[sdiy] String synth (solina) and Hammond organ questions

[sleepy_dog at gmx.de]

Howdy,

so it's time to dig up one of the projects I started, and continue a bit ;-)

STRING ENSEMBLE:
So, I programmed, in software, a at least not totally horrible Vox 
Continental like transistor organ emulation.
I read that those Solina string ensemble things worked very similarly. I 
know that one of the most important parts of the sound was the chorus.
But before that: What was the sound source like? Did they also do some 
funky chromatic "harmonics"? Probably not the same way the organs were 
done, or it would inevitably sound organ like, right? So, what did they 
do? I Haven't found answers for that so far. (all the info I had on he 
Vox Continental were from a vox site explaining the function of some of 
the boards, and my mind was filling in the blank parts. Spice'ing an 
oscillator + divider helped getting an idea of the waveform, but 
schematics I found generally weren't too great, and a systems overview? 
Not found.).

-> Where would I go from my transistor organ emulation to do the string 
ensemble - what are the key differences?


HAMMOND:
The other thing is, starting from the transistor organ, I made a crude 
Hammond emulation, mainly by using only sine, changing the tuning & 
drawbars, and making an extremely crude "leslie" effect. (I'm not a DSP 
guy, so I first try to achieve some things without getting really 
sophisticated)
But even without a leslie, from what I hear when I listen to some 
hammond playing, the sound seems to be so alive, even single notes, they 
seem to "breathe" somehow.
My software (not-really-)emulation sounds extremely sterile and lifeless.
Where does the variation in the hammond sounds come from? Is it really 
that all the tonewheels are spring coupled, like I've read someone 
speculate? I mean, all this mechanical (de-)coupling is supposed to 
*prevent* irregularities due to the funky 1-phase motor, right? I was 
thinking about introducing some slight phase modulation in the 
clonewheels, but not sure randomly poking sticks in the device is a good 
way to go forward ;-)


- Steve