OMG.... never played much organ, vagro?

One of the things on this forum that always gets a gasp of approval is watching a REAL organ player get the most out of a modern organ... Stagea, Scala, Atelier, you name it. And, the hallmark of that performance is actually PLAYING everything (or an awful LOT more than most arranger players do ) with your feet, your left hand as well as your right. And the ability to split the lower manual up into multiple zones, or have cross layers on an expression pedal or velocity, etc., all of those things that you can do on the top manual, you do on the lower too... Having many different sounds, all mapped to areas you can get to quickly allow you to vary what you play drastically over a simple one keyboard setup. Remember, two 61 note manuals is actually a 122 note keyboard! Now THAT'S better than a 76! (except for full piano parts ).

But just as you sometimes split and layer up the top keyboard to have two, three, four or more sounds on it, you should be able to do EXACTLY that with the lower, too. The idea isn't just to play on one until you need something new... it's that you have BOTH manuals as your 'main manual' Depending on which sound you need for a phrase (or just one note), your RH could just as easily be playing the top manual OR the bottom, And vice versa for the left. Add in some pedals, and, by having a keyboard where the lower manual is JUST as versatile as the top, you can play amazing things with little more automatic than just a drum beat (and footswitches to trigger the fills).

If all you do is play chords in the LH and a solo in the RH, who NEEDS a second manual..? But if you REALLY come from an organ background, having that second manual be as integral to the OS as the main one is is essential. Any 128 voice arranger is easily able to handle far more Parts than you really need. But until programming what the lower manual does is integrated into the main arranger OS, full organ functionality eludes it. An organ registration completely reconfigures BOTH manuals, to be whatever you want. At the moment, an arranger registration really only addresses the main manual (or its' mirror)...

It's nothing more than software, too. No arranger manufacturer would have to change ANYTHING physical to enable this. All they have to do is realize that there are many who might like to add another manual, organ style (nice and close), maybe a 76 or even a wood 88, but it remains a pain to do until a 'second manual' input MIDI channel is enabled, which would allow just as much configuration possibilities as the main manual.

Simple, really....