Bass pedals

A few of the bass pedals designed to be used with electronic or clonewheel organs have features that operate the upper manual keyboards, such as an expression pedal or swell pedal, which is a treadle-style potentiometer for controlling the volume; buttons to turn on or change the speed of a Leslie speaker, a rotating horn speaker in a cabinet; or program change buttons, which send a MIDI message to the other upper keyboards to change to a new sound or setting.

Some bass pedals designed to be used with electronic organs have a MIDI merge feature, so that one or more keyboards can have their MIDI outs plugged into the bass pedal, and then the bass pedal merges the MIDI messages and sends them, via the bass pedal's MIDI out, to the organ sound module. This function might be needed if a keyboardist had two MIDI controller keyboards, and the bass pedals, and wants the MIDI messages from all three controllers to be sent to the sound module.

This Sisme combo organ shows the more portable type of combo organs made in the 1970s. This organ has bass pedals in a separate chassis. Eventually, these types bass pedals were designed and sold as standalone units.

Pedalboards have been a standard feature on pipe organs for centuries, and since the 1930s, electromechanical organs such as the Hammond organ often included pedalboards. In the 1960s, home spinet organs by Hammond, Farfisa, and other manufacturers included short, 13-note bass pedals attached to the base of the chassis. In the 1970s, electronic organ makers were aware that musicians wanted organs that could be taken to gigs at bars and festivals, so organs were made more portable. To make organs more portable, they were changed from being housed in heavy wooden consoles with an integrated amplifier and speaker and bass pedals (the home organ approach) to being made as a main keyboard, a detachable stand, and detachable bass pedals. The organist was expected to plug the organ into a Leslie speaker or other instrument amplifier and speaker. Even if the total weight of a split-apart organ was the same, portability was improved, because the individual components were lighter than an entire home console organ.

Once organ companies were making portable organs, some manufacturers began building bass pedals that could function separately from the organ console. These afforded the player great portability, and flexibility in combining them with other instruments and electronic equipment. A 1970s-era musician with a standalone bass pedal could use it under an organ for one set, put it under an electric piano for a second set, then pull it out and use it while playing guitar for a third set.

Moog Taurus (1976-1981)

An early and popular bass pedal device was the Moog Taurus. Moog called this instrument a "Pedal Synthesizer" in their literature, and explicitly pointed out that its five-octave range made it "more than a bass instrument". . Despite these efforts, most players used them for basslines, and the term bass pedals stuck. The Taurus I and II models are no longer in production, but they are prized as vintage instruments. In 2010, Moog introduced a new model, the Taurus III, in a limited run of 1000 units.

The Taurus III (2010-2012) offered more features, including fuzz bass.

Several progressive rock and hard rock groups (such as Yes, Genesis, Van der Graaf Generator, Led Zeppelin and Rush) and alternative rock groups such as U2 and The Police used bass pedals. Often, the group's bass guitarist would play in a standing position, meaning that they could only use one foot at a time to play, rather than play sitting down with both feet, as organists traditionally had. However, John Paul Jones of Led Zeppelin used bass pedals while sitting down at a keyboard. Bass guitarists frequently used Taurus pedals to hold down sustained, low-pitched pedal points while performing high-register melodic lines or percussive parts on the bass guitar. In 1983, Phil Collins' song "I Don't Care Anymore" featured Taurus pedals, unusually played by hand. Bassist Mo Foster appears in the music video as the man behind the machine.

Since the 1990s, most electronic pedalboards have been MIDI controllers, which do not perform any tone generation themselves. These pedalboards have to be connected to a MIDI-compatible computer, electronic keyboard or rack-mounted synthesizer to produce musical tones. Despite the fact that these pedalboards can control any kind of MIDI device, and can therefore produce a virtually unlimited range of musical pitches (and other sounds), ranging from a high-pitched melody to percussion sounds, they are still often referred to as "bass pedals".

Current manufacturers of these products, such as Hammond, Roland, Studiologic (formerly known as Fatar), R. W. Designs, mostly sell keyboards with 13-note keyboards (C to C, one octave), 17-note (C to F, an octave and a fourth) keyboards, or 25-note keyboards (C to C, two octaves). Pedalboards with less than a 32-note range are often used by jazz, rock, or popular music performers.

To perform the Baroque church music repertoire (e.g., J.S. Bach), a 30-note keyboard (C to F, two octaves and a fourth) is needed. A smaller number of manufacturers, such as Classic Organworks, sell a MIDI controller in full-sized 32-note AGO layout that can be used to perform virtually all the organ repertoire.

In the art music and church music context, MIDI pedalboards and digitally sampled or synthesized pipe organ instruments are used either as practice instruments or as performance instruments. Some universities and churches use MIDI pedalboards and digital organs as practice instruments, to allow a larger number of students to have practice time. Some churches use MIDI pedalboards to trigger digitally sampled sounds for the low register of the pipe organ. This has led to some controversy, because this mixes digitally sampled, electronically amplified sounds with the wind-driven pipe sound of the rest of the pipe organ; some purists argue that this is inappropriate, or that the sound or tonal quality of the digital bass voices are unsuitable.