Organ flute voices

[DerekA]

Just a curiosity.

AWM2 voices have 8 elements, and FM-X parts (Montage/MODX) have 8 operators, and the organ flutes 'home' voices have 8 footages. So Yamaha clearly like having 8 things, which sounds neat to the computer-minded. But the organ flutes vintage/euro voices have 9 footages .... I wonder if Yamaha's engineers have used some kind of trick to fit 9 footages into 8 elements, or if they had to bend the model ??

Also, I recently noticed that when you have an organ flute voice selected in L, R1, R2 or R3, and you press the slider assign button, then the live control window cycles through the drawbar settings for each part in turn, in addition to the standard B/1/2 assignments. So you don't need to go through the voice set menu to get to the drawbar setup.

[Bachus]

Just a curiosity.

AWM2 voices have 8 elements, and FM-X parts (Montage/MODX) have 8 operators, and the organ flutes 'home' voices have 8 footages. So Yamaha clearly like having 8 things, which sounds neat to the computer-minded. But the organ flutes vintage/euro voices have 9 footages .... I wonder if Yamaha's engineers have used some kind of trick to fit 9 footages into 8 elements, or if they had to bend the model ??

Also, I recently noticed that when you have an organ flute voice selected in L, R1, R2 or R3, and you press the slider assign button, then the live control window cycles through the drawbar settings for each part in turn, in addition to the standard B/1/2 assignments. So you don't need to go through the voice set menu to get to the drawbar setup.

The organ flutes just like the sa2 voices are probably not entirely AWM2..

On montage/modx they solve dthe problem in AWM2 by using more slots for a single sound.... organs use 2 slots... for example...   the major grand piano even uses 4 slots..   The whole instrument has 16 slots, each slot can contain 8 elements of AWM2, and has its own mixer channel..

[andyg]

Organ Flutes have 9 pitches, not 8 (16', 5 1/3', 8', 4', 2 2/3', 2', 1 1/3', 1 3/5' and 1' for those not sure of what they are!) simply because that's what was there on the original Hammond. Not a case of squeezing 9 into 8.

Neat trick with the slider assign button, must remember that one!

[Dromeus]

Since you asked about MODX/Montage. There are no secrets, with the onboard performance editor you can get insight how the Yamaha programmers build the sounds.

Yamaha does provide waveforms for each of the 9 drawbars. As Bachus pointed out you need a two part performance to use all 9 waveforms. Two parts have 16 elements in total. In addition to the 9 drawbars the remaining 7 elements may include waveforms for percussion, rotor noise and so on.

But there are also combined waveforms like Full Draw, Draw Even, Draw Odd, Jazz (first four out) and so on. Depending what you want to achive you may use those waveforms to build your sound with one part only. E.g. the preset sound 8-8-8-8-6-2-2-0-0 uses the following elements/waveforms:

Elem1: Jazz
Elem2: Draw 2 2/3
Elem3: Draw 2'
Elem4: Draw 1 3/5
Elem5: Draw 1 1/3
Elem6: Draw 1
Elem7: Rotor
Elem8: Percussion

Extra credit: there are even organ sounds using more than two parts. Typical use is to morph between two different organ sounds using the super knob.

[DerekA]

So I realize there are 9 drawbars to match the original Hammond, but I'm still interested in how they got the 9 waves into a single 8-element voice - if they did.

MODX seems to use a two part performance.

But PSR / Genos can have all 9 waves on each of the 4 parts (L R1 R2 R3) at once.

Seems like they either managed to fit 9 into 8, or there's some trickery going on ...

[voodoo]

The answer is:

they did not use the AWM2 engine, that can play back 8 sample voices at the same time. If they did, the 128 note polyphony would be reached after 16 notes.

Instead they programmed a simpler engine to produce and mix 9 sine waves without the need of sound samples. This can be done just by DSP programming without wave data i/o.

So organ flute is a different sound engine other than AWM2. No samples, no envelope, no filter, much easier. So no 8 element restriction counts here.

Genos has two sound engines: AWM2 and organ flute.
Montage has two sound engines: AWM2 and FM-X, but no organ flute.
Korg keys have other sound engines. Kronos has nine (9) different engines including piano and organ simulation and some physical string modeling. PA series has other engines including organ flute.

Uli

[DerekA]

Interesting, Uli. You are probably right, since I forgot there are also the 3 percussion drawbars ... making 12 sounds at once.

If the OS can deal with more than one engine, I'd love a future update to Genos to add FM-X. I'd even pay for that. But I don't think there's much chance

[tyrosman]

Organ Flutes have 9 pitches, not 8 (16', 5 1/3', 8', 4', 2 2/3', 2', 1 1/3', 1 3/5' and 1' for those not sure of what they are!) simply because that's what was there on the original Hammond. Not a case of squeezing 9 into 8.

Neat trick with the slider assign button, must remember that one!

nice one Captain  Andy G