Tone Color Setup For Organ

Stage Pianos
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allan_evett
Posts: 13
Joined: 18:51, 7 February 2015

Tone Color Setup For Organ

Post by allan_evett »

Just learned that the Tone Color knob (or assigned controller to Tone Color) affects one function in real time, when assigned to an Organ Tone. That function is an adjustable boost to all of the drawbars - proportionate to the initial drawbar settings as written to a Program; very useful for soloing, plus adjusting to varying guitar levels, different song sections, etc.. But I also discovered a hard-wired sub-function: At the 80-90% position of the ModWheel 2 - the default controller - the rotary effect speed kicks into fast. While that might be useful for a particular song or two, it's not at all a flexible arrangement. What if a user wants to take advantage of the overall drawbar boost, but wants the rotary speed control to remain separate ? Yes, rotary speed can be assigned to a separate controller (default is paddle), but that still doesn't negate the fast speed change that kicks in with Tone Control.

Hoping that Roland corrects this in a future software update. Would be very helpful to have the option of disconnecting speed control from the Tone Color knob/assignment. While I get the idea that the RD is a stage piano - with some limits to organ and synth function, there are many times I use it on single-keyboard gigs. So having a couple of updates / corrections to organ tone editing would be great.
DesertBoat
Posts: 362
Joined: 01:49, 5 October 2017

Re: Tone Color Setup For Organ

Post by DesertBoat »

I have been working on this one.

I have focused on the tone wheel itself. The rotarty kicks to fast about 125 or 126 on the tone wheel, one or two clicks before the max value of 127.

The following adjustment will approximate a pipe organ crescendo pedal (I know it has another name, but my organ lessons are too many years old to recall). It will allow you to add harmonics up to the max, but not decrease.

Assign your expression pedal to Tone (default for the tone wheel programs is expression). Set the min value to 64, max to 124.

This should allow the pedal to only ADD as you press, and limit the value prior to kicking the rotary to fast. If you do not bring the min value up to 64, this will allow the pedal to back the stops all the way to zero volume.

There should be similar adjustments that could be made to the Mod Wheel and Tone Knob settings. I will post those as I figure them out.
DesertBoat
Posts: 362
Joined: 01:49, 5 October 2017

Re: Tone Color Setup For Organ

Post by DesertBoat »

After noodling around more, I can not find any setting that will limit the value sent by the tone color wheel or the mod wheel.
SledDriver
Posts: 76
Joined: 02:56, 8 October 2017

Re: Tone Color Setup For Organ

Post by SledDriver »

I think you are referring to the SWELL pedal on a pipe organ. :)

Cheers
DesertBoat
Posts: 362
Joined: 01:49, 5 October 2017

Re: Tone Color Setup For Organ

Post by DesertBoat »

No, swell (usually on the swell or choir organ ranks) is more akin to the volume or expression pedal. Swell mostly acts on volume, but does have a little tone color change as the louvers close.

The tonewheel color control, set up as below, is an approximation to the crescendo pedal, which pulls in additional stops to change not only volume but the overall organ sound density.
Argonaut
Posts: 1
Joined: 16:21, 5 December 2021

Re: Tone Color Setup For Organ

Post by Argonaut »

FYI, On a pipe organ, a swell pedal opens or closes the louvers (i.e. volume control), the crescendo pedal (if equipped) gradually adds stops (sounds) until reaching full organ, and the sforzando pedal button adds all stops at once.
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