On HW history

Hello all:
After reading K. Spencer´s recent and ancient posts about HW origins, I decided to post a question has intriguing me for years.
What was first: a) the sampling of organs for historical-conservationist purposes, or b) the design of specific software to be used in future sampled organs, or ...
Thanks,
Luis

Luis,

I can answer this one. Organs had been sampled for use in non-realtime playback systems since at least the 50s. You can learn about this by searching for "computer music" online. It was a quirky era.

The first sampled real-time organ was the concept system that North American Aviation built in the mid 1960s. It used a crude plug-in diode array to enter three stops from pre-determined wave shapes - by hand. Then the three stops could be drawn to play them on a single manual. This was the instrument that was shown to many US organ companies. Only one of these companies, Allen Organ, saw the musical and economic potential in the system. This led to a partnership between North American and Allen that produced the first commercial digital organ in 1971. We had a fully-functional prototype of the organ in our home for a year or so before that, and I practiced on it daily.

Allen was defintely the artistic force behind the first organ. They were not trying to reproduce a specific existing pipe organ - but rather wanted to provide a comprehensive 2-manual instrument for the organ literature.

The only reason these first digital organs were not software-based is that the general purpose computers of the time could not handle the necessary computational rate. The first generation Allen system used custom microelectronics provided by North American (which soon became Rockwell after a merger.)

You can read more about this on my web site here:

http://www.nightbloomingjazzmen.com/Ralph_Deutsch_Intro.html

Les

Les: Thanks you very much¡
Luis

You might be interested that Ralph Deutsch tried to sell his ideas and patents along with North American Rockwell to Hammond Organ prior to going to Allen.

Management at Hammond, did not place any value in his ideas and was working on their own custom ICs for the Hammond models that were built after the mechanical system was abandoned.

Rgds,
Ed

Ed,

Yes, that is correct. North American invited just about every US organ manufacturer in to see the demonstration - and there were a lot of these companies back then! I believe the big selling point was the improve sound quality and control over analog systems. In return, there was a major up-front investment required for the partnership and for the company to retool their manufacturing. Many companies saw themselves as too small to handle the investment. Others were doing a great business with he sounds they already had and saw no advantage.

Les

I cant help remembering repairing, a Chamberlin Keyboard many years ago for a customer of mine,
It was not computerized at all.
It utilized a large number of recorded audio tapes,
all in a row that passed over one long rotating capstan, and a row of tape playback heads.

It utilized a wood keyboard, with rubber rollers, 1 under each key, and as one would press these keys a loop of that tape would play many interesting pre-recorded sounds !

It had very real sounds, BUT as I found out after a number of Repair calls,
the tapes did not stretch uniformly, and would tangle most severely.

I would have to remove the spindle of mini reels of tape in the back of the machine,
and unroll the entire assembly out over the area behind the machine in order to untangle all the tapes,
then re-roll all the tapes on their proper spools in order to get it playing again !

"(added) There are a few U-Tube recordings of this, and similar instruments,
It predates all digitally sampled instruments, and it did Play !

(Pre, HW History )

RSVP ?
Mel

It utilized a large number of recorded audio tapes,
all in a row that passed over one long rotating capstan, and a row of tape playback heads.

Could be that's where Richard Dorf got the idea for the (Schober) Reverbatape. Wonder which was first?

Rgds,
Ed

I cant help remembering repairing, a Chamberlin Keyboard many years ago for a customer of mine,
It was not computerized at all.
It utilized a large number of recorded audio tapes,
all in a row that passed over one long rotating capstan, and a row of tape playback heads.

It utilized a wood keyboard, with rubber rollers, 1 under each key, and as one would press these keys a loop of that tape would play many interesting pre-recorded sounds !

It had very real sounds, BUT as I found out after a number of Repair calls,
the tapes did not stretch uniformly, and would tangle most severely.

I would have to remove the spindle of mini reels of tape in the back of the machine,
and unroll the entire assembly out over the area behind the machine in order to untangle all the tapes,
then re-roll all the tapes on their proper spools in order to get it playing again !

I am now wondering if anyone has ever posted a U-Tube recording of this old instruments,
I will check this, it predates all digitally sampled instruments, and it did sort of work !

(Pre, HW History )

RSVP ?
Mel

That was how the Mellotron (used in several pop and rock recordings, and on tour) worked as well.

Here is an interesting thread comparing the Chamberlain to the Mellotron and discussing some of the foibles of those kinds of systems (including an excerpt of an interview with John Paul Jones of Led Zeppelin): http://forums.musicplayer.com/ubbthreads.php/topics/2278290/Difference_between_mellotron_a

As far as I know,
I replaced many worn out tape reverb carts years ago.

Mr. Les Paul was instrumental in utilizing tape Reverb way back,
followed shortly, with Multi-track recording, Ping Pong style
utilizing a pair of small Ampex Full track recorders, he was dismayed at the increase in noise level
and the loss of quality in earlier added tracks. So

He Had Ampex Build him a Tape Drive with eight tracks,
with "completely Separate Record and Play switches"
on each track, so he could record on say track 2 as he was playing back track 1,
then after recording 8 layers he could mix down to a Stereo Pair !

Apology's for going off subject but great history !

In the mid 1970's the music store I was working at sponsored a organ concert at one of the auditoriums in town. The guest organist was the late Bill Thompson. During that weekend, he said that he had been substituting for George Wright on the TV soap opera, General Hospital. They were using a unit consisting of tape loops to create orchestral sounds for the background drama music for the TV series. Bill described it just as has been described on this forum, a small keyboard with tape loops inside allowing notes to play for about 8 to 10 seconds creating the drama music for the show.

There are several demonstrations on YouTube of these units that are probably forerunners to synthesizers.

- Don

Could be that's where Richard Dorf got the idea for the (Schober) Reverbatape. Wonder which was first?

I utilized Tape Reverb in the 50's, and it was not new then.

I had a Tape Reverb Unit, with movable playback heads, in order to modify its effect !

Most of the commercial Tape loop reverbs,
utilized the so called "Mobious", (or continuous-loop) that worked similar to an Eight Track Tape cartridge.

Many radio broadcasting studios used similar carts,
(as they called them) for, sound effects, music, and commercials !

Rgds,
Ed[/quote]