[sdiy] Drawbar controller with a Yamaha Clavinova

[John Speth]

Hi everybody-

I just bought a used Yamaha CLP611 Clavinova for my
family.  It's pretty nice.  It has a real nice B3
organ emulation.  The organ emulation parameters are
adjustable via menus which makes tactile adjustment a
problem.  Also, those same parameters are adjustable
via MIDI.

So I figured it would be cool to make an outboard B3
drawbar controller to achieve a nicer B3 user
interface.  I figured the major construction obstacle
would be sliders functioning as drawbars that would
make up the majority of the controller.  Then I
discovered the Voce B5 and NI BD4 which both seem to
do exactly what I want (especially the BD4 since it's
just a controller and the price is right).

So the number of overtones for control on the Yamaha
range are 8 settings for continuous tone (16' to 1')
and 3 for decay (4' to 2').  (Yamaha calls it attack
but it looks like decay in their diagrams.)  That's 11
overtones.  But the BD4 only has 9 drawbars as does
all other similar controllers I could find.

Does anyone know why Yamaha uses 11 tones and the
others only use 9?  Does anyone know which ones are
omitted in the BD4?  I couldn't find a BD4 users
manual on the web.

(Yamaha cont tones are 16, 8, 5+1/3, 4, 2+2/3, 2,
1+1/3, 1.  Decay tones are 4, 2+2/3, 2.)

Please excuse my limited knowledge of organs and
terminology.

Thanks, JJS


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