The more you practice wisely, the closer to your dream you will come.
It seems obvious, doesn't it? But it isn't. Too often I get questions from subscribers how can they improve this and that, or how they can solve their problems, and how they can reach their dreams. My response, although very genuine, is not always met with the right mentality. Usually these people after getting an answer to one question start asking more and more without actually doing anything with that answer, with that advice. So I guess it's human nature to keep hoping that somebody else will solve our problems but the reality is that all help is self help. And people shouldn't ask for help the person whom they don't trust. But if they trust this person, they should do everything that he/she says. Not asking always for more advice but actually doing the work, doing the practice. Otherwise it's a waste of time and energy for both the receiver and the giver. So yes, the more you practice, the better it gets isn't just a saying. It's the only way.
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Anyone who's learning to play organ music has been in this situation at least once:
Practice becomes a routine. Routine is boring Boredom lacks meaning. We avoid doing what's meaningless. We stop practicing playing the organ because of this. All our efforts, all our time spent at the instrument flies out of the window. Progress stops, regret sneaks in, we start asking ourselves, "why did I start playing the organ in the first place?" But we can turn that around. Ask not what can organ playing do to you, but what can you do through organ playing to others. Once you've done this, you're on a mission. Then you can't get enough of practice. Sometimes the hardest thing in the world is just to keep going in your organ practice.
You feel lost, you feel empty, you feel like you are about to give up. It's of course this moment which defines what will happen next. Will you sink or will you swim? Will you persevere, learn that tricky left hand and pedal disposition and advance to the next level or will you choose something easier, something more like a short-cut? If you choose to continue, I can't promise that you will not fail. But I can promise that you will not succeed if you give up now. Small chance of success and some serious challenges ahead. What else do we need to keep us going? Different people learn differently. How do you think, which practice method would allow you to achieve world class quality in playing a single piece in a most enjoyable way?
1. To practice the entire piece 10 times without stopping very slowly. 2. To practice 4 measure fragments 10 times very slowly. 3. To practice 1 page episodes 10 times very slowly. 4. To practice the entire piece 10 times but stopping at constantly longer fragments in a real tempo, starting with 1 beat. 5. To practice in all 15 combinations of 1, 2, 3, and 4 voices very slowly 10 times. 6. To practice in 7 combinations of right hand part, left hand part, and pedals 10 times. 7. Something else? Post your preference (preferences) in comments. How often we get so deep into making sure our organ practice will be perfect, that it will give us the result we want? How often we freeze when making plans about how we will practice without actually doing a thing? How often we calculate all the steps that will lead us to where we want to be 3 months, 6 months, 1 year, 2 years, 5 years, or even 10 years from now but fail to take action today?
It's our Resistance playing tricks with us making sure we don't go anywhere, it's this weird force trying to keep us in the loop. And how do we know we are taking the right approach to practice? We don't. Unless we sit down and start pounding those keys or pedals we will not be any closer to our goal. And it will be just a dream, not a likely outcome. It's sad, isn't it, that we can put so much effort into planning stage but keep spinning our wheels? But we can change all that. We can regain our focus and sense of purpose by simply sitting down to play. If we are not sure, once we have been practicing a while THEN we can decide if this is the right method or not. There is no secret here. Only doing or not doing. Troubling situation, right? Obviously you want to progress in organ playing in building up your technique and repertoire but various time constrains (work and/or family responsibilities) make it seemingly impossible to do so.
You might have just enough time on the organ bench to repeat previously learned material and to keep it on the back burner so you are kind of stuck. You are not regressing but spinning your wheels. But since time goes by so quickly it feels like your technique might even degrade when you check your progress from one week to another. And without actually making progress, you can't learn new pieces, can't hope to prepare for organ recitals and even church service playing is becoming harder and harder to sustain, let alone to make it engaging and interesting. So that's the constrain you are facing - you want to advance but don't have enough time. Seems like hopeless business? Not the way I look at it. A question to you: Do you have at least 30 minutes a day for your organ practice? If not, it would not be realistic to hope progressing as an organist. So first you have to make some time. Will you agree with me that if you are truly serious, 30 minutes a day can be found perhaps by getting up earlier or staying up later than others in your family, or cutting back on your online activities or skipping your favorite TV shows, or processing your email inbox in batches just once a day instead of keeping your inbox tab open all the time? But this post is not about how to find more time for practicing organ. We just need to agree on the minimum of 30 minutes a day on the organ bench. Of course, I'm not suggesting that every organist would only play for half an hour. No, this advice is for emergencies only, when you're drowning in work and responsibilities but you still feel a need to practice. OK, here we go. First, you need to practice the right kind of materials. Fiddling around with sight-reading or playing a hymn here and there won't make the cut. You need to focus and play what really matters to your technique and of course to your goals as an organist. We'll pretend you need to learn some new pieces and advance your technique. With regards to technique, I personally like practicing Hanon's the Virtuoso Pianist exercises but they take much more than 30 minutes a day, perhaps an hour or so depending on your speed. Some people find Hanon to be boring and the exercises musically too dry and uninteresting. I too, tend to play only what's engaging to my mind. So I play Hanon in various modes and rhythms. This helps me avoid boredom in practice and at the same time learn new modes which I later incorporate in my improvisations. But you have only 30 minutes, right? This means you have to look at Hanon exercises strategically and figure out what's 20 percent of these exercises that give you 80 percent of results. That's 80/20 rule, or even 90/10 rule. In my experience (and your experience might be different), exercises in scales in double thirds (from Part 3, No. 52) are the ones that require the most stamina, they are very tiring to the fingers, and consequently make them very independent. That's right, out of this book, if I had to choose only one exercise, I would choose exercises in scales in double thirds. Of course you can play in different keys, in different modes, and in different rhythms and even meters to make them more interesting, challenging, and rewarding. Be careful not to overwork your fingers (at least at first). Start your playing slowly enough to be comfortable and trust that speed will come over time. Rest and relax when you feel tension rising. But this is not all. Spend only 15 minutes a day with these exercises in double thirds. The best part is that you don't even need an organ for that. You can practice on piano, on the table, or even on your lap while watching TV commercials. To make this practice even more inclusive, play pedal scales in parallel and/or contrary motion at the same time when you practice manual scales in double thirds. If your pedal technique isn't good enough, start with playing pedals at the ratio 1:2 or even 1:4. This means playing 2 notes on the manual and 1 on the pedals or 4 notes on the manual and 1 on the pedals. So those 15 minutes don't count into your 30 minutes organ practice regimen. You see what's wonderful - you are advancing your manual and pedal technique even while being away from the organ. But now let's go back to our practice. You need to learn new pieces and to refresh your muscle memory of the old ones and you've got 30 minutes for this. Here's what I recommend - practice for 15 minutes previously mastered material and for 15 minutes learn something new. When you repeat previously mastered material also don't play the entire piece but practice in shorter fragments repeatedly in a slow tempo. But since you don't have a lot of time, stop after 15 minutes and go to the next phase of your practice. In those time intervals when you're learning something new, don't aim to play the entire piece, though. Be very focused and strategic - play only those measures which you are learning, maybe 4 measures. That's it. Truly master them during 15 minutes. It's possible, if you're serious about it, if you're learning in single parts, in combinations of 2, 3, and 4 parts and repeating very slowly until you can play at least 3 correct repetitions in a row of that fragment. So you see at least in theory, how it's possible to advance in organ playing even though you don't spend much time on the organ bench. Of course, if you can find more time for playing the organ, that's even better - you can incorporate sight-reading, improvisation, harmony, counterpoint, transposition, memorization, learn more new fragments and repeat more old ones, play many more technical exercises etc. However, in this post I only was concerned with a bare minimum - learning a little bit of new material while retaining old one and polishing your manual and pedal technique to the degree that you feel you are advancing and not spinning your wheels. Try this system yourself for a while and let me know how it works for you. [HT to John] Don't try to be him or her, though. Try to be you. Try to be your own category, try to be the one that others will want to copy and follow. Find your own voice.
As M. Gandhi said: "First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win". But this is of course one of the hardest things for us, to discover who we are, to find our own category, to be something worth following. Here's the thing: You won't know (and I won't know and nobody else will know) if this is your true voice. Because the minute you think you found it, you need to strain to look for something new that challenge you enough. I don't think there ever was a time in Bach's life when he told to himself - "this is it, this is the Bach's style which I will be known for centuries. I've done it, I'm going to retire now." No, every day he sat down at his table and wrote something. The writing/playing/improvising doesn't have to be great. It just have to be yours. You won't know if it's great, if it's remarkable, if it's worth spreading. Others will decide its worth, if you let them. But first you have to figure out what's your purpose for playing organ, what's your mission as an organist - is it just for your own pleasure, or you want to share your skills with friends and family, or play at church, or perform organ recitals, become an improviser, a composer, a creator. But think beyond what you want to do, think about what your act as an organist will do to others. Although finding our true voice seems like a massive undertaking, it usually gets down to the things that are at hand - taking that first step. The step you are most afraid of, the piece that scares you the most, the improvisation practice that you are putting off for weeks etc. If you can concentrate on just one step without thinking too much about the future (but holding it in your sight), then you can take another step tomorrow. Sometimes you don't know what this step is. Most of the time, I say. Then you leap. Leap into the dark without knowing where you will land but trusting that in the end it will be OK. When we look up at other organists who excite us, whom we want to follow, if we were to ask them, the best of them would still say things, "I'm still learning", "I'm not sure what I'm doing." Because the minute we stop learning, the minute we are sure of something, we stop progressing not only as organists but also as human beings. Just be helpful to others and whatever you do, assume a digital-first posture (meaning share your work and process online). This will help your work and insights to spread. I think in general, whatever we do, our mission is to become artists, to change (our) world, to make it a better place for everyone around us. There's no recipe for this. If there was one, everyone would do it, and it wouldn't be as valuable. No map, no step-by-step instructions. Only a compass. Eventually you'll figure this out just by doing, if you stick to it when they ignore you, when they laugh at you, when they fight you, when you win. But of course you would have won a long long time ago - the minute when you learn how to give. Yes, even today. Especially today. Do work that matters. Share. Repeat. [HT to John] Practice the above excerpt from "Jerusalem the Golden" by Irvine Dearnaley this way:
1. Right hand alone 2. Left hand alone 3. Pedals alone 4. Both hands together 5. Right hand and pedals together 6. Left hand and pedals together 7. All staves combined with both hands and pedals Take a slow tempo, aim for a smooth legato touch and 3 correct repetitions in a row in each step. Post time and the number of repetitions to comments. Practice transposing the above excerpt from the Fantasia and Fugue in C minor, BWV 562 by J.S. Bach minor 2nd upward to the key of C# minor this way:
1. Right hand alone 2. Left hand alone 3. Pedals alone 4. Both hands together 5. Right hand and pedals together 6. Left hand and pedals together 7. All staves combined with both hands and pedals Take a slow tempo, aim for detached articulate legato touch and 3 correct repetitions in a row in each step. Post time and the number of repetitions to comments. ______________________ Modulation Workshop Practice the above Variation 2 from "Ach Gott vom Himmel sieh darein" by J. P. Sweelinck this way:
1. Voice 1 2. Voice 2 3. Voice 3 4. Voices 1 and 2 5. Voices 1 and 3 6. Voices 2 and 3 7. Voices 1, 2, and 3 Take a slow tempo, aim for detached articulate legato touch and 3 correct repetitions in a row in each step. Post time and the number of repetitions to comments. |
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Drs. Vidas Pinkevicius and Ausra Motuzaite-Pinkeviciene Organists of Vilnius University , creators of Secrets of Organ Playing. Our Hauptwerk Setup:
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