Foot keyboards?.... or something....

[odysseus]

Hi there, anyone know anything about getting some keyboard sounds out with yer feet? You know... like Geddy Lee does. Other than a midi foot controller, I have no idea about what else I would need to get started. Do they run through a keyboard unit, run off a laptop? I'm a complete and utter n00b on the matter but I'm interested in how to get going, so when you're all done pointing and laughing (understandably!), any information on where to start and what gear is needed would be gratefully received.

Mucho thanks

Rob

[barkin]

What sort of sounds?

For basic keyboard synthy swirly stuff, I use the pedal synth on my Zoom B9.
Anything more than that... I've enough trouble coordinating two hands, without adding feet into the equation as well.

[odysseus]

[quote name='barkin' timestamp='1384868714' post='2281606']
What sort of sounds?

For basic keyboard synthy swirly stuff, I use the pedal synth on my Zoom B9.
Anything more than that... I've enough trouble coordinating two hands, without adding feet into the equation as well.
[/quote]

Yeah, putting long synth chords and stuff behind the riffage. Nothing too fancy. Maybe being able to assign sound effects to various pedals too...

[BigRedX]

For long synth chords you need to be able to play chords which means having two maybe three (or more) feet...

[waldflote8]

Hi,
I had a similar quest and stuck an octave of bass pedals in a box (Moog Taurus sort of clone thing) along with a PC motherboard and MIDI scanner. The pedals and scanner generate MIDI which can be connected to a synth or back into the box to play soft synths on the PC. At some point I intend to improve the scanner to do various functions, single press chords etc. It's maybe easier to build one than play it, hats off to Geddy (and Alex) for their skills in that area

[odysseus]

[quote name='BigRedX' timestamp='1384901182' post='2282224']
For long synth chords you need to be able to play chords which means having two maybe three (or more) feet...
[/quote]

5 years ago I was in a band which used midi foot pedals. Somehow the main man was able to assign certain chords and/or notes to certain pedals for certain songs in order to play them behind the rest of the music. I should have asked back then how it was done, but that was then. It is certainly doable, but I'm unsure how.


[quote name='waldflote8' timestamp='1384952813' post='2282681']
Hi,
I had a similar quest and stuck an octave of bass pedals in a box (Moog Taurus sort of clone thing) along with a PC motherboard and MIDI scanner. The pedals and scanner generate MIDI which can be connected to a synth or back into the box to play soft synths on the PC. At some point I intend to improve the scanner to do various functions, single press chords etc. It's maybe easier to build one than play it, hats off to Geddy (and Alex) for their skills in that area
[/quote]

Yes indeed!

[toneknob]

The Moog Taurus 3 is polyphonic. Lord knows how you do it though.

[BigRedX]

[quote name='odysseus' timestamp='1384985995' post='2283271']
5 years ago I was in a band which used midi foot pedals. Somehow the main man was able to assign certain chords and/or notes to certain pedals for certain songs in order to play them behind the rest of the music. I should have asked back then how it was done, but that was then. It is certainly doable, but I'm unsure how.
[/quote]

Assigning different chords/sounds etc. to individual notes on the pedal is definitely doable, although how you go about it will depend on the MIDI capabilities of your foot pedals and those of the synth(s) or VST(s) that you are controlling with it. How familiar are you with deciphering MIDI implementation charts?

[odysseus]

[quote name='BigRedX' timestamp='1385040428' post='2283706']
Assigning different chords/sounds etc. to individual notes on the pedal is definitely doable, although how you go about it will depend on the MIDI capabilities of your foot pedals and those of the synth(s) or VST(s) that you are controlling with it. How familiar are you with deciphering MIDI implementation charts?
[/quote]

Sad to say it, mate, but I don't have a Scooby. I thought that maybe there was some gear out there I could buy which would sent an idiot's guide with it. It looks like I was somewhat optimistic. It would seem that there's a gap in the market for some sort of simple keyboard unit that can allow certain sounds to be controlled via foot pedals by n00bs like me. The quest continues.....

Thanks for your input, chaps! :-)

[BigRedX]

[quote name='odysseus' timestamp='1385071891' post='2284266']
Sad to say it, mate, but I don't have a Scooby.
[/quote]

OK, here's some basic knowledge about "bass pedals"

AFAICS at the moment the only one available with built-in sound is the [url=http://www.moogmusic.com/products/taurus/taurus-3-bass-pedals]Moog Taurus 3[/url]. All the others seem to be just a keyboard for your feet and require something else to make the sounds - usually connected via a MIDI cable, but some are designed to go with specific instruments (usually organs) and have a proprietary interface. For your purposes unless the unit on it's own as capable of making all the sounds that you want you should ignore anything that doesn't have a MIDI out socket on it.

They are all pretty expensive. The cheapest new pedal board I can find ([url=http://www.hammondorgan.co.uk/b3/basspedal.htm]Hammond XPK100[/url]) is over £500 and with that you will still need a MIDI keyboard or sound module (or computer with a MIDI interface running VSTs if you are feeling brave) to make any sounds. The Moog Taurus which does have sound generating circuitry built-in costs $1995 (in the US) and is currently out of stock.

At their most basic they behave just like any other controller keyboard. Press a key (pedal) and whatever it is connected to makes a sound at the note you just pressed. Press a different key and it makes the same sound at the new pitch. Playing chords required you to press two or more pedals simultaneously.

If you want to be able to play chords from a single pedal press or have totally different sounds on every pedal that will involve getting into programming of the unit and/or the sound generating device it is attached to. Again AFAICS the pedalboards themselves don't have much in the way of programability in the way that you will need (from what you've said you want to do), so it's probably best if you focus on getting a keyboard or sound module that has the facilities that you need.

So you said you want two things on top of the standard one note per key all with the same sound default:

1. The ability to play chords with a single key press. For this you need a keyboard that can assign multiple notes to a single key. However remember that at the most basic level this will asign the same intervals to every key but just transposed. If you want major and minor chords (or others) you'll need a greater level of programability, and/or some lateral thinking with the assignment of sound splitting and stacking.

2. To get different sound on different pedal notes (without having the change sound patches) the receiving keyboard/sound module needs to be able to do multiple keyboard splits - you will need one split every new sound that you need to assign within a single patch set up.

Sorry if that all sounds a bit complicated. To some extent it is. Everything you want to do is possible but how easy it is will depend on what you end up buying. It might be worth getting a knowledgable keyboard playing friend to show you what is possible as regards keyboard splits and stacking different sounds on a single key, so you can see for yourself how it works.

Good luck!

[waldflote8]

I didn't fancy going into MIDI in great detail so planned to use a software sampler and trigger whatever (chord/vocal backing/special effect noise) sound I wanted. I use NI battery and it has a load of cells/pigeon holes which are assigned to MIDI notes - I haven't a clue about samplers etc. so forgive this bad description - You load whatever you want as a .wav file into the cell and trigger it by the pedals. Could add drum triggers and additional MIDI keys/pedals to share the duties . Where there could be a problem : syncing a longer sample to the beat of what we are playing at the time, loading samples between songs though it looks like I could store everything I need for a set in one go, swapping between synth and sample mode on the fly (the Audigy 2 card I have in there has 5 outputs or so, use switches or volume pedals to select synth/sample/both) Oh and I might forget that D1# pedal triggers a humongous explosion and not the quiet bell tree I was expecting,.. would liven up those ballads

[odysseus]

Many thanks for the info, BigRedX and waldflote8. I now know a bit more than I did yesterday. I shall investigate further!

[TorturedSaints]

Here's what I use:

Roland PK-5A midi bass pedals (ebay £280) into USB-MIDI cable (£5 ebay) into old cheap laptop (running Win Vista, so quite old), running Reaper (£50 I think for a non-commercial licence) into VSTi EMU Proteus VX (free download), output via ASIO4ALL driver (free download) to laptop soundcard, to headphone out to keyboard combo amp.

The Roland pedals are played in 'MONO' mode and thus once you have pressed the pedal down, the midi stays latched on until you select another note or press the 'MONO' button again.

I can play chords through this by the use of another VSTi called Cthulu. (About £50 as far as I can remember). Although it's not its primary purpose, you can assign chords of up to 5 notes (I think, I only use 4) to individual keys on the Roland pedals. It works quite well for me live. It doesn't require any midi wizardry that can't be done using point and click on a mouse.

The trick comes as I'm looking at 2 sets of music (one for the bass, although I can remember that one) and another, listing the pedals I have mapped the chords to. You might think it's easy, just map Em to the E pedal, but if you're playing chords at 1 bar intervals, there's a lot of demented hopping around if you were playing E/A/E/A etc. I actually find it easier to play (pedal wise) by using adjacent pedals, so in this case, I might program the C to play E chord and the D to play A chord. You will probably come up with your own method.

I also play samples by using the free included sampler in Reaper, ReaSamplomatic5000. I assign different midi channels to samples, sounds from the soft synth and Chthulu song presets. During a set, I don't have to touch the laptop, having already opened the setlist 'project' in Reaper. All triggering/playing/chords are then selected by changing midi channel from the Roland pedals.

Hope this helps,a bit.

[Annoying Twit]

[quote name='odysseus' timestamp='1384985995' post='2283271']
5 years ago I was in a band which used midi foot pedals. Somehow the main man was able to assign certain chords and/or notes to certain pedals for certain songs in order to play them behind the rest of the music. I should have asked back then how it was done, but that was then. It is certainly doable, but I'm unsure how.
[/quote]

This would be a complete doddle in Max/MSP. It would be easy to make a patch which accepted MIDI notes, knew which key it was in, and created different chords for different notes. E.g. if the key was C major, then you could say that your chords would be:

C=C major
C# = Erm, what would be the most useful choice here
D = Dm
Eb = Eb major
E = Em
F = F maj
Gb = Erm, what would be the most useful choice here
G = G7 (just to be fancy)
Ab = Ab major
A = Am
Bb = Bb major
B = Bdim

Then, pressing one pedal note would give you a chord.

If someone wanted a patch to do this, it would take me about ten minutes to make one in Max/MSP. You wouldn't need Max/MSP to run it, you could use the free Max runtime.

EDIT: Damn me and my OCD about computer hacking when I should be doing other stuff. Here's how you turn pedal notes into chords. This doesn't do all the modes, only Ionian is filled in with actual chords. It would take no time at all to add in additional chords for the other modes, but a lot of headscratching and time do decide what chords would make most sense to use in each of the modes.

I used C# and F# for an inversion of C major and G7 respectively, though in hindsight that's confusing and I should have chosen chords with those root notes for those keys. It's confusing to play a C# and get a C chord (of some type), particularly in other keys.

But, fundamentally, this is how you make a single note on a pedal become a whole chord. Note that the real work is done inside a custom object, but posting computer code on this forum may not be a popular action.

Edited December 15, 2013 by Annoying Twit

[TorturedSaints]

Interesting way of doing it, thanks for the MAX diagram. I think I'll stick to my Cthulu thanks as it's working for me.

[Qlank]

How about this kind of thing:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nFiamzOj9J0
My 30 year old Firstman bass Pedal Synth. Surprised it still works, with a bunch of stomp-boxes : octaver; chorus; fuzz.

[Jus Lukin]

-

Edited February 19, 2022 by Jus Lukin

[gelfin]

This is worth looking into

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZQGxJm6xkc

[davidlovellbass]

I'm thinking of jumping into the whole foot keyboard thing too. At the moment the Keith McMillen 12 step is the best option as it'll do chords as well as having a small footprint and being cheaper than most other controllers of similar ilk. The thing I'm trying to work out is if it's worth buying a synth module and spending more but having an easier setup and not worry about it being stolen at gigs or using my mac and software which will be far more flexible with tones and use midi.
I'm not sure what the preset sounds are like but for just over £200 it's worth a try

[RAY AGAINST THE MACHINE]

Don't know if a moot miniatur has a foot pedal option. Cheaper than a full blown Taurus ...

[RAY AGAINST THE MACHINE]

Proxy spellchecker ..should be moog minitaur

[BassTractor]

[quote name='RAY AGAINST THE MACHINE' timestamp='1412359159' post='2568279']
Proxy spellchecker
[/quote]

Quod erat demonstrandum
(yeah, I know, but it's fun to use it anyway)

[BassTractor]

Don't know if anyone is helped by this, but just in case:
If you have access to an analogue synth, it may be possible to build a very cheap solution with some types of pedal keyboards from old electronic organs. Electronic organs can be had for free ("collection only", you know), and some systems are built so that you can remove the pedals and have one octave that is still holding together, and not just a flock of loose components running away in all directions.
BTW, many two-octave boards are built like this, but I assume most people will be after one-octave ones.

Anyway, these pedals normally have big ass contacts, so its easy to solder stuff on them, and with mainly resistors one can wire these up in such a way that one can "send in" a voltage at one end and get out the correct control voltage at the other end depending on which key is being depressed.
Very cheap and fully functional.

This is strictly monophonic, mind.
For polyphonic, you'd need some type of scanning - which I assume is more complicated and more expensive (never done that).

Edited October 5, 2014 by BassTractor

[Dad3353]

[quote name='BassTractor' timestamp='1412496700' post='2569252']...
Anyway, these pedals normally have big ass contacts, so its easy to solder stuff on them...
[/quote]

[size=4] You wouldn't be in need of a spell checker, by any chance..?[/size]

[BassTractor]

[quote name='Dad3353' timestamp='1412511975' post='2569439']
[size=4] You wouldn't be in need of a spell checker, by any chance..?[/size]
[/quote]


Hehehe.
But no, I don't think so.

I see three errors or what might be perceived as errors:

- "ass" as in the Mercan spelling of "arse", which is my chosen way of doing it as I only know the Mercan expression "big ass" in this meaning, and am not aware of an English expression "big arse" - - though that lack of knowledge of course does not mean that such an expression does not exist. I doubt the spell checker will arrest me for it though.

- "its", which is the result of a non-typical but grave oversight on my part, and one that the spell checker is hardly going to find.

- "on" instead of "onto" which I suspect it must be. Another oversight that I can't imagine the spell checker will find.


...unless...


... if by "spell checker" you mean to indicate I should start assuming that I'm safe, and re-educate my faithful Ganymede so he can be my spell checker instead, in which case I must must have the manly courage to stand up against you and pronounce one resounding and clear "No, dad! For that, I lack the courage!"


That, or you meant something else of course.