What's your usual practice footwear?

I don't feel I can do rapid pedal scales properly in socks.

Rob, I wish I could do those in whatever way.
Ernst

Nothing like brining a bit of fashion to the organ console. I use my very trendy Adidas Hi-Tops

They have quite a flat sole so I find I can feel the pedals alright and end up hitting one pedal key at a time, which was not quite the case with various other shoes I tried before. As I don't anything fancy like heel-toe playing the absence of a stepped heel goes unnoticed with me.

But then again gieven the amount and complexity of pedal play I do, I could probably use a broomstick to play the pedal and would still get it right

I am disabled on my left foot (less sensitivity and mobility), so I'm very happy about my new latin dance shoes. Playing the pedals never went better.

All of this ongoing dialogue reminds me of seeing theatre organist Al Bollington in concert back in the 1970s. He recounted how, being in the RAF during WWII, he had discovered a pipe organ in some mansion. It was dreadfully cold and damp, so he proceeded to play in full gear, with jacket, flight boots, and gloves.

To prove the point, he promptly donned gloves and galoshes, and rendered a note-perfect performance.

The bottom line is you can play with just about any kind of footwear if you put your mind to it and practice. Don't be intimidated by the size of the footwear. I have played in socks, leather loafers, and Reebok running shoes. In fact I find that practicing in running shoes, which are considerably wider than my loafers, makes me better at precise foot positioning.

Carlo Curley had wide size 12 shoes - looked like oxfords - and was noted for his crisp and precise playing.

So hope is not lost yet for learning to play the pedal in my 14 hole Doc Martens then? Pheewww!

On a serious note, I very much agree with rayjcar on his point of playing in an kind of footwear.
I have seen organists play in pretty much anything ranging from sandals to hiking boots. And there probably is a great deal I have not yet seen also

Everybody has their precious preferences and why not, as long as it works for that person.
It's all about what gives you the best feedback and precision to play and every human is very different when it comes to that.

Interesting to see how many are 'fessing up to using socks which I was always taught to believe was poor practice.

I must admit I prefer socks these days - it means I can go anywhere and not have to worry whether the shoes I'm wearing will allow me to play or not. I wear socks at home so no changing footwear when jumping on my Hauptwerk organ. I find it easier (no, read, only possible) to play chords using socked feet. I also find I do more smooth transitions between toe and ball of foot than heel (ie I use heels less) when playing consecutive notes in socks - not sure if that's poor technique but it seems to work fine and as Bach said, play with your nose if you can make it sound musical.

Occasionally (in winter) I'll wear slippers in church - as they have a thin rubber sole they are not dissimilar to some types of organ playing shoes.

Where playing in socks gets more difficult is on organs with a stiff pedal action (think bruises to your toes - curiously electric action pedalboards are just as bad culprits as tracker) or a high pedal to manual distance. The highest organ I played measured around 34 inches which made me wonder whether I'd reach the pedals without wearing stilts.

If I may, I want to share my experience with organ masters. I started playing the Organ in April of this year and I had been playing with socks all the time -- at home and at church in my lessons. I managed okay, although I felt heeling took a bit of an effort due to the lack of shoe heels.

I received my organ masters yesterday to much anticipation. I put them on (fit like a glove) and started playing. I was very impressed from the beginning, I could still feel the pedals through the suede sole and heeling with an actual heel makes it so much easier. They don't look half-bad either.

I played maybe 2 and a half hours yesterday only to notice that wearing shoes is actually pushing me to improve my pedaling technique. Obviously it isn't as easy to press continuous pedals while wearing shoes and neither is gripping the sharps since you can't curl up your toes when moving around the pedalboard so a better feet position has to be achieved. I find that it is pushing me to become better at doing stuff like keeping my knees together so my feet curve outward and actually rotate my body when playing the high and low parts of the pedalboard. The heel is not very grippy which encourages me to actually think ahead and put my feet at the right angle to hit the pedal with the heel right on so that it won't slip.

All in all I'm very happy with my purchase. I got used to them in around half an hour and I'm already seeing improvements in my playing. The two gripes I have with them is that they are indeed hot and the pedals aren't very grippy. I can live with that.

That's been my experience too, JSO. Without the organmasters i have a hard time using my heel. On the odd occasion I play at church I find it almost better to play in my socks. They have an old Baldwin, none AGO pedalboard. I find the pedals too close together when wearing shoes and I make plenty of errors. Inclined to try to find works for just manuals. The lower part of the pedalboard sounds like a bag of nails anyway .

Used to play with socks only until a year or so ago. I ordered a pair of OM shoes and found the heel to be just too much for me....probably because of all those years in socks. I had a local shoe repair guy lower the heel some (when he found out that I was using the shoes for playing organ in church he did the job for free!) and found that to be the answer. Some of the pieces that I found tough to pedal in socks became easier with the OM shoes. I like the idea of using the elastic shoestrings...I am going to give that a try!