Rock Organ VII - workshop

Rock Organ 7

This month I want to talk about making your keyboard have the same impact as a distorted guitar playing power chords. In a rock band, I think it's very common for the keyboardists role to be a little overly polite. Many of us will play some unobtrusive pad or quiet rhythmic part to stay out of the way of the very aggressive guitar parts. I think we need to bring the keyboards back out front! Many of the below examples are influenced by Keith Emerson, Jon Lord, Rick Wakeman, and Stevie Wonder who, to me, are the most important rock keyboardists. With these tools I hope you will be inspired to find your own Power Chords on keyboard.

Ex 1

To me, the closest sound to a distorted guitar is a distorted B3. The king of this style of playing is, without a doubt, Jon Lord of Deep Purple. Instead of running his organ through a Leslie Speaker, he ran it through a Marshall Stack with a very straight sound. The setting Jon liked to use is the first four drawbars all the way out with no vibrato or Leslie. Most new organ simulators come with great distortion. If you aren't lucky enough to have a great Hammond and Marshall rig, turn the distortion dial on your clone or plugin almost all the way up. Ex. 1 begins with a crunchy blues riff in the right hand using the C blues scale (C, E,b F, F#, G, Bb, C). For the authentic sound we hold seconds and fourths to get a very open guitar-like crunch. The left hand enters with a big glissando by putting the whole hand over the black and white keys in the lower manual and sliding down to Power Chords supporting the interesting suspended structures of the right hand part. The setting for the lower manual or bottom split is the 1st and 3rd drawbars all the way out no vibrato or Leslie.

Ex 2

This is another organ example with a little less distortion this time. This sound to me is very influenced by Jack McDuff's sound on "Rock Candy". Keith Emerson has said this tune was the reason he started to play organ! The top manual has the first four drawbars out with 3rd percussion harmonic on, soft volume, fast decay. We also use C3 vibrato on this one. All the right hand voicings are root position and inverted triads moving diatonically in the D dorian mode (D, E, F, G, A, B, C, D). The bassline is very influenced by something Chester Thompson of Tower of Power would play The setting is 1st and 3rd drawbar all the way out C3 vibrato. Notice the last three chords in the excercise. We add a blue note (Ab) to create a gospel inflection and also add unusual dissonant bassnotes for a greasy sound.

Ex 3

This is a funky two fisted Clav riff also with the gospel sounding chords of Ex 2. This time in F. We begin in bar 1 with right hand fourths supported by short bass stabs. This fast, rhythmic switching between hands is the key to funk clav playing.The right hand material is taken from the F dorian mode and F blues scale. The left hand part moves in the spaces of the right hand to create a funky interlocking part. At the end of bar 2 and 4, notice the chromatic walk up in the bass. This gives the right hand chords a slightly dissonant feel that resolves nicely at the beginning of the phrase. There is an auto wha effect on the clav to make the sound even grittier.

Ex 4

This example utilizes a Prophet 5 patch that is voiced in fifths. The chords we play are fairly simple shapes (4ths and triads with bass notes), but when every note is harmonized with a 5th, the chords sound really big. The beauty of these patches is that the simplest shapes make the nicest sounding chords On your own analog synths and plug ins look for patches that say "5th" in the title and experiment with your own voicings. This is a very Prog Rock influenced excercise that goes into an ELP sounding odd time anthem in the last few bars. Also experiment with opening the cutoff frequency filter on your synth to add more expression.