Electronic musical instrument was designed to be a lower-cost alternative to a pipe organ for church music, musicians soon discovered that the Hammond was an excellent instrument for blues and jazz; indeed, an entire genre of music developed built around this instrument, known as the organ trio (typically Hammond organ, drums, and a third instrument, either saxophone or guitar). The first commercially manufactured synthesizer was the Novachord, built by the Hammond Organ Company from 1938 to 1942, which offered 72-note polyphony using 12 oscillators driving monostable-based divide-down circuits, basic envelope control and resonant low-pass filters. The instrument featured 163 vacuum tubes and weighed
Bill Ashton (jazz musician) to jazz in 1978 and Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2010 Birthday Honours. Ashton has also received the BBC Radio 2 Jazz Award in 1995 for his Services to Jazz, a Silver Medal from the Worshipful Company of Musicians, and is a Fellow of Leeds College of Music. Bill Ashton (jazz musician) William Michael Allingham Ashton OBE (born 6 December 1936) is a British saxophonist and composer, best known for co-founding the London Schools’ Orchestra, now the National Youth Jazz Orchestra (NYJO), of which he is Musical Director. Ashton was born in Blackpool, Lancashire.