Have any prog band used regular home organ
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Topic: Have any prog band used regular home organ
Posted By: Icarium
Subject: Have any prog band used regular home organ
Date Posted: July 14 2023 at 03:23
Organs are of various types and models, from cool organs like hammond and farfisa, to extravagant church/cathedral organs, to funny pump organs to silly mouth organs (harmonica  . But i remember my uncle and aunty had an organ in their house a regular house organ, ( i do not know what model it is) but it produced organ sounds, and had many cool knobs and rythem box.I wonder have any band for coolness sake or for practical reasons used a regular commoner house/home organ. I would find that to be a very cool thing. Im all for practicality and if you have/had a home organ and you and your frinds were dabbing on profducing eppic prog music, a home organ would be an amazing tool. -------------  
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Replies:
Posted By: mellotronwave
Date Posted: July 14 2023 at 03:55
This topic looks very organic 
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Posted By: Icarium
Date Posted: July 14 2023 at 04:36
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I am all for organic and organ based sounds, allso homebased -------------
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Posted By: Starjet
Date Posted: July 14 2023 at 04:56
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Not prog by any means, but on topic and highly amusing: |
Posted By: Easy Money
Date Posted: July 14 2023 at 05:41
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Soft Machine (albums III and IV particularly) used a Lowrey Organ, which is the common home organ brand. They ran it through a distortion box to make it more gnarly. Robert Wyatt's "Rock Bottom" also features Lowrey type organs. The Pete Sinfield solo album uses a Symphoniser, which was the ultimate high end Lowrey. Bo Hanson used to use Lowrey type organs too. Alice Coltrane also used a Lowrey. EDIT: Also "Welcome" album by Santana. |
Posted By: Icarium
Date Posted: July 14 2023 at 06:41
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Easy Money wrote:Posted By: Manuel
Date Posted: July 14 2023 at 08:53
Yes, Soft Machine was the first band that came to my mind when I read the topic of this thread.
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Posted By: mellotronwave
Date Posted: July 14 2023 at 09:59
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Hi Icarium https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garth_Hudson i think this link will help best regards |
Posted By: Icarium
Date Posted: July 14 2023 at 10:52
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Posted By: Hrychu
Date Posted: July 14 2023 at 12:17
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Not prog, but Gotye had a song called State of the Art heavily dedicated to the home Lowrey organ. Also, check out this live version of Za Krokem Zen by Blue Effect. It seems Oldrich Vesely is playing one of those home/theater organs there. ------------- 
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Posted By: Gerinski
Date Posted: July 14 2023 at 15:47
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Pete Townshend of The Who also used a Lowrey organ 
If you allow me to be a bit nitpicky, the Symphoniser was a String Machine rather than an organ. In fact it was the first String Machine, invented by the brit Ken Freeman in 1969, although his deal with CMI-Lowrey to produce it came only in 1974, while the dutch Eminent-Solina released the first commercial String Machine integrated in their Eminent 310 Unique organ, famously used by Jean-Michel Jarre, in 1972 (and they released the strings module as a stand-alone instrument, the Solina String Ensemble, also in 1974, becoming the most successful string machine). The full story can be found in my book "The Musical Instruments of Progressive Rock; An Illustrated Guide"  . |
Posted By: Easy Money
Date Posted: July 15 2023 at 11:24
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^ There was a high end Lowery organ I would play on at a music store in Dallas called a Symphoniser. I believe the symphoniser part was sort of an add on to the organ, and it sounded very much like synth strings. This was still a Lowrey organ, it had the cheesy rhythm machine, auto acccompaniment and everything. It was the most expensive Lowrey in the shop. |
Posted By: cstack3
Date Posted: July 15 2023 at 11:50
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I'm sure most prog keyboardists started out on an inexpensive home organ of some kind! I used to mike and amplify cheap hobby organs through guitar pedals. It gave some amazing sounds in the home studio! ------------- I am not a Robot, I'm a FREE MAN!! |
Posted By: JD
Date Posted: July 15 2023 at 13:32
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Here's my son performing Clotho from ELP's The Three Fates on my mom's Lowrey organ.  ------------- Thank you for supporting independently produced music |
Posted By: cstack3
Date Posted: July 15 2023 at 17:52
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Regarding Grumpy Olde Rick..... In 1966, he joined the Concordes, later known as the Concorde Quartet, playing dance and pop songs at local events with his cousin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Wakeman" rel="nofollow - Alan Wakeman on saxophone and clarinet. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rick_Wakeman#cite_note-FOOTNOTEWooding197928-10" rel="nofollow - [10] Wakeman used the money earned from their gigs to buy a https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hohner_Pianet" rel="nofollow - Hohner Pianet , his first electronic instrument. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rick_Wakeman#cite_note-FOOTNOTEWooding197928-10" rel="nofollow - [10] ------------- I am not a Robot, I'm a FREE MAN!! |
Posted By: Gerinski
Date Posted: July 15 2023 at 18:11
This was the Lowrey-Freeman Symphoniser of 1974, it could well be that Lowrey released also an organ including the strings synth as an add-on. |
Posted By: Easy Money
Date Posted: July 15 2023 at 19:04
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^ That would be my guess based on the information that you have provided. The Lowery Symphoniser that I played on at the music store was a sort of short lived high end Lowrey organ that had a string symphoniser as an add on to the organ. Re the Solina you mentioned: when I used to go to music stores in the mid 70s, they often had a ARP String Ensemble, I suppose this was what was later called a Solina, the bigger store in Dallas also had a Mellotron, plus a keyboard that used literal floppy disks called an Orchestron. It sounded similar to a Mellotron. I tried out a lot of keyboards in the 70s and still collect 70s keyboards and synths to this day. |
Posted By: Gerinski
Date Posted: July 16 2023 at 04:33
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The String Ensemble was first made by the Dutch company Eminent-Solina, and then ARP made a deal with them to sell it with the name ARP. Thanks to the commercial network of ARP the most successful version was the ARP one. And yes, the Orchestron was an attempt to take over on the Mellotron, but it came too late and it ws expensive, the electronic string machines were much more practical.
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Posted By: Hrychu
Date Posted: July 16 2023 at 05:24
IMHO the consumer-marketed Optigan actually had better sounds than its big brother the Orchestron. -------------
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Posted By: Criswell
Date Posted: July 17 2023 at 07:16
| Emerson rolled around on stage with a Hammond L100. That was a pretty common home organ. We had one sitting in our living room growing up. |
Posted By: Icarium
Date Posted: July 17 2023 at 08:26
| Making prog in your living room is the ideal way to access the kitchen sink. |
Posted By: Gerinski
Date Posted: July 17 2023 at 12:20
A bit of research revealed that the Lowrey organ which had the integrated Symphoniser (string machine) was the Symphonic Theater H25-3 model.  |
Posted By: Easy Money
Date Posted: July 17 2023 at 12:36
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Yeah, I guess thats it. I was trying to remember which stop turned on the strings, maybe one on the left there. Anyway, I have two old string synths you probably know about, ARP Quartet which does brass, strings, organ and piano on a shortened keyboard (shorter that the String Ensemble) and the Crumar Orchestrator, which does strings and other stuff on a longer keyboard. Crumar and Univox used to make keyboards that emulated the major companies for a smaller price. |
Posted By: Gerinski
Date Posted: July 17 2023 at 13:15
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Yes I know about the ARP Quartet and the Crumar Orchestrator, although just from hearing / reading about them. The Quartet was another deal ARP made with the Italian Siel to market the Siel Orchestra with the ARP name, same as what they did with the String Ensemble made by the Dutch Eminent-Solina. I know you have a very nice collection of keyboards!
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Posted By: cstack3
Date Posted: July 17 2023 at 18:01
I'm a big fan of cheap keyboards! I'll put a 1/4" guitar jack on them and play them through 50 watt guitar amps!! I've got one of these, it is great fun! ------------- I am not a Robot, I'm a FREE MAN!! |
Posted By: Easy Money
Date Posted: July 17 2023 at 19:55
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I have the first Casio model ever made, I knew someone who worked for them. I also have many different models down through the years. Its interesting how they changed over time. I have one that proclaims it has "Pulse Code Modulation". I also have the one you are showing that did short eight bit samples. It was sold at Macys of all places. |
Posted By: cstack3
Date Posted: July 17 2023 at 21:15
Cool, nice to meet you! I also had what I think was the first Casio...I believe it was their "M-10." It had only a few settings, including a very nice pipe organ as I recall! I intended to mount it onto a guitar so I would have a "double-neck" instrument (6 string guitar on top, with keyboard mounted on the bottom) but alas, I lent it to a friend and never saw it again! Run those suckers through a bunch of guitar stomp boxes like chorus, wah-wah etc. and you can really crank some tunes! It's too bad that I'm such a plonker of a keyboard player! Here, this is hilarious! Mark Mothersbaugh of DEVO is shown playing one!! (...is DEVO "prog??") ------------- I am not a Robot, I'm a FREE MAN!! |
Posted By: Easy Money
Date Posted: July 18 2023 at 05:15
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Yes, M-10 is the one. Mine has some custom settings that my friend installed including a note repeater. I like to use the rhythm sections on the later Casios for making recordings. You can blend different rhythms and run them through phase shifter, compressor, reverb etc and get some interesting sounds. The Casio keyboard sounds were purely electronic up until about the early 90s when their sounds became more sample based. I prefer the early electronic ones, but the CTK 630 (mid-90s) has some really cool features in the rhythm section that never appeared in any subsequent models. I also wanted to hang my Casio from a guitar so I could do keyboard-guitar battles by myself, sort of as a joke, but never got around to it. |
Posted By: Gerinski
Date Posted: July 18 2023 at 06:27
Chris Wolstenholme of Muse has such an instrument, built by Status, bass + keyboard, should be fun |