I appreciate the encouragement (and all the feedback in such a short time!) As I figured, most of you learned when you were young and it was easier to learn something new.

Bernie, a lot of what I play IS church music. Chords (and often the bass too) change on almost every beat! It's evident that some of these songs were written for a two-manual organ with pedals. Thanks to the "easy" chord systems and bass inversion I can usually come up with a passable rendition. But doing so requires a lot of hand movement (and mistakes!) hence my question.

If I just needed to do root and fifth, there are instruments which have a built-in faculty to do this. Lowrey comes immediately to mind. There might also be ways to trick the arranger with footswitches, a MIDI module, and creative style programming. But too often I encounter slash chords where the bass isn't even part of the chord. I can't think of a system to cover all the combinations in a way consistent enough for it to become second nature (i.e.,"muscle memory.") Remember, I'm not looking to play polka or a bass pattern; just to follow the descending bass line as it might be written into the score.

A while ago I bought a 13-note pedalboard thinking that I might be inclined to try. It was quite expensive for something I've never used! Now I'm sorry that I didn't spend even more for the 17- or 20-note pedalboard, because it would be easier to play. For certain it would reduce "jumps" from B to D, etc. I think "real" church organs have pedalboards with two full octaves!

Somewhere deep inside me there's a wannabe church organist trying to get out. Unfortunately I never had access to a good organ, or the requisite training as a young man. So now I have to rely on ingenuity and technology to make up the deficit.


Lee, some arrangers do have a setting for "manual bass" which is I think what you're asking about. If not, it would be easy enough to mute the style bass, and then assign a bass voice to a set of MIDI pedals. Absolute worst case, buy a separate tone module and run the pedal bass through line in.