Hammond Chord Organ Sheet Music

In theory, you could play the Hammond Chord Organ with just two fingers, one from the left hand and one from the right hand. (Of course, you'd need to add the left wrist, the left foot, and the right knee to really make it work.)

In its quest to conquer the home market, Hammond included not one but two types of simplified music with the Hammond Chord Organ.

The "picture music" tablature shown below was attempt to radically simplify music notation. The notes were arranged vertically instead of horizontally. The duration of the note is indicated by the the size of the note, not the shape. The pitch was indicated by the horizontal position of the note, and reinforced by printing the key name inside each note. Just in case you were still confused, there's the little picture of the keyboard at the top of each column.

"Picture music" is basically pretty similar to a piano roll, and Hammond seems to have intended it mainly for complete beginners. While conventional notation has its problems, it's still a lot easier to deal with than a glorified piano roll.

Example of "picture music" tablature for Hammond Chord Organ.

Most Chord Organ music published was in the more standard format shown below. Like the picture music, this included registration information, and relative chord numbering in addition to simply naming the chords. And square notes indicated the sharps or flats in a piece. Aside from these slight enhancements, and some melodic simplifications, this type of Chord Organ music is pretty much what you'd see in any popular music book.

Example of standard music notation adapted for Hammond Chord Organ.

By the way, both examples are "Merrily We Roll Along".

And this example doensn't have any rhythm, you're intended to just press and hold each chord and bass note for a droning effect.


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