Choose the preset you'd like to see below
Some of these are from the Hammond factory presets, some are ones I've discovered or written down over the years. Rather than simply list them, I present...the "Drawbarinator!"
Remember these are only starting points for your own creativity; feel free to adjust these to your own style. Tasteful use of the drawbars means you'll be adjusting them often to fit the mood of a song, the form, the room, the audience, and so on.
An Explanation of What Drawbars Do
When you play a single note on an organ, you can pull out different drawbars (stops?) to sound more than one note at a time. Unlike a piano, which plays a single tone for each key pressed, an organ key can sound several concurrent tones, often at different octaves and volumes.
The drawbars on the Hammond are closely related to the lengths of pipes on a traditional organ, and follow the overtone series. The octave of the tones produced by pulling out a single stop (with a volume level of 0-8, marked on the slider) corresponds to the "length" of a windblown pipe. The leftmost drawbar (16') is known as the "suboctave" and therefore plays an octave below the fundamental of whatever pitch you're actually playing. The 8' drawbar (the "unison") represents concert pitch--the same pitch level as what you are playing. The 2' (Blockfloete) drawbar is an octave above, and so on. The diagram below should illustrate this more clearly. Note that the "odd pipe lengths" (such as 5 1/3', 2 2/3', etc) will produce tones either a fifth or a third above (plus one or more octaves) the pitch you are playing. The farther out you pull the drawbar, of course, the louder the tone will be.
