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12. Organ technique

1 Organ keys are like on/off switches – the only way to make them sustain is to hold them down. The sustain pedal is instead often used to switch the speed of the Leslie speaker effect. Here’s an NI Vintage Organs B3 Kontakt Player preset, playing sustained chords while switching speaker speeds with the pedal.

2 Organs have no pitchbend feature, so to emulate guitar strings being bent, organ players started including grace notes, rolls and slurs into their playing. To play a grace note, quickly flick the note one semitone to the left of your target note, using the finger to the left of the one you’re about to use to play the main note.

3 This approach blends well with staccato, funky, rhythmic chops, particularly when using the sharpened fourth degree of the minor blues scale (as described on p33) as the grace note, sliding from there onto the fifth. Combine this with a held-down flattened seventh, and you have the beginnings of a classic organ riff, as shown here.

4 Another classic organ technique is the glissando, achieved by running your hand up and down the keys. You can use the side of your fingers or the back of your hand for this, but the trick is to merge it smoothly into whatever follows. Here we’re sliding up the keyboard with the left hand, hitting a pre-shaped C minor chord ( C, Eb, G) with the right.