New gadget: the two-dimensional expression pedal

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Here is my favorite new live gadget: the Fulcrum pedal!

This beast is too good to just leave it to the guitar players - it is a bit of a game-changer for standing keyboardists like myself!

When playing keys standing up, it is near impossible to operate pedals with both feet, so I’m limited to one scalar parameter to control. Typically, this is some kind of volume (volume, hammond swell, sax breath, string intensity). But with this beast, I can control a second one without changing my general way of playing (or falling on my butt trying to operate two pedals standing up).

With hammond clones, this enables me to have swell on the main axis and Leslie speed on the horizontal. With my virtual sax, I have breath on main and growl on secondary. With other sounds, I use the horizontal axis to control filter sweeps etc. Haven’t really had time to think about more crazy uses - it’s too much fun playing my newly two-dimensional Hammonds and saxes…

I’ve had some conversations with Sonja, the inventor of the Fulcrum, encouraging her to not only market it to guitarists, but also keyboarders. She agrees on the potential, but she’s struggling with how to get the best marketing traction in the live keyboard community. There are tons of guitar gear youtubers, but not really a lot of well-known live keyboard youtube channels - or have I missed them? Her experience at Superbooth (Germany’s biggest synth trade event) was a bit frustrating - too many geeks from the “bleep & bloop” community, fiddling with patch cables and modular synths, completely uninterested in an expression pedal for playing live…

Any ideas on the right channels for her to give this gadget a bit more visibility in the keyboards community - short of throwing money at Jordan Rudess to promote it :sunglasses:?

Have a look at it on her website (you may need to switch the site to English with the bottom right switch). It certainly is expensive for an expression pedal, but definitely worth it for standing keyboarders…

Cheers,

Torsten

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One more video:

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Hi @Torsten ,

I would say Alex Ball could really put this “gadget” to interesting use from a keyboard player perspective (and he is originally a guitar player, too).

Just my 0.02 euro.

Gabriel

P.S. He could also be classified as a “geek from the “bleep & bloop” community, fiddling with patch cables and modular synths”, but IMHO he is much more than that and he also knows how to write a good piece of music.

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Maybe Matt Johnson?

He does a fair number of gear videos (as well as others) though mostly about analogue synths.
Rudess is a good shout, he did a video about the radial key-largo.

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It’s a really cool idea. Like you said Torsten, we’ve always been stuck with 1 dimension if both hands are in use, nice to see some novel ideas. Imagine playing lead sounds with this and a 2 way joystick!

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It is, indeed, a very cool product. However, given that a Yamaha FC7 can be had for less than $40USD at multiple online stores, I suspect that the 330-Euro price is going to put a lot of prospective customers off. I just closed a niche store for keyboard players, and I can definitely tell you that my $75-150 products had a very limited appeal to the ‘average’ keyboard player.

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My favorite keyboard YouTuber is Woody at Woody Piano Shack. He does tons of gear reviews, although typically he’s reviewing a keyboard or a synth module. He’s apparently just a guy who’s been gigging keyboards since the '80s or something.