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An electronic organ is an electronic device designed to imitate the sound of a pipe organ. Although many musicians hotly debate the sound quality of electronic organs compared to actual pipe organs, many churches that are unable to afford costly pipe organs have turned to less-expensive electronic organs as a viable alternative.
Early electronic organs used simple tone generators such as the famous Hammond tonewheels, or various combinations of oscillators and filters, but most modern electronic organs use high-quality digital samples to produce as accurate a sound as possible. The heat generated by early models with vacuum tube tone generators and/or amplifiers led to the somewhat derogatory nickname "toaster."
Electronic organs were once popular home instruments, frequently sold in department stores. Appearing in the 1930s, they captured the public imagination, largely through the film performances of Hammond organist Ethel Smith. Nevertheless, they initially suffered in sales during the Great Depression and World War II. After the war they became more widespread, peaking in popularity in the 1950s, but undoubtedly undercut by the rapid growth of television as a home entertainment alternative that same decade.
A typical spinet organ of the 1950s (from an advertisement in a popular magazine). Note the resemblance in size and shape to a small home piano. Note also the shortened, offset manuals and miniature pedalboard, both sure signs of the spinet. On spinet organs the keyboards were typically at least an octave shorter than is normal for organs, with the upper manual missing the bass, and the lower manual missing the treble. The manuals were usually offset, inviting (although not requiring) the new organist to dedicate her right hand to the upper manual and her left to the lower, rather than using both hands on a single manual. This seemed designed in part to encourage the pianist, who was accustomed to a single keyboard, to make use of both manuals. Stops on such instruments, relatively limited in number, were frequently named after orchestral instruments that they could, at best, only roughly approximate, and were often brightly colored (even more so than those of theatre organs).
The spinet organs pedalboard normally spanned only a single octave, was often incapable of playing more than one note at a time, and was effectively playable only with the left foot (and on some models only with the left toes). A single swell (or "expression") pedal, really just a master volume control, was located to the right and either partly or fully recessed within the kickboard, thus conveniently reachable only with the right foot. Such an arrangement spawned a style of casual organist who would naturally rest her right foot on the expression pedal the entire time she played, unlike classically-trained organists. This position, in turn, instinctively encouraged her to pump the pedal while playing, especially if she was accustomed to using a pianos sustain pedal to shape her music. Her expressive pumping added a strong dynamic element to home organ music that much classical literature and hymnody lacked, and would help influence a new generation of popular keyboard artists. A typical console organ of the 1950s (from an advertisement in a popular magazine). Considerably larger and more imposing than the spinet, it resembles the console of a pipe organ. Note the five-octave in-line manuals, the extra drawbars, and the full pedalboard, all of which make this a more complex, but also a more powerful and flexible, instrument than the spinet (and yet, the marketing message says clearly, even a child can learn to play it.) Larger and more expensive home models, known as console organs because they resembled pipe organ consoles, were also popular. These instruments had a more traditional configuration, including full-range manuals, a wider variety of stops, and a two-octave (or occasionally even a full thirty-two note) pedalboard easily playable by both feet in standard toe-and-heel fashion. Console models often made use of Leslies, free-standing loudspeakers speakers that produced a higher-quality sound than a spinet organs small built-in speakers. With their more traditional configuration, greater capabilities, and better performance compared to spinets, console organs were especially suitable for use in small churches, public performance, and even organ instruction. The home musician or young student who first learned to play on a console model often found that she could later make the transition to a pipe organ in a church setting with relative ease.
By the 1960s, electronic organs were ubiquitous in all genres of popular music, from Lawrence Welk to acid rock. In some cases, Hammonds were used, while in others, very small all-electronic instruments, only slightly larger than a modern digital keyboard, called "combo organs," were used. The 1970s and 1980s saw increasing specialization: the jazz scene continued to make heavy use of Hammonds, while various styles of rock began to take advantage of more and more complex electronic keyboard instruments as digital technology began to enter the mainstream.
A modern electronic organ. Its superficial resemblance to the modest spinet organ of earlier years is deceptive; this models high performance level, made possible by digital design, makes it suitable for professional as well as home use. See also
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