working pedals with the legs or knees

[Helmsmusic@AOL.COM]

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I don't know of anything currently on the market that would allow this, but 
it seems that you could build a "converter" of sorts that would have a 
rectangular frame that would sit vertically and just fit between the floor 
and the bottom of the keybed. This might be difficult to picture from a 
verbal description, but I'll try to translate what I'm seeing in my mind into 
words! On each side of the vertical portion of the frame, you would have a 
flat piece of iron that went through a bushed hole in the side of the frame 
(I'll call this a "rod" for lack of a better term). It would stick out of the 
sides of the box at just the right height to fit against the insides of your 
client's knees. On the end of that piece, you would have some sort of "shoe" 
that the pianist would rest her knees/legs against. On the end that's inside 
the frame, you would have teeth cut in the underside of each rod. These teeth 
would mate to a gear (one for each side, the "shaft" of the gear parallel to 
the piano pedals), and the same gear would also mate to another toothed rod 
inside the frame, this one vertical. (you're transferring an in-out 
horizontal movement of the first rod into a vertical up-down movement). The 
bottom end of that rod could be fitted with a cushion of some sort, which 
would rest on the tops of the pedals. To push the damper pedal, the client 
would move her right knee in (push the right "shoe" to the left), and for the 
soft pedal, move her left knee in, pushing the left "shoe" to the right. It 
would take a little machine work, but necessity is the mother of invention! 
Of course, she would be limited to using only those two pedals - I don't know 
how you would work the middle pedal in there, but it's used so infrequently 
anyway that I'm not sure that would be a big issue. I'm also not sure how 
hard she would have to push to actuate the pedals - she might end up pulling 
a calf muscle too!

Scott Helms, RPT
Kalamazoo, MI

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