Article: Create Your Own Baseball Organ

Sometimes Eric needs to take a little break from writing this site or step aside so someone more qualified can chime in. In this case, Eric’s brother Paul decided to share some of his musical expertise to create a custom instrument.

With baseball season in full swing (yes, the pun is absolutely intended), why not get in the spirit of the game by supplementing your GarageBand arsenal with a baseball organ? After much research by leading experts in the field (that would be me, exaggerations aside), the standard GarageBand Tonewheel Organ setup has been given some modifications, including extra tremolo and overdrive to replicate that classic sound you hear every now and then when you hit up a major league game. The organ lacks the range of the real thing, as is the case with most of the GarageBand organs, but still has a full, rich sound over three octaves – C2 to C5.

At the end of the article, we’ve included the organ file for you to use, but if you’d rather do it yourself, here are the steps.

Start by picking an existing organ (I’ll use the Classic Rock Organ for this). Next, go to the generator section and click the little pencil next to “Manual” (next to “Tonewheel Organ”). Change the rotary speaker to “Tremolo” and drag the sliders to the positions shown below.

After this, go down to the effects section and click the box to the left of “Compressor.” Now drag the corresponding slider about 2/3 to the right. At the bottom of the effects section, there is the echo and reverb section. If you used the Classic Rock Organ as your template, leave these alone.

With this done, it’s time to add Overdrive and Tremolo. Go to “None” and hold the mouse button down. Several GarageBand effects will pop up. Go down to “Overdrive,” click the pencil at the far right, and drag the sliders as shown below.

For tremolo, go to “Chorus,” and follow the menu down to “Tremolo.” Click the pencil at the far right and drag the sliders as shown below.

All you have left now is the equalizer. Click the pencil to the right of “Remove Guitar Dullness,” and drag the sliders according to the image below.

Go down to “Save Instrument,” and name the organ whatever suits you. It will now appear with all the other organs, and can be easily accessed.

If you’re curious as to what the organ actually sounds like, I have put together a version of “Take Me out to the Ballgame” that will give you a general idea (the audio quality has been reduced for space, so the organ actually sounds better than on the example). Enjoy!

If you’d rather have it done for you, download the zip file and install it yourself. First go to ~/Library/Application Support/GarageBand/Instrument Library/Track Settings/Software/ and create a new folder labeled “Organs.” Then, simply drag the .cst file there, and the Baseball Organ will be ready the next time you open GarageBand.

Download GarageBand Instrument File: “Baseball Organ”