Roland FP-5 owner manual Simulating the Creation of Organ Tones Tone Wheel Mode, What Are Feet?

Chapter 1 Playing the Keyboard

Simulating the Creation of Organ Tones (Tone Wheel Mode)

When any of the “Tone Wheel” Tones is selected, you can perform in “Tone Wheel mode,” in which the creation of organ sounds is simulated.

An organ features nine “harmonic bars” that can be drawn in and out, and by using the bars in different combinations of positions, a variety of different tones can be created. Different “Feet” are assigned to each bar, with the pitches of the sounds being determined by these “Feet.”

You can simulate the creation of tones using the harmonic bars by assigning footages to the Tone buttons.

In Tone Wheel mode, the footages are switched by pressing the [Tone Wheel] button, and a total of nine footages and percussion instruments are assigned to the Tone buttons other than [Piano] button.

What Are “Feet?”

Feet basically refers to the lengths of pipe used in pipe organs. The length of pipe used to produce the reference pitch (the fundamental) for the keyboard is eight feet. Reducing the pipe to half its length produces a pitch one octave higher; conversely, doubling the pipe length creates a pitch one octave lower. Therefore, a pipe producing a pitch one octave below that of the reference of 8’ (eight feet) would be 16’; for one octave above the reference, the pipe would be 4’, and to take the pitch up yet another octave it would be shortened to 2’.

On tone wheel organs, in the high range of the keyboard, high-pitched feet are “wrapped around” one octave down.

Folding back the high-frequency portion prevents the high-frequency sounds from being unpleasantly shrill, and folding back the low-frequency portion prevents the sound from becoming “muddy.”

On the FP-5 faithfully simulates this characteristic.

NOTE

When the Tone Wheel is

selected, you cannot enable

the dual mode (p. 18).

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