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I've always wanted to do a historic blog about the Hammond organ.... it's one of the most famous musical instruments in the last century. Consider this the first installment.

Hammond electric organs came into manufacture in 1935. They were large dual 61 note manual consoles mounted in wooden cases. The sound they make is synthesized/created by rotating tonewheels and magnetic pickups. The tone is shaped by controls called drawbars that can be pulled or retracted changing the harmonics and the overall sound. Over the years various model added features. The B-2 manufactured from 1949 to 1954 was very popular and had a vibrato circuit added to it's sound. The model B-3 is by far the most popular Hammond. it was produced from 1954 to 1974. The B-3 was used in Jazz, Gospel, Blues, Rock and many other genres.

In the beginning Laurens Hammond had a speaker system to go along with his brand of organs. Donald Leslie created a speaker cabinet with a rotating horn and baffle that created a chorale or tremelo effect to emulate the sound of a theater/pip organ. His attempt was to market his product with Hammond but Laurens wasn't interested. Leslie Tone Cabinets were sold as a stand-alone product around 1941.

To the ear, the combination of a Hammond with a Leslie was awesome!

Many of us remember Jim Stafford for some of his songs like 'My Girl Bill' or 'Spiders and Snakes' but here is a little gem that I've not heard in decades, love the graphics:





If you have any of you Jim Stafford songs feel free to add them.....

Soulless mutants! Here we are, trudging along in a cesspool of luke-warm mediocrity while these kids print their own golden tickets....

Harrrrrumph!

As much as I envy and loathe the gifted li'l ankle biters, I gotta say this one left an impression!

I got that message from K on Friday evening. I had never heard the band live before, so I replied "Sure, I'm up for that!"

So we met up in the train, and decided to hit a bar, before the show. There was a great one 30 seconds from the venue, so we sat down and ordered. I went for a regular coke, while K went for a double vodka/fanta. Once the bartender came down with our drinks, he went "Double vodka/fanta for the lady, and a rum and coke minus rum for the gentleman".. I was going "But I didn't ord.. Aaah, I see what you did there . Clever"

We finished our drinks and headed to the venue. The first band on stage was a band called Ankona, and they were a Russian folk metal band, complete with bagpipes and flutes. It was absolutely brilliant! They blended good old fashioned folk metal with black metal. Mind blowing! They had 45 minutes to play, and I loved every minute of it!

Then it was time for Delain, the main event. You could feel the atmosphere in the venue building! Once they got on stage, they literally blew the other band away. Symphonic metal is amazing live!

Charlotte, the lead singer, was amazing on stage! I have never seen a person belong on a stage that much! She ruled the show with precision and a fantastic voice! It was heavy, yet melodic at the same time. It reminded me of the early Within Temptation. Maybe because the bassist in the band was a former member of Within Temptation.

It was one of the best nights in a long time! One I would gladly do again!

AUTOTUNE is a digital audio processor pitch correction software that can transform a mediocre singers voice to perfection. What it does to vocals is what Photoshop does to images!
Available as computer download software or rack-mounted stand alone device, Autotune has been around for more that 20 years and has become a standard in the recording industry.
While it's intent was to correct off-key singing, with the thousands of settings, Autotune can be adjusted to give all kinds of coloration and effects to voices like pitch change and robotic-like sounds.
Let's say, you cannot hit the high notes... sing the song in a lower key and have Autotune change the pitch to whatever key you need.

The first time I heard Autotune in use was Cher's recording of Believe. It's the 'pitch-shift' effect she used with a hard setting to pull the notes to standard tuning. That gives it a grainy and very unique sound.

The surviving members of The Beatles have agreed to remove their hit song ‘Eight Days A Week’ from circulation after learning that there’s actually only seven.
The song will now be pulled from all music streaming services and removed from any future pressings of their ‘Beatles for Sale’ album.

Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr have even gone so far as to ask fans to burn any physical media with ‘Eight Days a Week’ on.

‘This is an incredibly embarrassing incident for us. When I was writing the song with John, we couldn’t remember if there were seven days in a week or eight and we didn’t have Wikipedia or anything to check with,’ said Paul.

‘It was mainly my fault because I insisted there was an eighth day called ‘Hymday’ and we were all so smacked up on drugs that no-one debated me,’ said Ringo.

Music fans are now busily scanning for factual inaccuracies in the entirety of Coldplay’s back catalogue.

Leo Fender was an electronics repairman who teamed up with Doc Kauffman in the 1940's producing musical amplifiers. Leo split with Doc to create his first generation of amplifiers around 1946 that had a tweed covering and brown metal faced chassis attached in a combo where the amplifier and speaker were in one enclosure. Around 1950, models changed to a Tolex textured vinyl covering available in different shades of beige and brown. While this era was significant, it wasn't until the 1960's that Fender started producing larger and more powerful models and in 1963 introduced a blackface model where the amplifier (head) was detached from the speaker cabinet. This is the generation that created worldwide awareness for Fender and his Blackface amps.

In 1965 CBS bought Fender for $13 million and started producing the same products with only a cosmetic change of a silverface chassis. Soon after, there were circuitry changes making them less desirable than blackface Fenders.

Blackface Fender amplifiers became hard to find and getting one often came with a price tag 4 to 5 times the original list price. I owned a silverface purchased around 1969 and it couldn't compare to the sound of my friends blackface.

The venues I had performed at were mostly nightclubs and school dances, but I joined a well established band in 1970 and needed something more powerful for outdoor concerts and stopped using Fender.

Once in a while I'll check a sale on eBay and see that year after year, blackface Fenders always hold their value.

Blackface pre-CBS


Chromeface