Digital piano gurus wanted

[alan29]

Here's the situation.
Our parish has no organ of any sort - space for one was never in the plans, we have a Kawai digital piano.
99% of the time it does a good job of accompanying the congregation with a variety of piano and organ sounds - and thats its main function.
All the sounds are touch sensitive - as you'd expect - apart from the organ ones.
Every so often someone gets a choir to sing at a funeral. We have one this week and they are singing bits and bobs from the Faure Requiem. Ideally I would like to accompany on the organ sounds - but there is no way of adjusting the volume unless I grow an extra arm to manipulate the main volume control, and the Faure demands a fair bit of swelling up and down.
Given that the piano is equipped with both USB and MIDI sockets, my question is whether or not an expression pedal would do the trick - the sort of thing guitarists and synth players use. Are any of them balanced so they stay at a setting like organ swell pedals are?
Failing that I will use the piano sound.
All advice (apart from "get a proper organ" etc) will be gladly sucked up.

[Nick Baty]

We have Clavinovas in two of our churches. I asked one of our local digi dealers (Dawsons) and was told this wasn't possible – still doubt it though. I often use midi in which case you can have organ dynamics – but the last time I suggested midi on here, there were calls for my execution. Also, midi is probably not suitable for accompanying the items you suggest. By the way, if this is for Sheila's funeral, then I will be with you in spirit. So sorry I can't be there.

[Nick Baty]

Failing that I will use the piano sound.

Try piano and strings together – you can add weight once you've played the note and the strings appear to fade in. All depends on the sampling, I suppose.

[alan29]

Thanks Nick.
I suspected it mightn't be a runner. Pity. I might try harp + a string pad .... its for the In Paradisum.
Yes it is for the lovely Sheila. Its going to be an eclectic mix of music from Mike Anderson to Faure - totally appropriate for the lady.

[Nick Baty]

Had lunch with her and Jim about this time last year – their penultimate son, Peter, was my bezzie at school. Now quite an accomplished countertenor!