Hello,

I am fairly literate when it comes to programming synths, but the one thing that i just can’t quite get is how to program organ percussion so that it only triggers when you lift your fingers off of a key, or being able to play legato lines without the percussion sounding.

If anyone has the knows what the parameters are to program this effect, i would be all ears. Thank you!

Terry

Which keyboard do you own?

Bad Mister,

I am trying to accomplish this on a Yamaha S30.

S30 - wow, that was some time in the distant past…

Well anyway, as I recall the S30 voice structure was four elements. One of the elements would have to be set to the “percussion” waveform (I don’t recall what waveform that is on the S30), or you could simply use a 4’ organ waveform and set its amp EG so that it decays VERY quickly and dies out - imitating what the percussion on a Hammond does.

Programming the percussion to behave like a Hammond is accomplished by a programmer’s trick on the XS and XF. I believe Scott Plunkett, one of Yamaha’s longtime programmers, came up with it.

On the Motif XS and XF, the Common LFO is set this way:
Wave - USER (it is a 16-step user wave, but it just consists of one short step, a downward slope that decays very quickly, and the rest of the steps are blank).
Play Mode - One shot
Speed - 2 (the slowest possible)
Key-On Reset - First on
Delay - 0
Fade-In Time - 0
Hold - hold
Fade Out Time - 64
Destination - Amp Mod
Depth - 127
Assign to - whatever element is the percussion element.

The principle is simple - the LFO is assigned to amplitude (loudness) and the depth is full on 127 (deepest). With the LFO set to “1st on” it triggers only once, so when you depress a key or number of keys, as long as at least one key is held down, the slow LFO affects the amplitude of the element it is assigned to (the percussion element), but since the LFO waveform is a one-shot and the element itself is very short decay, the LFO cycles oince and effectively turns the percussion element off after the key is depressed. When you lift all fingers off the key, that resets the LFO affecting the amplitude of the percussion element and so you can strike another key or keys and hear it again, but playing additional keys without releasing the keyboard entirely does NOT retrigger the percussion element.

That’s how the hammond organ percussion works - only when you first hit a key or keys and hold them, and it doesn’t retrigger until you take all your fingers off the keyboard.

Whether this is possible on the S30, I have no idea. I don’t even remember whether there was a common LFO in voice mode on the S30.

Wow, now that is a detailed answer!

FYI, the S30 does have a common LFO as well as
element LFO.

The ES series also employed this programming technique, which is actually how i discovered it was possible to emulate the legato organ percussion.
Thanks for such a detailed reply, this is why i am loyal to Yamaha since the S80/30 came out.

Terry

okay, I tried to use the technique that you described in your prior message,there is no user wave option in common lfo on the S30. There is also no one shot option either.

it looks like I may not be able to pull this off on the S 30.
thanks again for your help though.

Terry

If it has a monophonic (or unison) mode in the voice options and one of the settings is legato (or some sort of other-named trigger setting), you might be able to layer a second monophonic voice with just the percussion part.