with a 20 Meg hard drive cost almost $4000. In a year they came down to around $2.00 each and then lower. You can get them online for about 18 cents each.

Years ago I was at a Bush Dance outside Brisbane, Australia, watching the ghostly figures dance while engulfed in the fine dust. The band was called Bullamakanka, one of the country’s top “bush bands,” groups that played Aussie music and American country favorites. In more than a few of their songs the leader was shaking a stick covered in beer caps. He called it his “Lagerphone” and every now and then he’s smack it with another stick which made a loud rattle.

The “Lagerphone” - sometimes called the “Murrimbidgee River Rattler” - is an upright pole with two crosspieces upon which are screwed beer bottle tops. The noise I heard was made by hitting the instrument on the floor at the same time striking the middle section with a with a solid piece of wood. I have checked throughout the web and the Lagerphone’s beginnings were in far-off England long before the beer cap was invented.

A Monkey Stick By Any Other Name

It started out as a traditional English percussion instrument called the mendoza or “monkey stick” and was popular in folk music. This original instrument used pieces of carved bone and round metal disks. Nowadays, it is made from a round pole like a shovel handle with a work boot screwed onto the working end in place of the shovel. Tambourine-like disks made from flattened beer-bottle tops are screwed on at intervals along the handle. The player drives booted end down to the floor which produces a bass-drum-like sound and the rattle of many tambourines.

Beer Caps = “Lager-Phone”

In Newfoundland, it is referred to as an “ugly stick” but it is ingrained into the Australian heritage as the lagerphone and no bush band is complete without one. Try making one. All you’ll need is a boot, shovel handle and beer caps - and another stick to hit it.

Now go to this site and you can make your Gut Bucket!