MIDI for a Hammond

[Mark Smart]

>Is there any info on converting a Hammond tone generator organ to MIDI
>control? My main questions are: How could the fact that each key
>progressively controls up to nine voices be supported, including at least
>some aspect of the key pressure control of these voices (perhaps midi
>initial key pressure messages could control the depth to which the virtual
>'key' is pressed)? Could the 'drawbars' be supported in software somehow,
>to allow multiple user presets? 

Pavo makes a kit as part of their MIDITools series, called the 64- or
128-output driver. It takes MIDI note messages and drives high-current sink
outputs in response to them. I dunno how a Hammond keyboard is set up, but
maybe it would be possible to use this kit to replace the switching of the
keyboard, or run in parallel with it. I've been thinking about using this
kit to add MIDI in capability to an ARP Omni.

As for MIDIfying the drawbars...yowza, that sounds really horrendous. Just
MIDIfying the keyboard will be pretty horrendous, come to think of it.
Anyway, you might want to check out the Pavo site (www.pavo.com) to look at
the kits they have available.


************************************************
*     Mark Smart                               *
*     Electronics Engineer                     *
*     NovaNET Learning, Inc.                   *
*     smart at medusa.nn.com                      *
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