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 2010 Concert Season.

Conveniently located in the main auditorium of the WOBURN, MA, SENIOR CENTER
144 School Street, Woburn, MA
     Sunday at our July 25th concert, we featured NSHOS member Bill Lambert and also NSHOS pres Eric Larson (that's me) along with some great songs from Elizabeth Larson.. Bill and I played solos and also duets using the club's X66 Hammond, and as an added attraction, Bill's accordion, for I had asked Bill to bring that instrument along. Those of you who know me well know that I don't like the sound of an accordion. But as I have come to find out, there are many different types of accordions, and a good instrument in the hands of a good musician can be quite nice indeed. Such was the case for this afternoon's program.
     At one point, mainly for laughs, we swapped instruments; and I tried for the first time in my life to play the accordion. I began to have serious doubts about the wisdom of this impending activity when I quickly realized that I'd have to wear the beast and I had no idea either of how to "put on" an accordion, or how heavy they are. Finally, with Bill's help, I had the accordion strapped on. Bill began to play the song You Belong to Me in Ken Griffin's style as I know that song well and I figured I'd best start with something easy.
     Well, I started to squeeze the accordion together a little and then I realized I was not sure where Middle C is and when you are wearing an accordion, you can't see the keyboard because it is facing away from you and you can only glance down and see it sideways. Anyhow, I finally found C and began my first tentative attempt. All of a sudden it went silent. I forgot that when you come to the end of the squeeze that you have to reverse direction and start to pull the two ends of the accordion away from each other. It evidently has two reeds for each note so that you can play whether the instrument bellows section is providing either pressure or suction.
     Of course then there is the matter of keyboard scaling. Accordion keys are narrower than organ keys or piano keys, so even if you find Middle C, don't expect E to be exactly where you think it should be. And of course on the left hand side of the accordion there are dozens of buttons, providing either bass tones or chords. This is great, once you know where specific buttons are. I had no clue, so I didn't even try to push any of them. Somehow, I got through the ordeal. After that, it was evident that I should stay with the Hammond organ, an opinion seconded by at least three people in the audience. However, for comic relief, it was good for some considerable amusement. I came away from that experience with two conclusions. First, if I ever were to take up the accordion, I would immediately procure a small centrifugal blower to power it. Second, I think I now have some idea how a woman feels when she is well along with a pregnancy.
     Anyhow, all things considered, it was another great success. We had a really good crowd and everyone was very enthusiastic. Although Bill played a previous concert for us, this was the first time we had ever worked together, and it went, considering that we had no rehearsal, very well. One of the novelty numbers that we played was Bill's own composition, called the Toilet Plunger Polka. How it came to have that title is a story that I don't know yet, but it may have something to do with Bill's occupation as a high school custodian. However the title was derived, the tune itself is a really nice, catchy polka. I do not have it memorized yet, even though we played it twice. It follows the standard format for a polka, so I'm hoping to have it memorized when I hear it again.
     Towards the end of the program, I played two selections that have come to be expected from me whenever I play. I actually asked the audience if they would prefer me to play either Brubeck's Take Five, or Tico Tico. But a number of people said "Play both of them," so I did.
     After that Bill and I played America the Beautiful as Elizabeth led the audience. Speaking of Elizabeth, she was in rare form, doing a fantastic job on everything she sang, among which were As Time Goes By, Bye Bye Blackbird, I Can't Believe that You're in Love With Me, Slow Boat to China, and then in honor of the many Italians in our audience, she sang Santa Lucia in Italian. Her rendition of that song was spectacular and the audience loved her. Elizabeth, who is very interested in languages studied Italian several years ago. Currently she is studying Russian. When in college, she also studied French and she is able to converse at least to some degree in all of these languages.
Next Concert is August 22
    For this program, we are featuring several of our own and also the North Shore group's best playing members. There are several among us whose playing is excellent, even though some are not aware of how well they actually play. However, the current lineup is as follows; subject to possible changes or additions We will divide the afternoon according to how many people we actually have as the date approaches but that is how it looks at the moment based upon attendees at our most recent meeting. From the North Shore Group. Jack McHatton and Cliff Brown. From NSHOS, Jim Gregory, Ed Surette, Eric Larson, and Bill Lambert. Actually, I should not specify either North Shore or NSHOS as we are all one unified group now, all dedicated to the performance and promotion of music played upon electronic organs (primarily but not exclusively) Hammonds, and other keyboards as well.

Don't miss this one!
Jim gregory and Eric Larson, MIDI keyboard and X66.
Left. Eric Larson at the X66 and behind Eric, Jim Gregory at a MIDI keyboard playing Glenn Miller's famous arrangement of In the Mood at the June NSHOS concert.
Right, Bill Lambert at the ac-cordion. How does he keep track of all those left-hand pushbuttons?
BIll Lambert on Accordion
Wurlitzer 4600 instrument
Above, console of a very rare Wurlitzer 4600 series electrostatic organ from the 1950s. We used that at our Ken Griffin event to do accurate imitations of those songs which Ken played using that type of instrument. Some of the sounds of the Wurlitzer electrostatics are so different that they can't be duplicated by an other instruments. The only thing that gives you the genuine sound of a Wurlitzer 4600 series ES is another Wurli 4600 series ES instrument.
Learn more about the Wurlitzer Electro-static Organ.

Wurlitzer 4600 instrument FOR SALE This doesn't happen very often. This is a rare opportunity to own a one-of-a-kind classic.
Above. Bill Lambert in the "driver's seat" of the X66 Hammond.
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.

Meet our Artists
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!

   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 2010 concert season began 9 27 09
     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, we are continuing to improve the club's instrument. The most recent work involved more contact cleaning. We had several of the tab voices which did not work on all keys on the upper manual, and also the piano stop in the percussion division had stopped working entirely. Both of these problems are now fixed. We also addressed the balance between channels.
     The X66 can be a really great sounding instrument, but if, as was the problem in our situation, the tab voices are too loud, or the Leslie speaker dominates, then the end result is not as good as it might be. By reducing the level of the tab voice channel we were able to bring these back in balance with the rest of the instrument. The tab voice channel also includes the pedals which likewise had been overpowering. It is amazing how sometimes a few simple tweaks can really improve the sound of an instrument.
     Also, two meetings ago, we added a couple of small capacitors to the percussion volume tab circuitry in such a way that the percussion tab, when in the normal position, switches these caps into the circuit. With the caps in the circuit, the overall volume of the percussion relative to the rest of the instrument is reduced, but because of the frequency characteristics of capacitors when handling an audio signal, this also decreases the higher frequencies more than the lower ones. Previously, the percussion on our X66 had been so loud that it made most of the percussion stops all but useless, and the glockenspiel was really piercing. Nobody would ever use it. Now with the percussion and the tab voices back in balance, these very useful but neglected features of the club's X are once again useful, letting our concert artists exploit all of the various tonal resources of this instrument.
— 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.