Friends,
I know that some of you might be aware of this, but I thought that I would share it with everyone.
My father is a classically trained Jazz pianist since 1952, so I usually refer to him with any musical questions or techniques. He finally came by the house the other day and checked out the T3 for the first time.
Well, Im sure that there are people familliar with this technique, as some being organ players or have experience with bass pedals. I even remember one member talking of this heel toe technique but I didn’t know what he was referring to.
So basically, you can get more complicated basslines with less movement if you use your heel to play the white notes and your toes to play the black keys. When I saw my father do that I immediately figured out how people can be bass pedal wizards with practice. I was using so many wasted movements playing everything with my toe.
Well, I hope that will help some of you. It helped me out tremendously.
Fine idea if you are playing while sitting, but a darned near impossible to do if standing. Speaking of playing while standing, I have given up on trying to play the Taurus while its still in it’s case - after 20+ years of playing them on the floor, I just can’t get used to having them sit so high.
Organ was the first instrument I learned (in 1977) and walking the pedal board is key if you want to be quick. Ditch the shoes for sure. On the one octave pedal boards, on some organs, the left foot was primarily used for the pedal board (or entirely) because we had our right foot on the expression pedal. The 2 octave pedalboards (the longer pedals) were a lot more commonly played with two feet.
I haven’t owned an organ in some years but I can say that I seem to remember the pedal resistance being a lot higher than it is on the T3 on most of the instruments I played on.
I don’t think you’d hurt yourself developing your own walking technique on a small pedalboard such as this. As long as you’re keeping in mind that the whole foot is available to you, you’ll develop something that will work for you. Try to be mindful of your motions and don’t get into the habit of doing anything that feels like it will fatigue you quickly.
I can’t even imagine playing this instrument standing up at all – standing up is bad enough without rocking around on your heels. Maybe long droning notes at best.
Great thread topic Eric! I’ve been thinking about technique lately, having played an hour long set the other day - not the first time I played the T3 out, but the first time to play that long. Not that I used it all the time on every song, but it definitely requires practice. I REALLY need practice! I played it standing up while playing bass:
Latch is very useful, but I’m waiting for the update so that I can play with it latched, then switch to another patch that isn’t latched so that the sound will decay. Also, holding notes for the right amount of time takes some practice. And switching octaves - or maybe more accurately, remembering when to switch octaves - requires some thought, or maybe I just didn’t practice enough? Nah, I think it’s hard if it’s in the middle of a melodic phrase. But I usually use it for a harmonic basis to play over. Shall I post soundclips?
I haven’t played my bass and the Taurus at the same time because I haven’t had much time lately.
I believe with the way that they are designed, they really shohuld be played sitting down. We have Sting and Geddy to thank for inspiring us to play standing up, but really, how is one supposed to sweep the filter while droning a note unles we wear a wire or defy gravity?
Real expression is going to come from using the left foot to hit the notes unless you use a midi controller or expresion pedal to sweep the filter. This sort of goes against my natural tendancy to want to use my right foot for the notes and maintain my center of gravity (standing) on my left foot. My right foot is dominant, i kick with it, hit the bass pedal with it when drumming and of corse use it to hit the gas pedal. Do any of our foreign friends who drive opposite the US have the opposite footing?
I really want to develop an organ style with the Voyager, Micro and Taurus so I want to play sitting down.
Perhaps one of those benches with a rail under it for resting ones foot on it would be in order.
If you re a keyboard player its not going to matter, but yeah that would look dumb sitting down to mess with the taurus lol.
Standing and playing is going to have limitations though. Im sure that its not impossible to do some interesting stuff other than drones and things like that though.
