Recommended organ synth?

[Grayburg]

I'm looking for a (cheap?) VST or soundfont? with Motoi Sakuraba's organ sound.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VEz2jBNSyco#t=21s

It has a pretty distorted sound to it, or something.

Seems like he's able to mod the tremelo at will, too?

Been using a pretty lame soundfont for a while now. lol

[Kanthos]

That's a B3 organ (or something approximating one, of course). The B3 has a set of drawbars that are basically volume controls for a set of harmonics; you create a sound by setting drawbars in various positions. The tremolo effect comes from the leslie speakers that organ players would use. Basically, you've got two pairs of cones, low and high, that are spinning around, and you can change the speed from 'slow' to 'fast' (you'd have to physically modify the speaker to be able to set the specific speeds on a real leslie), usually through a footswitch or rocker switch attached to the organ. A software synth or some keyboards that have a B3 emulation will give you a lot more control over the speed, maybe even using an expression pedal to adjust it continuously. The distortion would either come from running the organ through a guitar amp, or by overdriving the leslie, or you might be hearing the various harmonics mixed together as distortion; I didn't listen too closely to the tracks to be sure. There's a few other things you can adjust that make the B3 sound, but those are the ones you mentioned.

As far as synths, there's one called VB3 that's not too pricy, and I seem to remember hearing of some other one that was free. Native Instruments used to have the B4-II, and they currently have Vintage Organs which sample the B3 and a few other types of organs as well. The demos sound quite convincing, and they give you the controls that you'd have on a real B3.

[Meteo Xavier]

Where is the B3 one on Vintage Organs? I just got it as part of Komplete 8 and I haven't figured out how to find/create this sound yet.

[theshaggyfreak]

The stock organ settings are under default as shown here:

[Meteo Xavier]

I'm still having trouble with it - the B3 just sounds way too jazzy for my tastes. I've looked up organ settings and not much has come of it yet. Adding distortion/phaser helps a little bit, but not too much.

This is the organ tone I'm trying to get:

[Kanthos]

I'm not at my keyboard right now to try and match it exactly, but I'd start with 888000000 as a drawbar position (or maybe 888800000). Regardless, I'm not hearing a lot of the upper harmonics. Set the chorus to C-1; C-3 and sometimes C-2 are a bit much for rock and might contribute to the jazzy feel you hear. Definitely use chorus over vibrato.

Percussion sounds like it's off (though I'm listening on crappy laptop speakers); turning percussion on and setting it to 2nd or 3rd, whichever suits you, soft, and fast, will give a bit more bite to the monophonic solo lines. Add some overdrive, and make sure the leslie is running; they switch speed from fast to slow and back several times, but you probably don't ever want to stop it. I doubt there's a phaser on that; you're mistaking the leslie for phaser, I think.

The settings shouldn't be all that far off from what I said, and aren't as important as the playing style and the skill of the performer. A lot of jazz solos are also played with 888000000, the only differences being the lack of distortion and the chorus typically being C-3 instead of C-1.

[Meteo Xavier]

Closer to it it seems like.

I notice his organ also seems to swell and leslie at very different speeds while he's playing. Is his organ hooked up in some way that his velocity automates the leslie or how does that work? He's not controlling that as he's playing in some of the other live stuff I've seen him in.

[Kanthos]

Like I said, the song starts with the leslie on the fast setting and switches back and forth at times.

In a normal, physical B3 setup, the performer has some kind of switch for changing the leslie speed, usually a little switch that mounts on the front of the B3 (the leslie is a separate speaker built by a separate company; you wouldn't have anything built in). In more modern B3 clones, there might be a switch or a fast/slow toggle button, but changing the speed can often also be done with a footswitch, which is how I play, so I don't need to take my hands off the keyboard. There's also a bit of a speedup and slowdown time; the leslie doesn't instantly go from slow to fast or fast to slow. That'll be built into Vintage Organs, so you don't have to think about it, just know that it's there. I'm pretty sure that this can be controlled by the mod wheel in Vintage Organs (and if not, there'll definitely be some way to control it with a physical controller). I'd guarantee that the artist is using one of those three methods (a button on the keyboard, a footswitch, or the mod wheel) to change speed. It might be possible to change the rotor speed with velocity as well, but that would just be a really weird performance technique, and would cripple the B3's ability to be loud with the leslie on slow. Also, because of the time it takes to speed up or slow down, you'd have to be REALLY GOOD with your velocities to keep the rotor speed fast or slow without switching back and forth too much; otherwise, you'd be switching from fast to slow and back in all kinds of random places and that would sound awful and unrealistic.

You mention swell as well, probably in the context of the leslie speeding up, but here's how volume works on the organ. Organs aren't velocity sensitive (well, modern clones may be, but the originals aren't), so instead of using velocity to affect volume, the performer would use a pedal. This will just be a standard expression pedal in modern setups and is called the swell pedal on an actual organ. That's another big part of getting the sound exactly right (though not as important in a rock tune like the one that was linked; in something like jazz, the player might be moving the swell pedal nearly constantly to accent particular notes; in a rock piece with a lot of chords, the pedal would be used more to do overall dynamics by section and not by note).

[SnappleMan]

I've been using this same organ sound for years. It's very simply a B3 organ with distortion. I use NI B4, it has built in distortion effects. you want to make sure to pull most of the high stops to get that high end ring, and it helps to turn on a vibrato effect too.

[OverCoat]

http://www.vst4free.com/free_vst.php?id=283

if you don't want to pay any money for B4 which is expensive if that's all you want, this is the alternative. Been using it for years. There's a nag screen but it goes away when you switch presets.

[Meteo Xavier]

I'm getting closer to it. Is there a way I can turn down the actual leslie emulation itself when its on? I'm beginning to think thats part of it - Motoi's organ leslie is weaker than this model's emulation and its kinda overpowering by itself. I figure there has to be something in the program scripting that can do that.