Creating Organ Sounds; About Virtual Tonewheel Sound Generators; Varying The Sound In Real Time (Harmonic Bars) - Roland VR-700 Owner's Manual

Creating Organ Sounds

About Virtual Tonewheel Sound
Generators
Tonewheel organs are a type of organ that produce their sound by
means of toothed wheels called "tonewheels."
Tonewheel organs contain numerous tonewheels, with each wheel
corresponding to a key. The tonewheels are rotated by a motor.
When a key is pressed, a pickup detects the motion of that wheel's
teeth as they rotate past a pickup, and converts this motion into
sound. Because of this method of producing sound, tonewheel
organs are able to produce sounds with a rapid (strong) attack, and
came to be used in a wide range of musical styles.
The VR-700 contains a "virtual tonewheel sound generator," which
uses digital technology to faithfully simulate the sound-generating
methods of a tonewheel organ. In the same way as a traditional
tonewheel organ, the VR-700 lets you use harmonic bars to create
the basic sound of the organ.
It also uses digital technology to faithfully simulate various
distinctive characteristics of the tonewheel organ, and allows you to
freely vary these.
Ordinarily, the tone wheels revolve at a fixed speed. However, some
performers have been known to use a technique whereby they raise
the pitch by pushing the start switch while they're performing,
which increases the speed of the tone wheels' revolution. You can
re-create this effect by turning on the [ORGAN CONTROL] button,
then pushing the bend lever away from yourself.
In addition, it digitally recreates the vibrato, chorus, and rotary
speaker sounds that are indispensable to an organ sound, giving
you a great deal of freedom to create the sound you want.
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Varying the Sound in Real Time
(Harmonic Bars)
The harmonic bars are controllers that create the basic framework of
the organ sound. By sliding the nine bars in or out, you can vary the
organ sound in real time.
fig.H-bar.eps
An overtone of a different pitch is assigned to each harmonic bar,
and you can create the organ sound by combining these overtones.
If you push a harmonic bar inward until none of the numerals
printed on it are visible, the overtone corresponding to that
harmonic bar will not be heard. If the harmonic bar is pulled
outward all the way, its volume will be at the maximum.
fig.H-bar-Logic.eps
Time
8' volume: 8
Time
4' volume: 5
Time