The German Native Instruments renews, after about 5 years from its introduction on the music software market, one of its most successful virtual instruments: the B4. This was perhaps the most known and appreciated plug-in among computer music users, the simulation of the legendary Hammond organ most loved in the software environment and preferred by many to many other "clones" also in the hardware field. With the new version have been introduced big news among the most desired by virtual Hammondists, including new amplifier simulations, an improved Leslie effect, a better midi implementation, the reverb effect and much more. We discover in this article the “reinvention of the… tonal wheel”.
The origins of the Hammond
The Hammond organ was invented in the early 30s by a former music-loving watchmaker, Laurens Hammond (1895 - 1973), with the aim of finding an economic and practical alternative to the mammoth and very expensive pipe organs for the Catholic Churches. The functioning of this fabulous instrument is based on a project begun many years earlier, in 1897, by another ambitious inventor, Thaddeus Cahill (1867 - 1934), called Telharmonium or "Dynamophone”, A gigantic musical instrument, actually almost a metallurgical factory, which occupied the space of an entire warehouse. The sound was generated by large metal toothed wheels put into rotation by a series of electric motors, each wheel was related to a specific note and had a diameter and a number of teeth different from the others; in front of each wheel there was an electromagnetic transducer, that is a pick-up (like those of the Rhodes piano or the electric guitar), which picks up the movement and translates it into an electrical signal in the audio band. The success of Cahill's invention was matched only by its colossal failure, so much so that the project, after several revisions and countless attempts at miniaturization, was definitively extinguished during the years of the First World War. Laurens Hammond, being very practical in mechanics as his profession had to do, precisely, with the gears of watches, took advantage of his technical preparation and the innovations of industrialization of the 30s to resume the Cahill project and give light , finally, to an electromechanical musical instrument capable of equalizing the sound of a pipe organ occupying a fraction of its space. The first example was built and sold in 1935 a Henry Ford, the American auto industry tycoon, who bought as many as six, some of which have been on display for years in his museum of American industry, which then tragically went up in flames in the 50s. The first Hammond to appear in public, however, was presented for an audition in St. Patrick's Cathedral in Chicago, in front of an audience of onlookers including church organ experts. Among those present, no one was able to distinguish the sound of the organ installed in the Church from that of the Hammond, however this was not a real success for Mr. Laurens as, in the years to come, the Clergy prohibited the use of the organ. Hammond in the Catholic Churches as defined only an "electrophone" and not a true liturgical organ. Among its first users, the name of George Gershwin and even that of the physicist thomas edison (do you know the light bulb?). But the sound of the Hammond we are used to today is not only the result of the magic of the organ itself, since the best accomplice of a B3 (Fig. 1) is undoubtedly a Leslie rotary speaker. Donald Leslie (1911 - 2004) was an employee of the Hammond factory, with a passion for improving the sound of the electric organ. So it was that, at the beginning of the 40s, he decided to leave his job to devote himself to the construction of a particular acoustic speaker able to spread the sound in the surrounding space thanks to two speakers capable of rotating on themselves by 360 °. Thus the famous Leslie case was born, since then an essential accessory for the owner of an authentic Hammond organ. The curious thing was that Laurens Hammond didn't like Leslie's amps at all, said they "polluted" the beautiful sound of his instruments, and claimed that nothing could amplify a Hammond organ better than an original Hammond amplifier. He was so convinced of it, and took this situation to heart so much that he wrote phrases like "don't buy Leslie amps”, Which indirectly made Donald Leslie's products a big publicity, saving him at least six years of advertising campaigns. The result was that everywhere the use of Hammond organs spread, in jazz, blues, funk, Gospel, in all musical genres, there were no Hammond organs without Leslie box attached.
The B4 and the Hammond:
The Hammond organ has always been a musical instrument that boasts countless attempts at imitation, starting from the 60s with the entry into the market of electronic organs (those that have oscillators similar to synthesizers as sound generators) until today with the software simulations. This is why a real sector in its own right was born, that of Hammond clones. Although the term "clone" defines the exact reproduction of something, in terms of Hammond it is not exactly the right term but often, as in the case of the B4, it is the one that comes closest to the concept of excellent imitation. The Native Instruments B4 (Fig. 2) reproduces in software form what happens mechanically and electronically inside a Hammond B3 organ and a Leslie speaker.
Inside a real B3 is the generator, made up of an engine which turns the 91 tonewheels - Or tonal wheels - in front of the 91 pickups; there is a filter section to clean the sound of the generator from excess interference (also called leakage); there are the drawbars (Fig.3), those levers that the musician can use to define his own sound; there is the matrix, which connects the drawbars and tonewheels to the keys of the two manuals (the keyboards) and the pedal board; There is the scanner vibrato, which reproduces the vibrato and chorus effect thanks to a series of low-pass filters; there is the percussion circuit, which allows you to add more attack to the notes; finally there is the preamplifier, obviously tube. All of this is simulated almost perfectly in the B4, and all 91 waveforms produced by the tonewheels (not exactly symmetrical sinusoids) were sampled from a real Hammond. We could, therefore, define the B4 as a physical modeling synthesizer, as both the mechanical and electrical elements of the original instrument are literally modeled, giving the software user all the flexibility (and beyond) found in using the physical counterpart.
Differences between B4 and B4 II:
The first version of the B4 limited itself to simulating a B3 with a generic Leslie cabinet, offering great sound but lacking some of the many possible options for using a Hammond. Version two, on the other hand, adds 13 different speaker types (Fig. 4), ranging from the two most famous Leslie amps, the 122 and 147 model, to guitar amps such as the Marshall JCM 800, the Fender Twin, the Roland Jazz Chorus, one Orange cabinet, one Ampeg bass cabinet, up to a DI box; we also find the possibility of positioning the speaker in a virtual listening environment, the possibility of the double Leslie (à la John Lord!), the lever of the brake which stops the motors of the rotating speakers, the reverb effect with an excellent simulation of spring reverb, the ability to choose the degree of leakage, the legato and sustain modes for the bass pedal, and last but not least the very useful innovations in terms of MIDI settings, including a screen dedicated entirely to the assignment of controllers (Fig. 5) and the option to invert the response of the drawbars to the values of the Midi Control Change. Furthermore, to give space to the many innovations introduced, the interface has been divided into 5 different pages against the 2 of the old version. In terms of sound, the most interesting news certainly lies in the choice of cabinets and, above all, in the microphone options. When recording a real Hammond, you usually need at least two condenser microphones to pick up the sound coming from the Leslie cabinet, and optionally a dynamic one to pick up the bass. This obviously involves the resumption of environmental considerations as well. While the old version of the B4 sounded too direct, with an almost total absence of the environment, the new B4 gives a greater sense of real shooting. In the sample audio file that you find on the cd attached to the magazine, in the section Mp3 demo -> B4_II, you can hear a face-to-face comparison between a real B3 organ, recorded in an American studio with AKG microphones, and the B4 II set up in much the same way as the original sound. In addition to the effect of the environment, the improvement that has been made in the valve overdrive effect, very full-bodied and rich, is also remarkable.
Final Considerations:
The Hammond is certainly an irreplaceable, inimitable and unreachable instrument, especially if the need is for a professional organist, but if we consider a studio musical environment, where the main purpose is to add a Hammond track to a pop piece, then a good simulation like the B4 is definitely the right choice. If, on the other hand, we want to bring to the stage the pieces of Jimmy Smith (Fig. 6), of Joey De Francesco, of Barbara Dennerlein or of Klaus Wunderlich, or of Deep Purple, of Pink Floyd or of the Who, and we cannot afford a real Hammond or , even having one, we have no way to carry its 150 kg of weight, the ideal solution is a good laptop, Windows o Apple , with a good master and the B4: satisfaction is guaranteed and the back thanks! The B4 installs very easily, requires activation and registration of the license via the internet for the first installation only and is available in VST, RTAS, DXi, AU and stand-alone formats. CPU usage is almost negligible, which makes it compatible and very stable even on a relatively old computer. For those, on the other hand, who already own the old version of the B4, an upgrade is definitely worth considering.
