Organic Panic

PANIC and I tracked some wonderfully over driven organ the other night. After many failed attempts with his short-circuiting Juno we turned to my old faithful Ace-Tone for the elusive timbre we were looking for. The poor thing hasn't been tuned in years and sounded like Edith Bunker crooning "Those Were The Days". We popped the top and started twisting stuff with makeshift screwdrivers...namely authentic Gene Corduroy brand guitar picks.

One of my favorite lil' tricks with the Ace-Tone is turning it off whilst holding down a key or ten. The notes bend and moan until it wheezes into silence. It is one of those magical lil' things that make digital/soft synths dull in comparison; when you turn them off...they're off, man! Total dullsville. Well, the off-button technique became necessary when we wanted to play a dead A key...Panic found that if he played an A# and turned off the organ just at the right moment it approximated an A. Pretty sneaky, huh?

For those who care about such things, we used a small Fender Vibro Champ (c. 1970) recorded with a AT4047 about 3 inches from the grill cloth into a Universal Audio 2108 mic preamp patched into a Layla24 all tracked with Cakewalk Sonar on a despicably aging PC.

La, la, love ya...

{csmr}

Over his shoulder...