(organ music)
- Hey, what's up everybody, Jordan Leibel from
Pianote Here and we're teaching a lesson on rock organ 101.
So if you ever wanted to start playing rock and roll
organ, this is the lesson for you.
We're gonna look at some of the basics of what
makes a rock organ sound like the Leslie speaker
and the draw bars and we're gonna do that by learning
Give Me Some Lovin', the Spencer Davis Group lic.
So here's the lic right here.
(organ music)
It's a really simple lic, we're in the key of g major.
The first cord that we're playing is just a g seven
so what I'm doing is I'm just playing g
and then I'm playing d and f. (organ music)
And notice that I'm not letting go of this bottom g
note throughout that whole riff.
I'm just letting that anchor the whole progression.
So I'm in g seven and then I just bring my top two
notes down to make a c cord. (organ music)
So there's g, c, e. (organ music)
And then I pop those top two notes down one more time
to make a straight g triad so a g seven cord.
(organ music)
Moving to that c cord and then down to the basic g triad
in root position so now let's add some effects to give
it that signature organ sound.
The first thing that I'm gonna do is turn on the rotary
Leslie speaker feature on the organ here.
You'll have a similar feature on your keyboard.
It might be on the mod wheel which is that little
wheel that you have on the left hand side.
It might be a button like mine.
It might even be a switch or a little knob or something
that you can use but basically it takes your sound
from going like this to sounding like this.
(organ music)
So there's two settings with the Leslie speaker.
There's a fast and a slow setting.
And they kind of add this expressive vibrato to your
organ sound so notice how when I play this riff this
time, I'll start off with the Leslie speaker going slow
and it's gonna be this kind of slow growl and then I'll
press the button to make it go fast and this time
it's gonna start to warble and become a more
expressive vibrato effect. (organ music)
So that's that iconic b three Leslie speaker sound.
It'll take your organ playing up 10 notches by just
messing around with that effect, sounds super cool.
Alright, the next thing that we're gonna look at
is the draw bars, that's these weird little sliders
on the left of the organ here.
If you have a dedicated organ, maybe a b three,
if you're lucky or if you have just a digital organ
like what I got here, you'll probably have some similar
features like these draw bars and what they do is they
add overtones to your keyboard.
So if I pull these way back and push them all in.
(piano music)
The organ's barely gonna make any sound.
But when I draw them out. (organ music)
They're gonna add different harmonic frequencies
to the cords that you're playing.
So the one thing that an organ doesn't have
is velocity sensitivity, doesn't matter how hard you
play the keys. (organ music)
It's always gonna be the same volume.
But the way that an organ player gets around that
is by manipulating these draw bars.
So you can play really quiet if you just push them
all up to the top. (organ music)
And if you wanna go just full out.
(organ music)
You just draw out all the stops on the organ
if you really wanna wail, alright guys.
So this is just the very beginning of rock organ.
There's so much more to learn.
Now I demoed this on a Rolland VK7 but if you have
any keyboard or synthesizer at home, you should
have similar features like the rotary settings
and the draw bar stuff somewhere in the feature
settings of your instrument so take a look at those,
experiment with the sweet riff that we had here.
Remember that g seven cord. (organ music)
and how those top two notes just kinda walk down to
that g major triad, alright everybody.
I'm Jordan Leibel, this is For Pianote and if you
have anything else that you wanna learn about the
piano or the organ, check us out at piano.com.
(piano music)