[Harp-L] Organ sounds on harp



There's been a lot of discussion this week on how to get a great organ sound from harp.  I've been doing a lot of experimenting since Jorge posted his video, and here are a few of the things I've discovered.

1) A rotating speaker effect is necessary to get an organ sound, but in itself it's not completely convincing. If it's all you've got, better than nothing.    

2) In addition to the rotating speaker, you want octave doubles. If you only have one FX device for that purpose, and it won't do multiple octaves at once (which is what an Electro-Harmonix POG does), you use an octave up or two octaves up.  If you can, you use octave doubles up and down.  With most FX devices, that means using more than one device for the octaves.

3) You put the high octave doubler after the rotating speaker effect.  That gives it a lot of high-end cut, very much like a rock band Hammond.

One thing I haven't tried yet is setting up one of the RPs to do a different interval than a high octave or double octave, such as a 17th (octave plus a 5th).  You can do that on a Hammond organ using the drawbars, and it might be very cool.  

Jorge showed that you could do all this with two devices: a POG and a Korg G9 (I think), which he said was no longer in production.  If you're using anything but a POG or a HOG, you'd need three devices: two for low and high octave doubles, and one for the rotating speaker.  

I'm using the second setup, with three Digitech RPs, on a loop I recorded last night. I'll post the results here soon.  

The cost of Jorge's setup is at least $375 new, and could be as much as $525 depending on which rotary speaker effect you use. (Behringer makes a stompbox that sells for $50, Roland makes one the goes for $200. It has to be something besides the Korg unit that Jorge uses, since that's no longer in production. It costs $324 for the POG.) The cost of 3 RPs is about $450, fifty dollars more if one of the RPs is a 355.  Three RPs will do a lot more than either a POG or a rotating speaker, of course, starting with reverbs and delays, not to mention a lot of other FX and sounds.  But that's how many RPs you need to do two harmony voices plus a rotating speaker.

So basically, if you want to get a really good organ sound out of a harp, you need at least $375 worth of FX (less of course if you can get one or more of the pieces at a discount, used, etc.), and probably more like $450-500.  The good news is that you really will get a great organ sound at that price, and that's a very nice sound to get.

Regards, Richard Hunter








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