Greetings from my workplace using hand and feet

This is my part-time workplace at church.
Fugue g-minor from the 'Eight Preludes and Fugues' formerly ascribed to Bach.
BTW, body coordination by playing with hands and feet is an excellent brain training.

Thanx for sharing!

Mann bist du bevorrechted dass du so einem schönen Orgel spielen darfs...

Playing a real church organ is allways a special thing..

Great job! I love Bach!

Thank you all.

@Bachus: The churches are presently short of organists, if you take lessons, practise hard (feet coordination is a really tough problem the first year even if you're very good on the piano...) and make a two-year course for "C-Organist", you will easily find an employment and be "bevorrechtigt" too
But you're right, sometimes I forget that I should also be thankful for having the possibility to play on one or two nice pipe organs every week and to have nearly unlimited access to one of them. And both sound really nice - in contrast to some very small pipe organs in modern congregation rooms in other parishes which sometimes sound very acute.

Rosetree Very nice playing!! Kudos to you.

Reminds of what seems like 100 years ago I took a semester of applied organ at the University of RI with Professor George Kent http://web.uri.edu/music/meet/george-kent/

Worked on 3 of the 8 preludes and fugues during the semester, the feet didn't cooperate as well as I would have liked, always found it easier to play in stocking feet. One thing I can never forget is being able to play the pipe organ on campus in Edwards Auditorium, what a grand instrument. It was mounted in the orchestra pit, you hit a button and the hyrdualics raised the organ and platform to the same level of the stage.

There is a reason i once long time ago stepped away from playing organs. I never mastered the pedals as good as i would have liked..

I have never looked back, untill recently.. maybe i should give it another try, who knows, maybe age helps here..

Rose tree, great job. Must be a joy to play some great instruments. Playing the pedals is becoming a lost art. In college I wanted to learn how the Jazz Organists did their Bass Lines. I thought it was a combination of foot and LH so I asked the one teacher who was a master organist. He had no clue. I signed up for a semester of organ anyway and took lessons on the Chapel organ. The hardest thing to master was balancing on the bench while using both feet .
On my own I did master the pedals with one foot and could really play some bass lines on my modified B3 ala Barbara Dennerlin. Used to take my shoe off and get some weird looks from customers. Those pedals were a pain to move and setup though. I've still kept a set of Roland PK5's and sometimes hook them up to my BK9. Years later I find out the Jazz guys were doing all their Basslines with their LH and just tapping a pedal for accents. WOW !!!! Wish we had Youtube back then.

That's simply awesome, rosetree!


I love your "office", too.

Thanks for the music,
Dan

Thanks again for your comments!
I think I'm going to make more use of my midi pedal again. I stupidly sold an 18-key pedal, because I thought it was too heavy, and bought a lightweight 12-key pedal.
@Bill: I have also played on midi pedal without shoes on gigs. These small midi pedals really invite to put off your shoes... But it's wise to wear black socks then

Not my kinda music nor my kinda instrument ( I had to struggle on one of those home harmoniums as a young child) but absolutely brilliantly executed, my sincere compliments !!

regards,
John

Those portable pedals don't let you do proper heel/toe playing. Kind of like the correct fingering we've talked about in other threads. Easier to move though.
Somewhere on the Internet is a guy who plays both feet on a Hammond barefoot. Doesn't look too good but I saw a clip of him doing "Squib Cakes" by Tower of Power. Look it up and listen to the bass, this guy can do it with his feet ! Even Chester Thompson who recorded the original goes to LH bass for his solo part where the real bass drops out.

Rosetree....I can't say anything that has not already been said. But I DO want to say you've always had my respect as a musician......now you have even MORE of my respect! Nice job playing an instrument we all know is not that easy to work with.

Mark

We all know bass pedals play "base lines." But when I was younger, filled with enthusiasm, and filled even further with ideas, one of those thoughts was to use the pedals as a "third" instrument while the arranger played the bass line. My forte, in those days, was playing three keyboards and two sound modules at once. When I thought about it, I realized that can be done with the many simple chorded songs such as Green Eyes, Spanish Eyes, etc....all songs with very few chord changes. Mostly I would play (on the pedals) a tuba, trombone, brass stabs, bells....all sounds that don't need fast movements.

I regret never following through on that. And, nowadays, it's not worth the trouble. People wouldn't even notice. They're only interested in clever Youtube acts.......something like playing bongo drums while you're riding backwards on a Harley-Davidson motorcycle at 80 miles an hour down Sunset Strip in Hollywood!

Mark

Actually if you play a good solo bass line on the pedals, then most people take notice, as it gets away from the boring and monotony of Style play.

Another good way is to play a tune (That is normally played on the keyboard) on the pedalboard, such as flight of the bumble bee (For the more discerning customers) with the keyboards just used for the backing.

Playing 2 tunes simultaneously is also good, with the most popular being the Widor’s Toccata on the manuals while simultaneously playing star wars on the pedals.

Most of the rest of the things you mention can be done on most modern entertainment organs, without needing to use the pedals. (These can be used something else)

An arranger on its own is severely limited in what you can play manually without using boring backing styles, as you only have one keyboard, however add a set of bass pedals (And even a second keyboard) and you can go to a whole new level. (Convenience wise the arranger is great as it easy to carry and setup, but most players yearn for more)

Bill

Ausgezeignet!(sp?)

I'm impressed. Besides not really being a keyboard player per se, I can't walk and chew gum at the same time.

Rosetree ... I really enjoyed that ... Thank you ...



Wow, Bill ... nothing like adding some 'slightly' challenging melodies on the pedals, eh? ... ...
I find it amazing how some people can use both hands and both feet gong in different directions at the same time ... I got both hands going pretty well when I was playing chromatic accordion, but never got as proficient on piano or kb ...

Thanks once more for the new comments!



I remember two years ago I used my midi bass pedal during a gig with our band, and in one song I had forgotten the transpose, I think +5, which was active for the keyboards, but unfortunately not for the bass pedal, and luckily I more or less managed to play the tune in C major with the hands and in F major with the left foot - a special kind of musical schizophrenia or bipolar disorder

Last week I played a tiny positive organ on a wedding 60 miles west, and the bridal couple had the most unusual requests for church music: Guns N' Roses as well as van Halen.

I took a recording of the Guns N' Roses tune. I wished the small pipe organ had a "distortion guitar stop", then it would have sounded more like hard rock, but I got as much rock out of that positive organ as possible, and certainly nobody in that monastery had ever heard tunes like that coming out of that organ...

https://soundcloud.com/rorosetree/sweet-...oster-langwaden

Very cool !! Great playing and you got all the songs nuances.

Thanks!

@Bill: For such renditions, the listener can only appreciate it if it is put in relation to the limitations of the instrument, and with organ pipes rendering hard rock the limitations are clear - that's what you are capable of (I remember you used to play a pipe organ, too...).