The EVB3 Percussion Section

Percussion on a tonewheel organ isn’t that cheesy-but-cool box full of pre-programmed rhythms that you might have seen on your grandmother’s organ. It’s a percussive, polyphonic, tuned sound that can be used to add a little extra flavor to the attack of your upper manual sound. It’s an interesting effect because while it is polyphonic, it triggers similarly to the way notes do when a synth is in legato mode—as long as you’re playing legato, the Percussion effect will not be added to the attack of a new note. Figure 11.9 shows the EVB3 Percussion section.

Figure 11.9 The EVB3 Percussion section.

In a real tonewheel organ, the Percussion effect “steals” the 1' drawbar to produce its sound. In other words, when Percussion is turned on, the 1' drawbar is no longer available because its circuit is used to produce the Percussion effect. EVB3 does not have this limitation, so when you use the Percussion effect, the 1' drawbar is still usable. The Percussion controls on a tonewheel organ are limited to four rocker switches that turn the effect on and off and control the volume of the effect, the speed of the decay of the effect, and the harmonic the effect produces. Again, EVB3 doesn’t suffer these limitations. While the effect obviously can only be either on or off, and the selection of harmonics you can use is limited to two, the volume of the effect and the decay time are highly controllable.