Nord User Forum

[Mooser]

"Sometimes I'm picky. Most of the time sloppy.
I've shown mine ...."

And thank you for doing that, and it looks pretty nice! That's the idea, you've got to get the back end of the pedal up, and stick things together, so you don't kick it away from your foot.
Show mine? Heck, now that I've seen your's, I'm going to improve mine along the same lines!

[flmc59]

Long live velcro btw

[RevvDon]

Well I broke down and got the Nord PK27 pedals. They were hard to find.. Alto Music here in NY ordered them from a place in Kansas called Music Warehouse, I think. Now comes the hard part, learning to play them. Still having difficulty on on how far under my c2 to place them.

[flmc59]

In

[flmc59]

Sit on the bench. Not to far in our you will have problems with sideways leg motion.
Move the lower leg forward until the blade of the fot is naturally parallell with the floor.
Adjust the pedalboard so that the end of the black pedal right in front of you is in middle or first third of the foot (starting from your toes)
If you easily play a black key with the forward part and a white key with the heel you are about right.
When not playing a key your foot should quite relaxed.
As you go to the extreme left or right this will of course change.

Experiment until if feels relaxed (hard in the begining)

Do not look at your feet!!!!
Looking will only slow down the learning.
Play slowly first. Practice root fitht on the beats one and three. Play lefthand on two and four.
Walk up to the four chord.
Play root and fifth to the 4 chord.
Walk down.
Get that solid and swinging.
When that works - add the melody.
The foot should "know" what to do.
My foot bas known paths. I "just" decide which path and the i gave some time to do other things with the hands until it is time to decide on the next path to take.

Do not practice to long at the time.
If you play long notes try to rest the leg on the pedal for every note. This gives the blood a chance to run through and will endure longer.

Try and tilt the bench forward. (block it up 2,5 cm in the back end).
This will help to keep your back strait and the edge of the bench will not press on the underside of the leg cutting off the blood flow.

[RevvDon]

Thanks for all the tips. Working on getting some type of bench. I'm using a stool right now and it doesn't give enough room to support my thighs. I need something to hold my right leg up so I don't have to hold it up myself.

[flmc59]

Train the muscles in your leg and abodomen so you can play for sustained ammonts of time

Playing pedals is physical

[Mooser]

Congrats Revv Don, you popped for the best. To flmc's excellent treatise on pedals I can only add this: Try using the Hammond 16' pedal drawbar to add "thump" or pluck to left-hand bass. You do this by tapping, or whacking (depends) a pedal (it doesn't have to be the right one, in fact, it almost shouldn't be, I use "A") at the beginning of each bass note, a tap which only makes the "pfft" sound, but isn't sustained long enough to form a note. It works, and will when mastered, add a lot to your bass line. If you want to play either I-V or scalar or arpeggiated bass lines with your foot, try the "synth bass" setting. That gives you both "pluck" and more importantly "sustain", for a smooth sound on intervals which can't be spanned with your foot. Which leaves your left hand free for, well, whatever, comping, block chording, counter-melody, fending off brickbats, whatever. (Be aware, "synth bass" with sustain can't be used for "thump" with LH bass.)
I have also seen many players use the heel for naturals, and keep the toe over the sharps'n flats. This makes chromatic and diatonic lines smoother, but won't get a third, fourth or fifth. The Hammond XPK sets aren't long enough for this (unless one possesses much daintier "pedal extremities". I can't do it cause my feets too big.) But your Nord Pk-27's are! Most pop players don't use the full both-feet technique of classical organ, because you really can't take your foot from the "expression pedal" since, well, that's where your expression lives.
Very often, a combination of techniques are used: LH bass with pedal taps for a verse, than maybe shift to a pedal bass with LH chords for the bridge, or LH bass with pedals-and-LH chords for the turnarounds.

And if there's a bass player, who hasn't seen them yet, you can drive him absolutely nuts with spurious bass notes. Who could ask for anything else?

[Mooser]

"I need something to hold my right leg up so I don't have to hold it up myself"

If I am reading this right, shouldn't your right foot (connected, as the song says, to the right leg-bone) be resting on the expression pedal?

[RevvDon]

Thanks for the tips Mooser. I meant my left leg. In reading some old Hammond instruction manuals online, it seems my feet, in this case my left foot, should be hanging above the pedls so I just have to pivot my ankle to strike them. Sitting on a stool,I have to actually hold my left leg up to do that.