Tips on learning to play pedals

[phad]

Hi all, new member here from London UK!

I've been learning organ for a while now - I have a Hammond SK2 and a Roland PK-7 pedal board, which has 20 short pedals.

This year while at home in lockdown I decided I wanted to make a real stab at learning how to play with my feet.
Because the Roland pedals are short I think I can only play with toes.  I'm getting better at finding notes without looking and
if I'm not too tired am quite accurate as long as it's only a couple of note per bar!  Co-ordinating with hands is trickier,
I find I can play pedal and LH fairly well but add the RH and things start to go wrong...

So, I just wanted to ask folk here if they can recommend any resources that will help me improve my pedal technique?
eg. websites, YT channels, exercises

Thanks,
Paul

[dlargent]

Paul,

I think you can do a lot of cool things just playing an octave of short pedals, even just using the toes of your left foot.

You could practice walking a bass line with your left hand while tapping a note on the pedals to give you a thump.

Write out a two-beat jazz bass line where your left hand and left foot played the bass line in unison.

Practice a bass line for a slow song where you play the bass line with your feet, chords with one hand, and melody with the other.

Practice scales or scale fragments, making the scale legato just with the toes of your left foot.  Difficult at first, but totally possible.

Practicing scales, start on the lowest possible note on the pedals and go up.  So if you're practicing an Ab major scale, you'd go low C, Db, Eb, F, G, Ab etc.

I have the XPK-200L pedals, and I think they're pretty good for a portable compact set of pedals.  I'm sure the Rolands you have are excellent.  There's an organist I've seen a few times around here who has them, and he does a ton of great music using the one octave.

Good luck,

Doug

[phad]

Hi Doug

Sorry not to thank you for your reply sooner, I didn't get a notification - maybe I can set that in the forum settings.

Your suggestions sound great - lots for me to work on.

Best wishes

Paul