When people pick wild blueberries in the forest during the first 30 minutes is really fun – a beautiful nature, singing birds, we put the berries into the basket one after another. It’s even better when the berries are fairly large – then you can have the full basket fairly fast.
But later, the further you are into the forest, the more effort is needed. If you try picking with a bent back – your back begins to hurt; if you are picking on your knees – they begin to hurt also. After about 2 hours of this process, it becomes a real suffering for most people. Your body hurts in any position. However a lot of people don’t stop picking the blueberries here. They try to ignore the physical pain and continue picking them until they have full baskets. Why? The answer is simple. These people have a goal – they don’t want to come back home with empty baskets. Practicing organ music is similar to picking blueberries. At first practicing gives much pleasure, the sounds of the organ are relaxing and you are in a good temper. But if you try to really focus and continue playing after about 30 minutes, practicing begins to be not so easy. Often you would want to switch to another activity. But if you have a goal such as learn and master a certain organ composition or prepare for a public performance, then you are able to overcome your struggles and practice with pleasure much longer (with frequent breaks for stretching and relaxation, of course). Do you have a goal?
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If you ever happened to cut the grass with a trimmer, you must have noticed that a short grass can be cut very easily with just one sweep.
Single motion – that’s all. Very little exertion and a quick result. But if you move to the field where the brushes are, you have to cut the same grass at least 4 times, the top, a couple of times in the middle and one time close to the ground. If you try to cut it with one sweep – the trimmer will twine with the grass and tangle up in the brushes. Moreover, if you want to cut sweet calamus which grows close to the wetlands, you may need to sweep even 8-10 times. Practicing organ music often is the same as working with the trimmer. Shallow and straightforward pieces can often be played just once and that might be enough to play without mistakes. By the way, in this case, because the music is shallow, playing it twice would be boring. But if you are practicing an advanced and artistically valuable composition, playing it one time through will not be enough (in fact, playing it twice will not be enough, either). It turns out that you have to give a complex piece a few more chances to sink into your memory, fingers and feet. Let it live with you for a while and play a few more times. The more you play it, the more discoveries you will make. I have met many organists who say that they don't have available time to practice organ. They would love to play this instrument but simply they can't find enough time in their day. However, finding time for organ practice is easier than you think.
Of course, you just have to figure out the most important tasks of your day. This might mean spending less time with your computer, spending less time watching YouTube videos, spending less time interacting with your friends on social media sites. This may also mean you could get up half an hour earlier or stay up half an hour longer. Do the most important tasks of your day first and then you will have a little more time left for yourself. One thing that is important about finding time is understanding that you don't need to practice for many hours without stopping. You see, if you have only 30 minutes available for organ practice that will be just enough time to do it. So 30 minutes of wise practice might be enough to begin to see the results. The problem is when you start skipping the day and spend the day without organ practice. If you practice one day and skip a few days, then your practice is not consistent. The most important thing is to spend every single day with your instrument at least for 15-20 minutes. If you only have 15 or 20 minutes try to repeat the previously mastered material. If you have 30 minutes, then perhaps take 15 minutes for repetition of previously mastered material and 15 more minutes of learning something new. If you have more than that, of course, add some time for improving your pedal and finger technique - some technical exercises, scales or arpeggios. So about 30 minutes a day will give you consistent results of your practice. If you are freer on weekends, then you can spend more time with your organ pieces during Saturday and Sunday. Perhaps on weekdays (Monday-Friday) you only have 30 minutes for your organ practice but on Saturday and Sunday you can spend perhaps two or more hours. That will work very well for your practice. Apply my tips and you will be able to find just enough time for yourself to play every day. Try not to make any excuses for skipping your practice. Remember, if you spend one day without practice, only you will notice. If you spend two days without practice, your teacher will notice it. If you don't practice for three days, everybody will notice it. If you spend every day practicing just a little, then you are moving towards your goal one step at a time. I have met many organists who wish they could practice more efficiently, more effectively and achieve higher results in organ playing. However, their organ practice habits are sloppy enough so it is difficult for them to achieve these goals. In order to help them overcome these challenges and change their practice habits I would like to share some tips in this article.
One of the first things to remember is to practice regularly. That means you really cannot achieve higher level if you practice once or twice a week. So you should practice every day even if it means only 30 minutes a day. If on some days you only have 15 minutes available, repeat previously mastered material. That counts. Also in each practice session you have to have a clearly defined goal. This means that whenever you sit down on the organ bench you should have a clear vision of what you are about to accomplish in this practice session. This goal can be very small, for example, learning these difficult four measures of your piece, memorizing a section of music or repeating previously mastered musical material. Your organ practice also has to be wise and you should aim to correct your own mistakes. Too often I see organists make mistakes while playing organ and they don't stop and don't correct them. They would just keep going until the piece is over. This is an incorrect approach to practice. What happens is that if you don't correct the mistakes, they just keep coming back the next time you will be playing this piece. Therefore, you have to correct your mistakes right away. But you should not stop here. You should aim for at least 3 correct repetitions in a row. There is one more thing which helps to improve sloppy organ practice habits which is practice in fragments, separate voices and voice combinations in a very slow tempo. If you practice in this manner, you can control your movements and playing much better. Therefore, if you make any mistakes, you will easily correct them right away. Try to apply my tips in your organ practice. Keep in mind your goals, practice regularly and be persistent in correcting your mistakes. This will help you advance in organ playing and achieve the results that you want. Any organist who wants to master this instrument aims for efficient practice. What this means is that you simply have to be able to practice in a manner which would allow you to master as much organ repertoire as possible in as little a time as possible. Achieving this level is not easy but here are a few simple rules to consider.
First, your repertoire should be within your technical reach. This means that if the organ piece is too difficult for you at the moment then you will face a higher probability of frustration. Consequently, you might even quit practicing altogether so the piece has to be not too difficult. The second thing to consider is how you practice. Your practice has to be repetitive, slow, persistent and regular. Let's consider each term in detail. Your practice has to be repetitive in a way that you should practice your fragments or episodes over and over again. This will help you to make your playing very fluent and consequently you will avoid making mistakes. Also you will correct any mistakes you make along the way because you will be repeating your fragment many times. Second, your practice has to be slow. Even though the concert speed of your piece is fast, try to pick a very slow practice tempo. In other words, your practice tempo has to be so slow that you would avoid making mistakes. This usually means that you should be playing about 50% slower than the concert tempo is. Third, your practice has to be persistent. This means that whenever you feel that you are making a mistake you have to go back to the beginning of the fragment and correct it at least three times in a row (usually more, because three times is just a minimum number of repetitions). Finally, your practice has to be regular. It's no good if you just practice once or twice a week and skip two or three or more days without even touching an organ. The best way to practice efficiently is to practice regularly and this is one of the most common mistakes I see beginner organists make. They practice sporadically once or twice a week while in reality they should be practicing every single day even for as little as 30 minutes. You don't need to practice for many hours a day but only 30 minutes might be enough so try not to skip your practice time. Apply these tips in your practice and with time you should be able to practice efficiently on your instrument and learn pieces very fast and easily. Many organists who like playing the organ spend a lot of time practicing organ pieces every day. However, if they lack proper structure in their practice sessions, then they will lack the direction. This lack of direction will slow down their progress in organ playing. In this article, I would like to share with you my thoughts on the importance of structured practice.
The usual practice session of many organists looks like this: they take an organ piece that the like and play it from the beginning until the end several times and take another piece and do the same. So their time ends and they call it an organ practice. However, it is far from an efficient and effective organ practice because it lacks the proper structure, direction and goal. If you just play your pieces from the beginning until the end, chances are you're not developing the skills that you need. You also are not learning your pieces to the best of your ability. Instead, you should work on mastering each individual piece. Here's what I mean: you should be striving to make it an error-free, fluent, musically interesting, and enjoyable to listen to. This can be accomplished only if you have the proper goal for each and every of your practice sessions. So in each individual practice session you will have to know specifically what you need to master and what kind of steps do you have to take in order to achieve that. One of the best ways to practice your organ music is to work on individual fragments repeatedly. In order to better control your movements and avoid making mistakes, you have to choose a very slow tempo and work on perfecting separate voices or parts. Only then you can go on practicing two-voice combinations and three-voice combinations. It would be a mistake in many cases to attempt to play the entire four-part texture right from the beginning because this kind of texture simply will be too difficult for you at the moment. However, you should structure your practice in such a manner that you take one step after another and little by little you will succeed in reaching your goal of that particular practice session. Remember that one practice session leads to another and so on until you master the entire piece. Think about these tips when you practice organ playing and implement these steps and techniques in your everyday structured practice. This will help you to achieve much higher level than you are currently in. Do you ever find yourself in a situation that you sit on the organ bench and practice your organ music but are not accomplishing anything of importance in organ playing? If this is the case, it is very likely because you don't have any structured goals set for your future. In this article, I will share with you my thoughts about the importance of structured goal setting for organ playing.
If you don't have any important goals set for your organ playing, chances are that you are not advancing very much. Just think about it for a moment. How can you achieve your goal, if you don't know what the goal is? Even more importantly, how can you achieve your goal, if you even don't have one? Your goals can be long-term goals or short-term goals. Long-term goals work best for your future accomplishments and short-term goals work really well for your everyday practice. An example of a long-term goal would be becoming competent church organist or a famous recitalist or developing excellent organ sight-reading skills and so on. All these long-term goals are related to much longer periods of time - most likely many months, sometimes years. Shorter range goals, on the other hand, work really well for supporting your longer range goals. An example of a shorter range goal would be mastering a specific piece of organ music. This could be even shorter and more specific, like mastering a particular section of that piece. Your goal would be small, if it fits into one practice session. They are the things that you want to accomplish in one sitting. Just remember that one practice session leads to another and another. So they can lead to the larger goal you are setting for yourself for the future. A final thing to remember is that your longer range goals should be exciting enough that you will feel some sort of challenge and excitement for yourself when you will reach them. If the goal doesn't excite you enough to strive for it to be persistent and persevere in your daily practice, it probably means that it is too small. So your short-term goals must be very specific. If you do this, they will contribute to your long-term goals. Apply my tips in your goal-setting practice and you will discover how much faster you will progress in organ playing because you will have vision for the future. If you want to master organ playing and develop your technique, you must understand the importance of efficient use of practice time. Too often people sit on the organ bench for several hours a day and don't accomplish anything worthwhile. In this article, I would like to share with you some tips which will help you to use your practice time more efficiently.
If you find yourself playing the organ without a new goal in mind, you should stop right away and think what you would like to accomplish today. It is very important thing to do. Without this small goal for today your organ practice will not be effective and efficient. You must have clearly defined goals. For example, this could be just perfecting previously mastered material, learning a new episode of organ music, memorizing one section of your piece and so on. When you have your goal that next step is to take action. Every action on your organ bench will lead you closer to your goal so if your goal for today is to memorize four measures of your organ piece then that's what you have to do. Don't sight-read any organ music; don't play any of your favorite hymns. Instead you should focus on memorizing those four measures. The best way to memorize these four measures is to subdivide them into for separate measures and memorize them individually. When you can play each of the four measures separately, combine them into fragments of two measures and later of three measures and only then attempt to play four measures without stopping from memory. So this kind of practice is very specific and helps you to use your practice time efficiently. If you only have 15 minutes available for your organ practice today, don't despair - you still can achieve some important tasks. For example, you would perfect your previously mastered material that you played the day before. This might mean repeating it at least three times. Aim for correct notes, rhythms, ornaments, fingering, pedaling, articulation, and hand and feet position in each repetition. If you make any mistakes, go back and try to correct them. Apply these tips in your practice and remember that you always have to have clearly defined goals for each practice session. This will prevent you from using your time inefficiently. Are you frustrated at the enormous amount of time you have to put in while learning organ pieces? Or perhaps you want to learn your favorite works in a shorter period of time? In this article, I will show you some tips which will help you learn and master any organ piece faster.
One of the most important things if you want to learn pieces faster is to practice them in a slow tempo. Generally, you have to use the tempo that is about 50% slower than the concert tempo. This will give you accuracy and help avoid making mistakes. Before learning the piece, try to write in fingering and pedaling. Remember that it is not required to indicate every finger and pedal in the entire piece right away. Instead, you can write in your pedaling and fingering only in the episode that you are working and practicing. Another thing to remember is to practice in fragments. This will help you to correct any mistakes easily. When you practice your piece, play separate voices repeatedly so that you can master them individually. Only after that work on voice combinations such as two parts and three parts together. After this becomes easy, try to play all parts together over and over. One more thing to remember when you practice these episodes is to aim for correct rhythms, notes, ornaments, articulation and hand and feet position with every repetition. Do not proceed to the next step unless you can play it fluently at least three times in a row. Above all, try to practice every day. Not necessarilly for several hours, but at least for 20-30 minutes. Even if you have that little time, you can still make progress - you can repeat previously mastered material instead of learning something new (which you can do on days when you have more time to practice). Organ practice can be compared to boiling water - the minute we take the pot off the fire - the water begins to cool down. So if you want your organ practice to be in a good shape - do it every day. Also don't neglect the importance of having an exact measurable goal and a plan of action to achieve this goal. This will definitely speed up your learning process. Otherwise, your playing might be just wandering around in circles. If you really want to learn organ pieces faster, then you should perfect your organ sight-reading and harmony skills very systematically in a step-by-step fashion. This is how I'm able to play 12 recitals a year with different repertoire. Consider these recommendations when you take your organ pieces and apply these tips in your practice. Finally, you have to be very persistent in your practice and then you will succeed in learning organ pieces faster. This question is a complicated one. There is no straight answer to this question because there are a number of variables to consider. If you're interested to know my opinion, please read on to find out.
First of all, you have to understand that every organist is different and will have different set of skills and experience which will consequently make their learning process shorter or longer for each individual. However, there are certain variables that must be considered here which will help you understand the complete picture. The first variable is the technical advancement of the organist. This means what kind of things he or she can play perfectly on the organ with the fingers, with the feet, and with the hands and feet combined. Second, you have to also understand that the level of difficulty in every organ piece is not the same. There are easy pieces, difficult pieces, slow pieces and fast pieces so each individual will need different time in mastering different kind of composition. However, you're reading this article not because you want to know what these variables are but in reality you probably want to know how long will it take for you to master any given piece that you choose. In order to understand the answer, you can do the following thing. You can devise a plan with set of actions in mastering this piece with specific steps which would be needed in order for you to achieve the goal of perfecting this composition. Let's say you want to master this piece in 30 days. Then you would need to look at the length of the piece. If the piece is 10 pages long and you have a due date after 30 days, this means that you have to master one page in three days. It's a very simple mathematical calculation. Now as long as you can stay on track with this plan, practice every day, and master one page in three days, you will achieve this goal. However, you have to also understand that mastering each individual page is not enough for overall perfection of the piece. You must have some additional time for combining these pages into larger units and that will take you more weeks. Of course all of this works only if you are still sticking to your plan, following through and learning one page in three days. So in my example your piece of 10 pages long can probably be mastered in about 60 days, giving 30 days for mastering each individual page and another 30 days for mastering the piece in its entirety. So consider these variables and the above example and you can determine exactly how long it will take for you to master any specific piece of organ music. |
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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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