The North Suburban Home Organ Society

Eastern Massachusetts Premier Group for Those Who Love the

HAMMOND ORGAN and OTHER
ELECTRONIC KEYBOARDS

Welcome to our new 2011 Concert Season.

Conveniently located in the main auditorium of the WOBURN, MA, SENIOR CENTER
144 School Street, Woburn, MA
Next NSHOS Concert is Sunday, December 18th.

Let's see. It appears that I was the January artist. For this program I used both the club's X66 and also our C2, which is a ca. 1954 Hammond and which I used to get an authentic Hammond sound for a few Ken Griffin imitations, one of which was his version of the song Jealous, and the other was Lazy River. I had big plans of setting up some digital signal processing to get a nice repeat echo effect such as Ken used, but lately it seems that Iam so busy that I did not have time to go in and set up on the previous night, and I anded up setting up just before the program which is a situation that I try to avoid, but it was inevitable this month. Naturally when I am so pressed for time, I can't take the time to set up everything as elaborately as I would normally like. However, it seemed to go well anyhow. As usual, I ran the C2 through the X66 amplification system and speaker cabinet so the sound was good. The C2 is one of the earlier models with the ratcheting drawbars and older style wooden vibrato line box, so we were able to get a really good Griffin Hammond sound anyhow.

It is very difficult to write about one's own playing; the tendency of course is to be completely subjective, which is an attribute which should never enter into a description or review of any type of artistic endeavor. The cold weather reduced our audience size, and there was snow on the ground so turnout was not as good as I would have liked, and I also had to compete with a big football game. To me of course, our group and its music are infinitely more important than any sporting event, but I realize that some folks feel the same way about sports as I do about music! Anyhow, the standing O I received at the end of the program made it all worthwhile.

Our next meeting and concert will take place on Sunday, Feb 26. We do not have an artist for that meeting yet, but we will announce it here as soon as we do.

—Eric
Gerry Gottschalk
Eric & Elizabeth
Above, Gerry Gottschalk at the piano, our July featured artist. Below, Eric Larson at the X66 and vp Jim Gregory at a Yamaha keyboard.
Eric and Jim
Above. Elizabeth Larson sings at a recent meeting. Below, Bill Lambert performs a Ken Griffin imitation on the A100 Hammond console.
Bill Lambert at the A100 Hammond
Hammond C2
Left. a ca. 1954 Hammond C2, recently acquired and it's ideal for doing Ken Griffin imitations as it has the Hammond sound of that era. It is also a great back-up instrument, and for those artists who prefer a traditional Hammond to the X66, it makes it easy for them to get the sounds they are looking for.
Coming soon: You Tube video excerpts of some of our events. STAY TUNED!
New Feature!

If you'd like to join the NSHOS, you can Sign Up Here! This will take you to a handy form that you can fill out and pay for a membership via your credit card. If you are an existing NSHOS member, you can pay your membership renewal dues here as well. If you choose to purchase an NSHOS membership or renew an existing membership using our on-line forms, you may do so with the complete assurance that our on-line form has a security certificate attached, which means that the credit card information that you submit cannot be seen be anybody else.

Another new feature coming soon will be a series of You Tube videos showing excerpts from some of our programs, or various individuals playing brief demo sound clips. Here's the first one.
Eric plays a short fast version of Tico Tico
Who plays for the NSHOS? We've just begin this page, where we'll include a picture and a little information about the guys (and gals) who produce and participate in our monthly concerts. Meet your NSHOS musical friends here!
Meet our Artists
   Our monthly meetings/concerts are normally held on the fourth Sunday of every month in the auditorium of the Woburn, MA Senior Center on 144 School Street in Woburn, MA. Once in a while, we may schedule for the third Sunday if a special event or holiday falls on or close to the fourth Sunday.

NSHOS 2012 concert season begins Jan 22
with ERIC LARSON
     To visit us, get on 128 South and take the Washington Street exit, which is the first exit going south after Route 93. Go to the traffic light at the bottom of a slight hill and turn left. Continue about half a mile, look for Ryan Street on the left. Turn left on Ryan street, proceed about 0.2 mi to School Street. Turn Right onto School street and drive about 0.5 Mi. You will see the Senior Center, which was a former school, on the right. There are two wings to the building. As you drive into the parking lot, you will find the auditorium in the right wing of the building. Park anywhere in the parking lot and enter via the double doors. We look forward to meeting you. Share the joy of music, invite a friend!

Back to Home Page | Contact us | The X66 Hammond Organ | Philosophy
How Does a HAMMOND ORGAN Work?

We have recently added a lot of material to our technical pages, all of which is relevant to equipment that we use for our concerts. We have two new articles, one on MIDI and one on tape echo. The MIDI article is somewhat of an overview as MIDI is a complex and evolving subject however we have covered the essentials of MIDI as it applies to what we do at the NSHOS. We also have an article about the Wurlitzer electrostatic organ. After that, we have started an article about digital signal processing, although of necessity it will be a rather brief outline of the salient features of this very complex technology that is increasingly important in many aspects of modern music production. We've also started an article about the X66 Hammond organ. Not only is that the club's performance instrument, but it is quite different in many ways from the more traditional Hammonds.
     There has been and continues to be a great deal of progress made in electronically produced music and we hope that these technical articles that we include here will be helpful to you in gaining an appreciation for this new technology. We have also begun to include a few sound clips in some of these articles. To hear them, just click on any of the play buttons that you see on the relevant web pages. We implement these sound clips by using Flash, which is a very widely used media application on virtually all computers. We also use Flash for some of the technical animations on our tech pages. If you have a very old computer that does not have Flash capability, you can download Flash player by clicking the link below.  When you arrive at the page, you'll find an icon to click to begin installing Flash on your computer. Because of the huge amount of Flash based content on the web, it is absolutely essential that you should have this most useful feature not just for the NSHOS website, but for many, many others as well.          
Download Flash Player
©2010 NSHOS

     Regarding technical matters, I have nothing new to report this last month. I have been involved with so many extra and different projects that I have not addressed either of the two Hammonds that we are presently using, however, there is still more to do. The best thing one can do for musical instruments, regardless of what they are, is to play them frequently. Unfortunately our club instruments get played only one day per month. Key contact fouling and oxidation are a problem with many electronic organs, and the best way to keep contacts clean is through use.

     As you can see, we now have a C2 along with the X66. The C2 is in excellent working condition and it gives us a back-up if our X66 should ever need work. It also makes possible the playing of duets, or, if we add the house piano, we can have a trio. We have a second Leslie; I hope to hook that up to the C2 in the near future, and possibly also pick up either a PR-40 or an HR 40 tone cabinet for the C2 so that it can run entirely independently of the X66. For the present time, we send the C2's console signal into the X66 mic input and it plays through the X66 main series 12 speaker cabinet. However, I am disappointed in the lack of depth to the C2s pedals. I believe I have an impedance mismatch between the output of the mixer I am using and the X mic input as with the bass turned all the way up, the lower mid-range is accentuated but the real deep pedal tones are not as good as I would expect. Having heard this C2 play through an HR-40 Hammond cabinet in the past, I know that it puts out some serious pedal tones, so the problem of slightly weak bass is not in the C2. Also, the bass-cut feature for that channel in the mixer was not engaged, so the mixer was not attenuating the bass either. There are always interesting technical projects to attend to. But there is NOT always TIME to attend to them!
— ECL

     If you are a professional keyboard musician or a skilled amateur, be sure to contact us. We are always looking for new artists to feature for our programs. We are very pleased to see that we are getting new visitors to our programs and that many of those who visit have joined our group. We're also getting some visitors via this website. We welcome all to our monthly programs. If you would like to join the North Suburban Home Organ Society, or receive more information about this group, just click here. NSHOS.