I have observed some common mistakes people make when learning Prelude and Fugue in F major, BWV 556 which prevent them from achieving fluency and stylistic integrity. As I'm preparing for the opening of the free video mini-course in learning BWV 556, today I would like to discuss these mistakes and to show you the solutions which facilitates the learning process.
1. Articulation . This is the most obvious mistake I see a lot of people make. As you probably know, the ideal articulation for the Baroque music is the articulate legato touch when we make small breaks between each note unless indicated otherwise by the composer. When playing this prelude, however, at the beginning you can see the legato signs which connect three sixteenth notes. By the way, this articulation should be applied to all places with this piece even though the legato signs appear only at the beginning episode. What I see a lot of people do is they play the three notes legato, but fail to articulate after the last note in the group of three sixteenths. This of course produces the complete legato touch which is more suitable for Romantic and Modern organ music. Another articulation mistake is in the fugue - here many people find it difficult to articulate the inner 2 voices out of 4 voice texture. Since the alto and tenor voices can be hard to listen to while playing all of them together, no wonder why precise and consistant articulation is difficult to achieve. SOLUTION: take a slow tempo and practice in small fragments and in separate voices, then combinations of 2 voices, later 3 voices and only then - the entire 4 part texture. Insist of playing at least 3 times correctly in a row. 2. Fingering . Since the prelude can be played using the general arpeggio fingerings, it is in the fugue that people find difficulties with this issue. The most common mistake I see people make is applying finger substitution in this piece. SOLUTION: I recommend using early fingerings without substitution. Then it will help you create the ideal articulation naturally even without thinking. Also avoid placing the thumb on the sharp or flat keys. In the mini course, I will also explain how the early fingering techniques work in practice. 3. Pedaling . Similarly to fingering, the most difficult part for choosing the pedaling is the fugue. If you are consistently making mistakes in articulating pedal line in the fugue, chances are you are using toe-heel technique which is suitable for Romantic and Modern organ music. SOLUTION: Use alternate toe technique in most cases (right-left toes only). The rule to use the same toe pedaling here is this: play with the same foot when the pedal line changes direction. Otherwise play with alternate toes. 4. Tempo . A lot of people take a tempo which is too fast for practicing. The reason for this is that they really want to feel the natural flow of the music. It takes a lot of courage to insist on playing very slowly. I can tell you from experience that the slower you play, the faster your progress will be. SOLUTION: take such tempo for practice which lets you avoid mistakes. If you make a mistake, go back a few measures, slow down, and check that place again. If you do this regularly, you can overcome any difficulty in the piece. 5. Rhythm . The mistakes with rhythm involve failing to keep the steady pulse while switching between triplets and duplets in the middle episode of the prelude with no pedal part. Since the triplets appear in most measures of the prelude, it is not too difficult to play them correctly. However, the places I see people make rhythmical mistakes are when triplets change into duplets. Here it is easy to play the duplets too fast. The result is a lack of steady pulse and change in tempo. SOLUTION: I highly recommend counting out lout the beats of the measure throughout the prelude (and the fugue). In the beginning you will find it exceedingly difficult because you will be multi-tasking. However, there is no shortcuts here and you just have to insist in saying the beats loudly enough so that you can keep the steady pulse. By the way, there are certain rhythmic devices, such as hemiola which I'm going to be teaching in the mini course as well. Without knowing how to find it in music, it will be very difficult to play the cadences in this piece stylistically correctly. 6. Ornaments . There are two basic mistakes people make when playing ornaments in this piece - either they start the ornaments too early or on the wrong note. By saying too early, I mean they play them before the beat. This comes from the Romantic tradition. The starting notes of the trills also have their rules. SOLUTION: Start the ornaments on the beat and not too early. The trill for the Bach music usually has to start on the upper note meaning that if you see a sign above the note G (as at the end of the first episode in the prelude), start the trill from A. I recommend playing 4 notes for the trill: A-G-A-G. 7. Practicing . Although I constantly advocate for practicing in short fragments, it is not as easy as it might seem to develop this habit. You see, a lot of people come to me looking for help while they already have developed some incorrect or ineficient practice habits. Therefore, they might play the piece from the beginning until the end without fixing their mistakes they make along the way. SOLUTION: I think it takes a shift in mindset to practice in short fragments. You see, one thing we have to realize is that practicing is not the same as performing. As you become more and more fluent with this piece and time approaches for performing it in public (either for your friends or family, during church service or recital) you need to get used to play it from the beginning until the end without stopping. However, if you really want to achieve the best results with BWV 556, the majority of your practice should be done in short fragments. By the way, as I'm typing this sentence, already 98 people have jumped on board of my new free video mini course which will start on Thursday. Congratulations to everyone - it's going to be an awesome time for the entire Secrets of Organ Playing community. So much interaction, so much communication is going on though emails and comments over the past several days. If you haven't done so, there are only 2 more days left to register for free. The methods that I will teach in this mini course will be fully applicable to learning other works of Bach: http://www.organduo.lt/bwv-556-mini-course.html
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If you are looking for on organ piece which would be suitable to play by an organist with a modest organ playing skills but at the same time you want your listeners to love it, you absolutely should consider learning to play the famous Prelude and Fugue in F major, BWV 556.
This is a piece from the delightful collection of 8 short preludes and fugues, BWV 553-560, earlier attributed to J.S.Bach but now generally believed to have been composed by one of his top students, Johann Ludwig Krebs. In this article, I would like to share with you my ideas on how you can master this wonderful composition. Before you actually start the learning and practicing process, I recommend you do the following two things – analyze the piece and write in the fingering and pedaling. This is absolutely a must if you want to become a master of this piece. In order to analyze the prelude, you can do the following things – look at the structure of the prelude and see if you find some thematic material which is repeated somewhere in the piece. In fact, if you compare the beginning and the end of the prelude, you will see right away, that the ending is the exact repetition of the beginning. Therefore, this prelude is written in a nice ternary ABA form. You can also look at the tonal plan of this piece. In order to find out what keys the composer uses for this prelude, just look at the cadences. They will help you discover the tonalities in their order of appearance. If you want to analyze the fugue, I recommend you count all the subject entries in the fugue. You can also note which voice has the subject and use a pencil to mark the entries on the score. In order to know the fugue on a deeper level, you can find out the key areas for each subject entry. After the initial analysis is done, take a pencil and mark the fingering and pedaling for both the prelude and the fugue. Note that you don’t need to wait until all the fingering and pedaling is prepared and start practicing only then. Instead, you can make the markings of the first line or so, and start practicing right away. Finish the process of writing in fingering and pedaling as you go along through the piece. Now you are probably wondering what is the best and the most efficient way to practice this piece? My answer is this – take a fragment of about 4-6 measures long and learn each separate voice in this fragment. When I say learn, I mean strive for your playing to be free of mistakes at least 3 times in a row. In order to avoid mistakes when practicing, always take a very slow tempo, and pay attention to such details as articulation, ornaments, fingering, and pedaling, hand and feet position, and pedal preparation. For most people, the total number of repetitions will be somewhere around 10. When you master each voice separately in you fragment, play 2 voices at a time, then 3 voices and so on. Even though the texture becomes increasingly difficult with 2, 3 or 4 voices, always strive for perfection, stop every 4-6 measures and correct your mistakes. When you reach the end of this piece, you will also need to combine the fragments together in order to achieve the complete fluency and be ready to perform it in public. If you really want to master this piece, join my new free limited time 7 day video mini course in playing BWV 556 in which I will teach you how to play it from scratch in just 7 days. The registration for this course ends this Wednesday at midnight, US Eastern time. As a bonus, you will also get the score with complete fingering and pedaling for easy practicing. Click here to sign up for free now: http://www.organduo.lt/bwv-556-mini-course.html I'm so excited to announce that all the preparation work for my free 7 day organ video mini course is done. You can take advantage of this limited time offer by clicking on the link below and signing up for this course:
Sign up for free now If you take part in this mini course, you will learn how to play the Prelude and Fugue in F major, BWV 556 on the organ in just 7 days. Beside the most efficient practice techniques and step by step learning method for each day, I'll teach you many important things, such as:
Sign up for free now I don't care how long or short these videos are going to be, the most important thing for me is to teach you all that you need to know to successfully advance in organ playing. So although I call it a mini course, you will receive massive value and information which you can use not just to master this fantastic piece, but also other your favorite compositions that you are playing right now or intend to learn in the future: Sign up for free now So even if you have played this piece piece before, I encourage you take part in it simply because of these additional things that I teach you about in this course. Bonus: you will also receive a score of this piece with complete fingering and pedaling for easy practicing. But remember, this is a limited time offer and you have to act quick because the registration ends this Wednesday at Midnight, US Eastern Time (it's completely free to sign up, just enter your name and email): Sign up for free now If you have been my subscriber for some time, you know that I'm obsessed with over-delivering and exceeding my student's expectations and I'm not revealing all the bonuses and surprises that I've prepared for you. To your success in organ playing, Vidas Pinkevicius P.S. Please forward this message to people who might benefit from this mini course. As I look back at the idea to create my free video course in mastering Prelude and Fugue in F Major, BWV 556 (from the collection of 8 Short Preludes and Fugues for organ formerly attributed to J.S.Bach), I can see some major differences in the presentation and format from my previous Mini Course in Keyboard Prelude Improvisation.
1. Unlike improvisation mini course, the new BWV 556 training program will be available for a limited time only. This means that people interested in joining this course will have to make a decision during a period of about 5 days. 2. This course will be presented using a video format as opposed to pure pdf materials. Because many people like watching online videos, this medium is becoming increasingly popular in teaching as well. At any rate, a live example and visual demonstration will almost always get the message across more clearly. 3. I am also including a practice score with complete fingering and pedaling for easy practice. As you know writing in fingering and pedaling is a very slow and for many people tedious process and yet in many cases it is a crucial element if you want to truly master an organ composition. In this mini course, though, you won't need to worry about fingering and pedaling - it's already taken care for you. 4. I am not limiting the length of each lesson to some particular time frame. Some videos might become longer, some shorter - as long as I need to cover the material in a very detailed manner. For example, the introduction to the course and video for Day 1 alone were 19 and 33 minutes each. However, the video for Day 2 fitted nicely into some 15 minutes. This is because when I teach, sometimes I feel compelled to add some additional points besides pure fast and efficient practice techniques and steps. That's why you will find me talking about the ideal articulation quite a bit as well as about ornaments, fingering, pedal preparation, and even some exciting Baroque rhythmical devices, such as Hemiola. These differences of course provide an increased value to the course but at the same time raise some important challenges which I have to overcome if this mini course is to be as helpful to my students as it was with the improvisation mini course. One of the obvious challenges is the file size and the time it takes to edit and convert the video to the format suitable for online watching. For example, even though these first videos were actually recorded in a period of just 90 minutes, the time and effort it took me to prepare the camera, upload, fully edit for public online use was exhausting. As you might be aware, I'm not a tech person and these things don't come naturally and easily to me. Even to find the suitable position for the lighting cost me some funny juggling around my organ bench. And I still don't feel this is the ideal lighting but at least now you will be able to see me teaching clearly enough. As I am not a native English speaker and not an orator by any means, to talk in front of the camera is always a challenge for me. For instance, this opening episode alone had to be taken several times because I kept making some funny mistakes while pronouncing the phrase "BWV 556". As the Internet speed at my house isn't particularly fit for uploading large video files, I had to find some other place for uploading. Luckily, everything went well and actually, it feels like it's going to be a really exciting time both for me teaching and for the students who will be watching and practicing this fantastic Prelude and fugue in F major. I'm in the final stages of preparation for the public announcement about the start of registration for this limited time mini course. If you want to be notified when the registration period starts and not to miss the deadline, go here to subscribe to the instructional newsletter (if you haven't done so already) and receive my video "How to Master Any Organ Piece up to 10 Time Faster." You may of course unsubscribe at any time: http://www.organduo.lt/bwv-556-mini-course.html You may have noticed that I haven't posted any article on my blog for a while. The reason for this is that I was busy with something that will give much joy to my readers.
So here it is: I'm so excited, I want to announce that yesterday I've recorded the first four videos for my brand new free 7 day mini-course on learning to play Prelude and Fugue in F Major, BWV 556 on the organ in 7 days. That's right - after seeing so many positive comments and such a tremendous interest in my mini-course of keyboard prelude improvisation (over 150 sign ups in the first 48 hours), I decided to create something new this time - I'm going to be teaching through video. The reason for me to create this mini-course is simple - people kept asking and asking that I create a similar course for the organ repertoire. And to tell you the truth - I was sort of hesitant at first, simply because that's a lot of work and I was busy with my other organ coaching programs. But now when I look back at the videos I created and the value that you will get out of them, I think it was well worth the effort. I will share the details of the program and the sign up form soon so if you want to take part in this free exclusive limited time mini-course, be on the look out for further updates. Organ Playing: 7 Tips for the Best Articulation in Prelude and Fugue in B Flat Major, BWV 5606/12/2012 One of the most important aspects of stylistically correct performance of Prelude and Fugue in B flat Major, BWV 560 is articulation. It is precisely articulation which makes the playing of this piece sound in style as it was intended in Bach's times. In order to achieve that you should use a special kind of touch plus many other nuances of the right articulation. In this article, I will give you 7 tips in playing this prelude and fugue with the correct articulation.
1) Articulate legato. Since it is a piece written in the Baroque period, the basic articulation is articulate legato. The original term for this type of articulation used in the 17th and 18th centuries was the Ordinary Touch. 2) Small spaces. This touch means that you should leave small spaces between each note unless indicated otherwise by the composer. Since there are no special articulation indications in the original score, the notes should be detached. 3) Cantabile manner. Try to achieve the singing or the cantabile manner of playing. This term was used by Bach himself. For the best results try to play some passages from this piece using one finger only but as connected as possible. Then try to re-create the same articulation using the normal fingering. 4) Not too detached. Do not make the music sound too choppy. The best articulation will be if the listeners can't perceive the articulation but all the notes are clearly audible. 5) Strong beats. Try to emphasize the strong beats in each measure. This is possible to achieve in one of the 3 ways: 1) by making the weak beats a little shorter, 2) by making the downbeats longer, and 3) by coming in later on some more important downbeats, such as in cadences. 6) Inner voices. Articulate the inner voices in the fugue. While it is relatively easy to achieve the desired articulation for the outer voices (soprano and bass), the middle voices (alto and tenor) require your special attention. Therefore, it is very useful to practice the inner voices alone and in combinations with other voices. 7) Acoustics. The correct articulation also depends on the acoustics of the space. For example, if you are practicing at home, the spaces between the notes should be much less audible than in a vast acoustics of the cathedral or a church. The articulation in the concert hall should be somewhere in between the other two extremes. As you can see, the organist has to be prepared to adjust the articulation to the acoustics. Use these tips in your practice of this piece today. If you are precise in executing every detail, you will be surprised how natural and stylistically correct your organ playing will become. By the way, do you want to learn my special powerful techniques which help me to master any piece of organ music up to 10 times faster? If so, download my FREE Organ Practice Guide. Or if you really want to learn to play any organ composition at sight fluently and without mistakes while working only 15 minutes a day, check out my systematic master course in Organ Sight-Reading. Every beginning piano player enjoys practicing the Menuet in G Major, BWV Anh. 114. Although it may appear deceptively simple, it has a classical binary form, high quality tonal plan and all the features of a good composition. While most of the time this menuet is performed on the piano, it works equally well on any keyboard instrument, including the organ. In this video, I will teach you how to play and master Menuet in G Major from the Notebook of Anna Magdalena Bach on the Organ. You can download my fully edited organ arrangement of this piece for instructional purposes with complete fingering, articulation, tempo, and registration and detailed step-by-step practice plan here. Therefore, it is perfect for practicing without an instructor.
By the way, do you want to learn to play the King of Instruments - the pipe organ? If so, download my FREE video guide: "How to Master Any Organ Composition" in which I will show you my EXACT steps, techniques, and methods that I use to practice, learn and master any piece of organ music. |
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