When I had my first organ (the Farfisa Balmoral) the young man in the shop who sold it to me was a boy I used to teach (Maths) and he had just come out of a Music College. He said to me that the pedals on these 'Home Organs' are very short compared to a Church Organ and don't come under the seat you are sitting on. So you can't 'toe and heel'. Here's a video showing 'proper' footpedals on an organ and how to play them.
Quick Tips for the Beginning Organist - Beginning Foot Pedals
The next thing he pointed out was that the pedals on a Home Organ are a lot closer together so it is difficult to play them with a 'flat foot'. If you did that it was likely that you would also hit the note next to the one you are aiming for. Which brings up something else with these Home Organs. On a Church Organ the bass notes are 'polyphonic' ie. play two notes together and both will sound. Not that you would do that very often when playing the pedals as you're not trying to create 'harmony' in the bass. The bass pedals on a Home Organ are 'monophonic' ie. they only play one note at a time .. and that is the higher of the two you are playing. So if you are using a 'flat foot' and hit the note above the one you are aiming for as well as the correct one, only the higher note will play. Which will be the wrong note!
And another thing. There are not as many notes available for you to play on a Home Organ. A Home Organ will typically have 13 notes (ie. one octave, as this number includes white and black notes).
From Wikipedia:
Pedalboards range in size from 13 notes on small spinet organs designed for in-home use (an octave, conventionally C2–C3) to 32 notes (two and a half octaves, C2–G4) on church or concert organs. Modern pipe organs typically have 30- or 32-note pedalboards, while some electronic organs and many older pipe organs have 25-note pedalboards.
So what the young man said to me was, "Play the pedals with the ball of your left foot (not with the flat of your foot), don't use the right foot (that is controlling the expression pedal), push your left knee over to your right (which will keep the ball of your foot directly over the note you want to play), and with the short pedalboard you should be able to get to all the notes you want to play."
And he proceeded to play a boogie-woogie bass line at speed.
The Boogie-Woogie Bassline
Although there are many variations, the basic boogie-woogie bass pattern is a two-bar pattern using quarter notes. The bassline ascends and then descends strongly outlining the notes of each dominant 7th chord in the blues progression.
The basic two-bar pattern goes: | Root-3-5-6 | b7-6-5-3 |
Now I'm sure you 'real' organists will have something to say about all this! Tony, Don, Ken? It's just that this is how I've learnt to play my pedals .. but I have noticed that professional organists who come and play for our Weston-super-Mare Organ and Keyboard Club never seem to play with their knee over to the right, or play on the ball of their foot.
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Hugh