My first organs

My first organs and synthesizers (Sunday, 8 August, 2021)

When I was about 12 years old I started to play organ. That was around 1979 at a time that many people had a electronic organ at home. They almost complete disappeared (perhaps now in favor of the Hammond organ or its clones). The photo below was my first organ that I played for a couple of years. It was a Philips Philicorda GM760.

My next organ was a Yamaha Electone 205D (probably the C series), which was given to me by grandpa for which I played every sunday when he visited us. This organ I played for many years. It had a very basic rhythm ‘computer’ and arpeggiator. However, I never liked to sound which was kind of cold when compared to the Eminent organ that I played during my lessons at the music school in Tilburg.  The photos on the left I found on the internet since I could not yet find any photo of the organ that I owned. After a while I also bought my first synthesizer, the Crumar Bit 99, which I then placed on top of the organ. The Yamaha organ finally ceased working (perhaps also since at some point a vase filled with water was accidently dropped on the organ). I, however, removed the amplifier part and speaker from the organ and placed it in a new cabinet that served as my first keyboard amplifier for several years, and which I used in my first bands.

I had about 6 years of organ lessons at the music school in Tilburg where I played on a Eminent 1600 orchestra, which I couldn’t afford at that time but which you now buy for less than 50 euro on ebay. I sounded so much better than the Yamaha at that time.

After 6 years of organ lesson I continued with piano lessons for one year and then moved on the electonic music classes that were introduced at that time at the music school. They build a small studio with the famous Yamaha DX7 (FM synthesis), a first Cubase version on an Atari computer, but also a mixing console and analog tape (which we actually cut and taped together as part of the editing process).