Roland VR-700 Manuale Utente

 

Creating Organ Sounds

 

Tonewheel organs are a type of organ that produce their sound by 

means of toothed wheels called “tonewheels.”

Tonewheel organs contain numerous tonewheels, with each wheel 

corresponding to a key. The tonewheels are rotated by a motor. 

When a key is pressed, a pickup detects the motion of that wheel’s 

teeth as they rotate past a pickup, and converts this motion into 

sound. Because of this method of producing sound, tonewheel 

organs are able to produce sounds with a rapid (strong) attack, and 

came to be used in a wide range of musical styles.

The VR-700 contains a “virtual tonewheel sound generator,” which 

uses digital technology to faithfully simulate the sound-generating 

methods of a tonewheel organ. In the same way as a traditional 

tonewheel organ, the VR-700 lets you use harmonic bars to create 

the basic sound of the organ. 

It also uses digital technology to faithfully simulate various 

distinctive characteristics of the tonewheel organ, and allows you to 

freely vary these.

Ordinarily, the tone wheels revolve at a fixed speed. However, some 

performers have been known to use a technique whereby they raise 

the pitch by pushing the start switch while they’re performing, 

which increases the speed of the tone wheels’ revolution. You can 

re-create this effect by turning on the [ORGAN CONTROL] button, 

then pushing the bend lever away from yourself. 

In addition, it digitally recreates the vibrato, chorus, and rotary 

speaker sounds that are indispensable to an organ sound, giving 

you a great deal of freedom to create the sound you want.

The harmonic bars are controllers that create the basic framework of 

the organ sound. By sliding the nine bars in or out, you can vary the 

organ sound in real time.

 

fig.H-bar.eps

 

An overtone of a different pitch is assigned to each harmonic bar, 

and you can create the organ sound by combining these overtones.

If you push a harmonic bar inward until none of the numerals 

printed on it are visible, the overtone corresponding to that 

harmonic bar will not be heard. If the harmonic bar is pulled 

outward all the way, its volume will be at the maximum.

 

fig.H-bar-Logic.eps

 

About Virtual Tonewheel Sound 
Generators

Varying the Sound in Real Time 
(Harmonic Bars)

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