Nord User Forum

I have been playing church organ and piano/keyboard for many years.
Now I would also like to play some jazz/hammond organ sounds, but this is a special way of playing.
What's a good way to learn that? I'm looking for a tip in the right direction.
I have the Nord stage2 88

There's a nice book for the first steps: Dave Limina - Hammond Organ Complete, 2nd edition. It assumes that you have an original Hammond, though. So, you are a bit limited without 2nd keyboard and pedals. But you learn to use the drawbars, the expression/swell pedal (for dynamics), vibrato/chorus, Leslie (speed switching), bass foldback, glissando, trills, sputters, drone tones together with rock, blues, jazz, funk and walking bass techniques.

But I have no idea if all of those techniques work well with your keybed.

A weighted keyboard is not really ideal for learning organ technique.

analogika wrote:A weighted keyboard is not really ideal for learning organ technique.

It's not even close to ideal. But... at least it's a start.

A few years ago I made that trip in reverse. After many decades playing a Hammond B-3 I got serious about learning the correct playing technique for piano, but all my other keyboards had synth actions. I didn't make much progress, even after getting a fairly decent hammer-action stage piano, until my wife surprised me with a Yamaha AvantGrand. Within a few months I became much more confident and comfortable on piano. Of course I can't take that beauty out on a one-night gig, but somehow it helped me over the hump and my playing improved on hammer action stage pianos, too.

Hopefully the OP won't have to find a real B-3 to make his trip from piano player to organ player!! (But that would be a "swell" way to do it...)

This post is going to be a bit anal, I hope the OP and all the other good folks in here won't mind.

I have noticed over time that the question "how do I approach playing the Hammond" is often addressed with an emphasis on things like adjusting your playing to non weighted keys, learning how drawbars work to shape the tone, the use of percussion, chorus/vibrato, when to switch the Leslie speed, and so on. Books like Dave Limina's and Brian Charette's follow more or less this approach (by the way, there is very little teaching material around about the Hammond in general).

Nothing wrong with teaching those things, but it seems to me that this ignores the "elephant in the room" question so to speak, that is the music itself. The ever-present (and valid) advice of "just learn from the masters", while always true for any instrument and genre, might not work so well when one is at the beginning of his journey, which is where I'm assuming the OP is at at this moment.

So here's when I'll get anal. The organ (be it pipe or electric) is an instrument with unique features:

1. The ADSR envelope (to borrow from the synth world) consists of a sudden attack, an infinitely flat D-S, and zero release.
2. No key dynamics/velocity affects anything in terms of volume.
3. Expression/volume is controlled (on electric organs, less so in pipe organs) with a pedal that affects every note, whether that's already being played or not.

Apart from synthesizers, which can be programmed to behave any way you want, I'm not aware of any other "natural"/acoustic instrument which possesses the above features all at once.

But this is not just an academic arguing for its own sake. These features demand and even impose a very different playing approach and even mindset from any other keyboard instrument's. All of the above is going to have a big effect on things like chord voicings above all (how many notes, which ones, how wide/close...), or even whether and when to use chords at all, and it's going to make all keyboard approaches, that in order to sound good rely heavily on the sustain pedal and/or on key dynamics, pretty much unworkable on the organ. Anyone who's ever tried to play a digital piano without any sustain and with dynamics disabled will certainly have noticed immediately how much music doesn't all of a sudden sound good at all.

Figuring out what to play and how to play it is, in my opinion, much more "the point" than learning when to switch the Leslie on fast and things like this. It's about finding one's own voice with an instrument that, despite looking like a keyboard instrument like many others, has to be reasoned through totally differently.

I'm mainly talking about jazz here, which is the OP's concern. In organ jazz, there seems to exist this unspoken rule that says that in order to play organ jazz, you'll have to 1) play left hand bass with an 848 registration, 2) play solo lines with the 888 registration and percussion on, with a lot of cliche lines, 3) occasionally squabble as opposed to soloing, 4) have a guitarist in the trio to fill in the harmony (with a clean tone), and alternate solos with, 5) be as groovy, bluesy and funky as you can. This is the Jimmy Smith school which has become "the norm", when in fact it is just one possible way to go about it. Yet, almost every organ jazz players that have followed fall more or less into this style, and the (very scarce) teaching materials that are around just assume and take for granted that this is the way to play Hammond jazz. It's as if I wanted to play jazz piano and was taught the stride technique because, well, that's the way to play piano.

I believe all of this is very unfortunate, especially considering how beautiful and expressive the Hammond sound can be. It can be funky for sure, but it can also be very profound and moving. I'm still waiting for someone to put a Bill Evans-kind-of emotionality in Hammond music. Maybe Rhoda Scott has in certain occasions, and (occasionally) Lonnie Smith. But I can't name many others. In another life, in which I'm much younger and talented, that's what I would be striving to achieve, artistically . Anyway it's a huge void in organ jazz music, and jazz music, and music in general, that I'd like to see filled eventually.

Gospel players, on the other hand, are a lot more variegated and sophisticated with what they do, and, lo and behold, they don't always use that damned 888-with-percussion registration, and they play proper pedals too. I think there's a lot to learn from them!

Not sure all of this is still within the OP's scope of interest by the way, but I hope it wasn't too far away either.

Thanks a lot to remind of that part of the game! Reduce chords, omit notes, listen to what you (and others) are playing. I didn't mention it as Paolo86 already is an organist - but it may be different as a lot of stops on the Hammond aren't just octave sounds (most stops on a church organ are).

I've never tried to play the organ solo. I'm only playing a bit in a band context. So no idea if there is a need of accompanying instruments. In any case, it can be done without a guitar at side - see B. Dennerlein, analogika et al.

It would be interesting if you and others might throw in another two or three words about your feeling/thinking while playing the organ.

FZiegler wrote:I didn't mention it as Paolo86 already is an organist - but it may be different as a lot of stops on the Hammond aren't just octave sounds (most stops on a church organ are).

In pipe organs though the logic when selecting stops is primarily a matter of timbre: different ranks of pipes have different timbre, more or less flutey or reedy etc. Then of course some of them will be pitched at the unison, some at a different pitch. The pitch itself is part of the final timbre, but in the Hammond the drawbars don't act the same way as stops do in the sense that the timbre itself is the same, only the pitch changes. So yes when switching from pipe to the Hammond there's still some homework to do in order to learn the drawbars, but my point was that this is very little compared to all the rest that there is to explore!

FZiegler wrote:it can be done without a guitar at side - see B. Dennerlein, analogika et al.

Yes it can definitely be done, and Rhoda Scott is another great player that has played for a quite extensive amount of her career solo (well, with a drummer). I prefer her over Dennerlein, stylistically. Anyway, organ solo can be done but provided that you are good enough with pedals. That's something Scott and Dennerlein have in common. Most jazz organists play LH bass instead.

I think the case of analogika's band is yet different, because it's true they don't have a guitar and have a bass instead, but their genre is something on its own and quite different from the "jazz" that I assume the OP was intending it to mean, and from what usually the "jazz organ trio" phrase refers to. (For instance, Lachy Doley also plays in a trio with a bassist and no guitar, but again he isn't jazz in this sense, he's pretty much rock/blues.) Just to exemplify, this is what most people mean when they think jazz organ:



Then how not to name the most famous jazz organist until a few months ago, Joey DeFrancesco: as great as he was, he was essentially a more exuberant, technically impressive, and groovy Jimmy Smith. It is the exact same lineage and feeling (and sound, and band philosophy). There's always this laid-back, let's-have-fun, let's-be-funky attitude behind much much much "organ jazz music" that comes out from this mindset. That's not a negative thing per se, it's just that I, and I'm sure many other people, would also like to see a bit more meditative and "committed" kind of organ jazz.

An example of what this could be, more or less:



Still not 180° away from the JS lineage, but an interesting take of what can be done.

FZiegler wrote: It would be interesting if you and others might throw in another two or three words about your feeling/thinking while playing the organ.

Indeed! I suck too much to make a meaningful musical contribution to this, but... who knows, maybe one day, before I die, I'll be able to churn something out that's worth hearing...

thank you all for the replies. I understand that it works differently with drawbars than with registers on a church organ. I often see the answer to this question, look at the examples, but if you don't know what they do, you don't understand it either. Is it correct when I say that you mainly play chords? I've never played chords with piano and church organ, that's more for keyboard. I also understand that weighted piano keys are not the best for Hammond playing. I am considering connecting a midi keyboard for this. So the main question is, what is the basis of Hammond playing.

Hi Paolo,

the thing is that all what sounds good is good, no matter if it’s playing single notes in solos or 2- resp. 3-voice-chords, no matter if it’s holding chords or playing them in rhythmic patterns and so on. You will see that it is a very versatile thing.

You may take some famous recordings, such as „Made in Japan“ of Deep Purple and some others from Jimmy Smith, Booker T. or Milton Buckner, to find out what attracts you. If you then tell us one or two of your „favourite“ findings we would even better be able to force you in a good direction for both, sound settings and playing techniques.

Listening and trying to copy was my initial step.

Cheers from Germany

Paolo86 wrote:Is it correct when I say that you mainly play chords? I've never played chords with piano and church organ, that's more for keyboard.

You've never played chords on piano or pipe organ? What do you mean? I'm not sure what "keyboard" refers to in that sentence either. If you mean that you have so far only played music from scores, and thus you don't have chord theory knowledge, or functional harmony knowledge, then yes you'll need some of that to play jazz, but this far transcends the instrument itself. If you mean something else, please tell us.

Paolo86 wrote:So the main question is, what is the basis of Hammond playing.

Well that is precisely what my long post tried addressing: the topic is too big (as it would for any instrument), but just to sketch out what the current landscape looks like:

1. If you are looking for published instructional material (books, courses,...) on the Hammond, you won't find much, regardless of the genre of music, and the material you will find is generally concerned with things that are somewhat marginal to the music itself (what the chorus/vibrato is, when to switch the Leslie, etc.). This is not to say there aren't resources at all, or that they don't sometime go beyond that. The already mentioned Dave Limina and Brian Charette's books are examples, and also Tony Monaco's videos. Also, you must have already checked it out, but there are a bunch of YouTube videos, some by professional players, that give hints. Not structured courses, but useful tips here and there that you'll have to work onto. Sometimes there's some good stuff on YT.

2. If you are looking for in-person classes, you'll have to resort to a local teacher, as "jazz organ" is not academically taught anywhere in the world as far as I am aware. Depending on where you are located, you might or might not find someone. Also, finding a Hammond player around you doesn't automatically make him a teacher. There are a lot of players that are full of s*. I would rather learn on my own.

3. Since you said you want to play jazz, the current take on jazz Hammond playing is what I summarised in my previous post, that traces back to the Jimmy Smith lineage: 90% of it consists of a trio with a guitar; the organ is in charge of the bass; 888-like registration; groovy/funky/bluesy vibe to it etc. etc..

But, as Tasten-Bert says, do tell us which kind of music you're interested in and we can better guide you toward any learning path that might exist.

As a final note, one reason why teaching and learning organ, especially jazz organ, is difficult is because it's an instrument that's intrinsically and historically in charge of many different things that "normal" instruments would address separatedly. A bass player only plays bass. A saxophone player only plays monophonic solo lines. A Hammond player is supposed to play bass and chords and solo line, and modulate the timbre of the sound, and, and, and, all in real time. So yes "some" things are intrinsic to the organ, other things are just "general" jazz music knowledge and practice that transcend the instrument. For the latter category, there are plenty of resources anywhere. It just takes a lifetime to master them!