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Are you asking for someone else's favorite B3 organ sound, or are you asking how to find the organ sounds?

I know where to find the organ sounds. I'm wondering which organ sound other people use for a good B3. Thanks.

Hmmm! Not sure how that will help you. The B3, and in many regards, the organ itself as an instrument, is not only the first keyboard, but the first "synthesizer". The sounds are akin to what we now call 'additive synthesis'... Pipe organs had Stops, the B3 (and other tone wheel) organ had drawbars, that represent the harmonics - the building blocks for creating a tone.

What type of sound - genre, band, player - are you looking for? Because the CP4 Stage is principally a "stage piano", that has the majority of its deep programming functions targeting Acoustic and Vintage Pianos. The organs are not modeled, nor can they be manipulated in a manner like you might on a synth like the Motif-series or MOXF-series... But the selection of "preset" Voices cover a wide variety of your typical B3 sounds. In fact, they are derived from the Motif-series Library of B3 tones.

I have a similar question. I just gave up my Roland FP-4 for the CP4 and miss a couple of the organ stops. In particular, Roland had a nice B3 with some raspiness to it that I haven't been able to duplicate using the various amp inserts or using the "rock organs". I don't need the organ much, but when I do, such as the solo in "What is Hip," I want it to sound a little less like a home organ. Thanks

Hi Keith, welcome to Yamaha Synth. Thanks for the question!

"a home organ" ??? haha! 🙂 I guess you can do that if you want - it is certainly covered. We can certainly make some suggestions on how you can reproduce the organ sound used on T.O.P's "What is Hip?" - whether or not it will be the same as on your other keyboard, that only you can say.

Building your own PERFORMANCE "from scratch":
The CP4 Stage is a combination of physical models and sampled audio technologies. Truly the CP4 architecture is a combination of technologies… Both in the sound source end and the processing end. There are over four hundred Voices in the CP4 Stage Voice Library… Most of them are like reference books sitting on a shelf… "Raw material" for you to build with. Don’t think of any of the VOICES as entirely "finished programs", they are not ... They are very, very detailed "oscillators". They are the "raw sound" that you place in one of three PARTS (Main, Layer, Split), while in the Parts, you then further dress them up with the parameters that become, your PERFORMANCE.

When you select a VOICE that is an acoustic piano engine (CFX, CFIIIS, or S6), or a vintage piano physical model (Rd-type, Wr-type, or CP-type), these have associated INSERTION EFFECTS that come along with the Voice when you select it. However, when building from a VOICE that is from the AWM2 library, you do not have pre-associated INSERTION EFFECTS coming along with them, you must "dress up" the Voice by programming how it behaves.... It does not have any pre-associated INSERTION EFFECT as the modeling Voices do.

In all cases, you must construct your PERFORMANCE around the "VOICE" you have selected as the sound source.

The VOICE is the starting point (on a synth, like a Motif XF or MOXF, you start with selecting a "Waveform" and build multiple Waveforms into a VOICE) here you start building with the VOICE and build up from that point. This will include how it responds to Controllers, applying OFFSETS to the pre-programmed Filter and AEG settings, routing through the various effect and physical modeling processors, etc.

You have two Insertion Effects (your choice) and two System Effects (Reverb and Chorus). If you elect to construct your own PERFORMANCE from scratch - you will go through the process of doing it all from the ground up.

Organ 032: "70sPercOrg" is a good candidate for the preset drawbar settings typical of Chester Thompson's B3 sound on "What is Hip?". You will need to "dress it up" from the initialize Performance status

Press [SHIFT] + [ENTER] together to execute a QUICK RESET - this is your start point - the first Voice is inserted and basic defaults are restored.
From here change the VOICE to the ORGAN Category and dial up 32: 70sPercOrg. This is the equivalent of selecting a WAVEFORM in a synth... except you start with a much more polished starting point.

Assign the "Rotary Speaker" as INSERT A. See the Videos in the RESOURCE area for navigating and assigning Effects.
You can add a bit of raspy-ness using the right amount of "Guitar Amp Simulation" or "Compressor/Distortion" as INSERT B. If you use too much you wind up with the DEEP PURPLE (Jon Lord) B3-through-Marshall-stack type sound. That would be far too much for the Tower of Power type B3 sound.

One key to making the "Guitar Amp Simulator" work for organ is route the output of the Rotary Speaker to the Amp Simulator (or I often use the "Comp+Distortion") and use the proper amount of crunchiness - this is very subjective but if you exceed 10% for the DRIVE (overdrive) you probably have way too much... You want just a bit of stress/strain on the sound... not a guitar player's dream/nightmare of killing all real tone... just a bit of crunch now and again.

It is all personal taste hear - you may seek to avoid the Amp/Distortion route altogether and opt to use an entirely different approach to your processing. You have four processors to play with. You can experiment with these Effects to add "beef" or heft to the organ sound. The Chorus process, which includes all your time delay effects, can be used to add chunkiness to the sound. Instead of using the Chorus process for the typical swirling sound, use it with very short time delay settings to add a beefiness to the tone.

The Compressor portion of the CompDist Insertion Effect can be used to make the sound pop with presence and weight.

You have to tweak. Do not just call up a VOICE and expect it to be perfect. Think of the VOICES as the raw data.

Extra Credit and Tips:
Study the following PERFORMANCES in the factory set:
05: Jazz Organ
37: Rock Organ

Start by tweaking these changing effects, changing the Dry/Wet Balance, etc. You can learn how the INSERTION EFFECTs are assigned. You can learn about how the Controllers are assigned so that Rotary Speaker "Chorale/Tremolo" (Slow/Fast) is assigned to the MW, etc., etc.

We hope to have some programming examples for you to try in the coming weeks. But this should get you started.
By default the MW is assigned to MW PMod (vibrato) you will want to set that to 0
And the PB Wheel is set to bend a whole step...

Study the Factory PERFORMANCE to learn about how the MW is re-tasked as the speed switch for the Rotary Speaker.
Hope that helps.

Thanks very much! I'll give it a shot..

So, I edited the organ patch as you suggest and got a pretty good Jimmy Smith organ similar to the one I like on the FP-4. Now, is there any way I can add a little velocity sensitivity to the organ patch? I know organ players like no velocity sensitivity, but some of us piano players like a little bit of that when we use the organ patches (such as some of the Roland organs have). Is this a parameter that could be allowed to be adjusted via an operating system update? I remember reading some concerns about it on Pianoworld and wonder if just having that capability would help sales? Thanks