^ "Planet Gear: Gotye on the Lowrey Cotillion organ and Making Mirrors".^ "Lowrey Berkshire Deluxe TBO-1 organ: Baba O'Riley/Won't Get Fooled Again 'synthesizer' sound"."Garth Hudson: Legendary Organist with '60s Supergroup 'The Band '". Archived from the original on 8 June 2015. Musical Instrument Technicians Association. Automatic Orchestra Control, later renamed Automatic Organ Computer, came on the scene in 1963. In 1961, Lowrey's first home organ with a built-in Leslie speaker appeared as the Holiday Deluxe Model LSL. The Glide dropped the pitch of the organ about a semi-tone and cancelled the vibrato. " In 1956, the Glide, a foot switch located on the left side of the expression pedal, was introduced, permitting the effects of a Hawaiian guitar "glide", the smear of a trombone, the glissando of singing strings and the effect of a calliope. On October 5, 2018, Seijiro Imamura, Vice-President of the Lowrey Division of Kawai America Corp., announced that Lowrey Organ production would cease in January 2019. In 1988, Lowrey was purchased by Kawai Musical Instruments.
They included the MicroGenie V60, V100/101, V105, V120, V125 and MicroGenie Pro V600 (which was programmable and had MIDI capability).
In the 1980s, Lowrey launched the MicroGenie series of portable organs with built-in speakers, some of which could run on batteries. In the late 1970s, selling features of Lowrey home organs included Magic Genie Chords, Track III Rhythm and the Automatic Organ Computer. However, they had several additional features that made their sound distinctive from other Lowrey models, including "Repeat", "Glide", and "Trumpet Wow-wow" effects. The Gibson-branded organs' design and circuitry were similarly based on Lowrey's own "T-1" and "T-2" models, as well as their "TLO-R" and "Holiday" spinet models. The most popular of these was first introduced in 1966 as the Kalamazoo K-101, but was renamed the Gibson G-101 shortly thereafter. Later models įrom 1966 to 1971, Lowrey also produced combo organs for Gibson while the guitar manufacturer was owned by parent company Chicago Musical Instruments. The Gotye song "State of the Art" was written to showcase the sounds of the Lowrey Cotillion model D-575. Mike Oldfield made use of the instrument quite extensively on his Tubular Bells album, and on several later albums as well. To prevent feedback in the silences between notes (consequence of playing at a very high volume), Ratledge invented a style of his own avoiding the between-note gaps by soloing in legato. Mike Ratledge of Soft Machine switched from a Vox Continental to a Lowrey Holiday Deluxe sometime between late 1966 and early 1967, and used it from then on, adding a fuzzbox and plugging it into a Marshall stack. A rather surprising use of a Lowrey Organ, on a percussive "marimba repeat" setting, was the synthesizer-like background noise on The Who song " Baba O'Riley". The Lowrey Organ and its built-in drum patterns are also heard on the million-seller single, "Why Can't We Live Together" by Timmy Thomas. Furthermore, a Lowrey DSO Heritage organ was used to produce the classic opening for " Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds". Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band album), helping create a fairground atmosphere. The Lowrey Organ is one of several organs on The Beatles' 1967 song " Being for the Benefit of Mr. Its sound can be heard prominently on the 1968 recording of " Chest Fever", which begins with a Bach-inspired prelude/intro. Garth Hudson, the keyboardist of The Band, played a Lowrey Festival organ on many of the group's most notable songs. Lowreys were also used by some rock groups in the 1960s and 1970s.
While originally intended for the home entertainment market, Lowrey also produced theatre organs and a full 2-manual with pedal church organ.
Lowrey led Hammond in the development of automatic accompaniment features in 1968, automatic rhythm was added, and in 1970 the Genie model added automatic left hand and pedal. The Lowrey organ differed from its main competitor, the Hammond organ (which also bears the name of its Chicago-based inventor), in relying from its inception on all-electronic tone generation, whereas Hammond used electromechanical tonewheels until 1975. History and notable users History įrederick Lowrey experimented with electronic organ design, trying different methods of tone generation, from 1918 until the early 1940s, when he fixed on the Eccles-Jordan circuit, a very stable flip-flop oscillator, which became a Lowrey hallmark.