Abstract
The Hammond organ is one of earliest electronic instruments and is still used widely in contemporary popular music. One of its main sonic features is the "key-click," a transient that occurs upon note onset, caused by the mechanical bouncing of the nine electric contacts actuated during each key press. A study of the dynamic mechanical behaviour of the contact bounces is presented, showing that the velocity, the type of touch and, more in general, the temporal evolution of the key position, all affect different characteristics of the contact bounces. A second study focuses on the listener's perception of the generated sound and finds that listeners can classify sounds produced on the Hammond organ according to the type of touch and velocity used. It is concluded that the Hammond organ is a touch-responsive instrument and that the gesture used to produce a note affects the generated sound across multiple dimensions. The control available at the fingertips of the musician is therefore such that it cannot be easily reduced to a single scalar velocity parameter, as is common practice in modern digital emulations of the instrument.
Highlights
The Hammond organ occupies a prominent position in popular music
Through position and electronic measurements we show that the moving parts in the action react to the details of the key press, producing measurable differences in the timing and characteristics of the onset transient
When a key is pressed, the key contacts are connected to the busbars, generating an onset transient, after which the amplitude and harmonic characteristics of the sound remain constant for the entire duration of the note
Summary
The Hammond organ occupies a prominent position in popular music. After its introduction in the 1930s, it was widely used in popular music since the 1950s and its sound has been heard on countless recordings. Where the piano and most digital keyboards have a clear relation between velocity and the produced sound, the Hammond shows a more subtle effect: the key-click, a distinctive transient in the sound at the beginning of every note. This click is the result of the behaviour of nine different contacts embedded in the keyboard mechanism. As we show in this paper, these contacts are not ideal switches: they do not close at the same time and they exhibit bouncing These characteristics change in response to both the speed and the quality of the key press, giving the instrument its own distinctive form of touch response. The key-click is a short burst of a few milliseconds at the note onset, a statistically significant number of participants are able to correctly infer the type of touch used to generate a note
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