I routinely observe such trait in some of my student's playing - they constantly are moving their head to look at the score and to the fingers and feet. It's like they don't trust themselves to press the right notes. Therefore they feel the need to look down.
While some checking with your eyes wouldn't hurt anyone, doing it all the time will develop a certain habit - the one when you constantly have to look at your fingers and feet. If this is happening to you also, you might want to pay attention to the following risks: 1. You will not know your keyboard and pedalboard well enough. This means you will have a difficulty finding the right notes on the organ without looking. This leads to more mistakes when playing. 2. Constant movement of your eyes back and forth to the score and to your fingers and feet divides your attention. Focused attention to the score (or more precisesly, to the measure that you are currently playing) is the key to engaging playing. If you lose focus, your listeners will lose focus all the more. So how can you fight this natural urge to look at your fingers and your feet? It's a perfectly normal feeling because it feels risky to play without looking. So people look down out of fear of failure. Or maybe they do so out of fear of fear of failure? That's right - fear of fear of failure. That's different. This is not an actual risk - it's the preconception we create in our mind. Making mistakes feels bad. Feeling bad produces guilt. Guilt produces shame. Shame produces fear. But it's not real. It hasn't happened yet. We just think we might make a mistake because you can't look at your fingers and feet. So here's what I recommend: memorize your piece and play it from memory with your eyes closed for a week. This will feel weird at first - you will make lots of mistakes at the beginning. But towards the end of the week they will start to disappear. Blind organists do this all the time - they can't see so they learn to feel the keyboard and the pedalboard. You only have to struggle for a week or so because after that it will become easier.
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Have you been in a situation where you had to play an unfamiliar organ which had a very sensitive pedalboard? On such instrument your feet are in a position to hit the wrong keys all the time. Even if you avoid the forceful movement, your feet are always in danger of playing with constant mistakes.
I think a sensitive pedalboard has something in common with driving an unfamiliar car. In order not to confuse the accelerator pedal with the break you have to always be conscious and think before pressing the pedal of which pedal is the accelerator and which one is the break. Also sensitive pedalboard might be compared to walking on an ice. When it‘s slippery you have lots of possibilities to fall. Therefore you have to think before each step where you put your feet and of course walk very slowly. Finally, the problem with playing on the sensitive pedalboard could be similar to one when you eat the fish with lots of bones and in order to do it without swallowing the bones you have to always be conscious of each and every bite and think about what it's in your mouth. So my final advice for people who have trouble playing unfamiliar and sensitive pedalboard is this: pay constant attention to your feet and be conscious of every movement of your feet. If you have a chance to practice on such organ in advance, play very slowly in order to adjust to situation better. When you play organ pedals, how much force should you use? Should you pound the pedals as strongly as possible or should you depress them very gently? I think you can feel what the right answer is and here is why.
If you play the organs very gently, you can control the movements of your feet much better. This comes especially handy when you play in a fast tempo. This is because increased level of control can greatly reduce the number of mistakes. Another benefit of playing very softly is for the instrument. Gentle movements of your feet will help the instrument to respond more clearly. This way you won't damage the pedal action with your feet. If you depress the pedals mezzo piano, then the instrument will not make as much mechanical noise. The reasonable amount of action noise can be very interesting especially on mechanical action organs but too much noise can be distracting to listen to. However, it is not easy to control the force level of your feet. When you play fast pedal passages, the tendency is to get excited and play loudly and strongly. The evidence of that is increased tension in your legs and rather loud pounding on the pedals. If you use much force when playing with your feet, there is a higher risk of making mistakes. The reason for that comes from the tension in the feet. Also people tend to lift their feet higher into the air which prevents control of the action even more. I have seen some organists play with much force and after their playing the pedal keys would stick and some ciphers would occur. It is not uncommon that a person might even break the pedal tracker. This is not a pretty sight, especially during the organ recital. Therefore, I highly recommend you relax your legs and try to play as softly as possible. Use just enough force to depress the pedals and not more. On some organs, you will have to adjust the level of force because some instruments are especially sensitive. It is best to relax by playing very slowly, even the faster pieces. This way you can begin to feel more secure and increase the speed little by little. However, the amount of force you apply should not be increased. Apply my tips in your organ practice today. They will help you always stay in control and your instrument will be grateful to you. In return, the sound of the organ will be more natural, you will make much fewer mistakes in your pedal part, and you will be able to perfect your pedal playing. Do you have some experiences about playing organ pedals with too much force? Or perhaps you discovered your own ways which helped you to apply minimal strength when playing with your feet? Share your thoughts in comments. One of the most difficult textures to play in organ music occurs when pedal lines go in contrary motion with the manual parts. In other words, when the pedals go up, and hand parts go down and vice versa.
For our brain this arrangement of parts is especially tricky to process and we must take good care when learning such episodes in our organ pieces. The best advice would be to isolate the manual and pedal parts and practice repeatedly and separately. Let's say that your difficult passage extends over 4 measures. So I would recommend you practise pedals alone 10 times in the tempo which is about 50 % slower than the concert speed. You will notice that at the beginning repetitions are quite shaky but the 9th and 10th repetitions feel quite secure. Then practise manual part alone. If it is polyphonic, play the hands separately first, repeating 10 times the left hand part and 10 times the right hand part. Once you do that, you will be ready to combine the right hand and pedals, and left hand and pedals. It is important to go on to the next step only when you feel like you are ready and feeling very secure and your playing seems quite fluent. Otherwise frustration soon kicks in and real progress would be very difficult to achieve. But if you patiently wait when this combination becomes so easy, that you can play it very slowly without thinking, automatically, then you are ready to go on to the next step. This way you can master even the most dreadful looking pedal parts going in contrary motion with the hands. Remember that for many right-handed people left hand and pedal combination takes longer to master. Nevertheless, the process is the same - isolate the problematic episode and practise solo lines and each of the available combinations before putting everything together. All of the preceding advice won't work unless you figure out the fingering and pedaling in this episode so make sure you do this first. 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 video Organ Practice Guide. If you practice pedal scales and arpeggios regularly, you know that with time it will help you develop a perfect pedal technique. The problem with such training is that there is a temptation to rush through many scales a day, to do many exercises but not necessarily perfecting them all.
Sometimes we do that because we feel we need to attempt to do everything at once. But in reality, when we play too many things, too many exercises, too many pieces in one practice session, we don't accomplish anything substantial. If we play through 24 different scales and arpeggios a day just once, it takes considerable amount of time but the progress is very small, if any. This is because in every scale we might make a mistake or two. The wisest thing would be to correct that mistake but sometimes it's difficult to force oneself to stop and perfect that pedal scale or arpeggio. But there is no other way - we have to perfect what we do, if we want to accomplish something remarkable. So it's better to play only 2 or 4 scales a day but aim for perfection instead of rushing through all of them at once. Of course, once you master all the pedal scales and arpeggios and want to keep up your already polished technique, then playing through them only once is sufficient. But that's after the real hard work is done, after you master scales in 24 different keys in one octave, two octaves, tonic arpeggios, dominant seventh chord arpeggios, diminished seventh chord arpeggios, scales with double pedals, chromatic scales and so on. 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 video Organ Practice Guide. Imagine you sit on the organ bench and want to play a pedal solo line with the hand part silent. This could be an excerpt from an actual organ piece, such as Toccata, Adagio and Fugue in C major, BWV 564 by Bach, or a composition for pedal solo, like Epilogue from Hommage a Frescobaldi by Langlais. It could even be a pedal scale or arpeggio.
The question is this: where do you keep your hands in such situation? There are 3 primary ways to do this correctly which are taught in organ method books. 1. On the organ bench 2. On the sides of the lower keyboard 3. On your knees With the first method, you play the pedals while holding onto the organ bench. Here you are sort of helping with your hands to keep the balance of your body. This way makes it even easier to pivot to the new pedal position because your hands may involuntarily help to push to the right or left when needed. The problem with this method is that your hands may not always be free to help you do that when you play the organ. In fact, very often your hands will be busy playing manual parts of your organ compositions. Another way is to keep your hands on the sides of the lower keyboard. As with the previous method, the hands are a big help for keeping balance. However, the inherent danger here is to press the bottom or the top notes with your palms by accident (I've personally seen this happen) which can make a lot of noise especially if you are using a loud registration. The third way is just to rest your hands on your knees. Although this method takes perhaps a couple of weeks to get used to but then you are quite sure that you are playing with your feet WITHOUT the help of the hands at all. You should use other techniques for changing position. This is my personal preferred method of playing pedals. By the way, if you want to perfect your pedal technique, check out my Pedal Virtuoso Master Course - a 12 week training program designed to help you develop an unbeatable pedal technique while working only 15 minutes a day practicing pedal scales and arpeggios in all keys. 4 Tips in Choosing the Best Pedaling for Prelude and Fugue in B Flat Major, BWV 560 for the Organ6/12/2012 Knowing how to choose the most efficient pedaling in the Prelude and Fugue in B flat major, BWV 560 is not always easy. Sometimes an incorrect choice may lead to incorrect articulation. If you want to figure out the best and the most stylistically appropriate pedaling for this prelude and fugue, use these 4
powerful tips. 1) Write in each pedal choice for each and every note in the pedal line. While writing in fingering you can skip certain easy episodes and indicate the fingering only in the places which give you the most trouble, for pedaling I strongly recommend that you write in your choice for every pedal note. This is because many organists come to the organ with some experience on the piano and pedal playing gives them the most problems. 2) Avoid using heels. Since it is a piece written in the Baroque style, avoid using heels. Use toes only pedaling because on many Baroque instruments playing with heels is very uncomfortable. This practice comes from the traditional technique of playing the clavichord which was the most common practice instrument for organists in Germany at that time. By the way, some scholars believe this piece may have been written specifically for the pedal clavichord. 3) Use alternate toe technique. Most of the time in the prelude apply alternate toe technique which means playing with the left and right foot in alternation. This is especially obvious in the opening pedal solo and in other places in the prelude because of the duple meter. This technique allows you to create a perfect articulation in the pedal line with gentle alternation of strong and weak beats. In addition, it is quite easy to apply it in the passages with ascending or descending melodic line, such as in scales. 4) Use same foot technique. In the fugue which is written in the triple meter sometimes it will be necessary to play some notes using the same foot. In this piece, this rule is valid in situations when there is a change of melodic direction. In addition, you will also have to use the same foot in the prelude where the melody changes direction. Use the above tips for writing in the pedaling for the Prelude and Fugue in B flat major, BWV 560 today. After you have figured out and notated your pedaling, make sure you practice with correct pedaling choices repeatedly. This will allow your pedal playing to become automatic, fluent, and free of mistakes. 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. Have you ever observed the pedal technique of a world-class organist? It
seems like he or she can play effortlessly for hours at a top speed. How do you develop speed in your pedal technique? In this article, I will share with you 4 tips which will help you to achieve this level of proficiency. 1) Play scales for the pedals. The single most important exercise that the legendary French organist Marcel Dupre used when he was unable to play the manuals due to his wrist injury was pedals scales. Practicing pedal scales on the organ in all major and minor keys will develop flexibility of an ankle which is the secret to a perfect pedal technique. 2) Play arpeggios for the pedals. If you want even more benefit you can go one step further. Take 1 new major and minor key a week and play arpeggios on a tonic chord. You can also practice arpeggios on a dominant seventh chord and a diminished seventh chord which is built on a 7th scale degree (or raised 7th scale degree in minor). 3) Practice slowly to achieve speed. Although it sounds counterintuitive, it is best to take a slow practice tempo in which you can avoid mistakes and play fluently. Then little by little you can raise the tempo until you reach your desired speed. However, be careful not to force yourself to play faster because it has to be a natural process. You will play faster when you are ready for it. 4) Correct your mistakes. If you make a mistake in pressing the wrong note or playing the notes in uneven rhythms, always go back, slow down and play correctly at least 3 times in a row. This way you will form correct practicing habits. Note that if you are a beginner at the organ, it is better to postpone practicing pedal scales and arpeggios for a later date. Instead, take up some easier exercises for alternate toes first. Use the above exercises and tips and start perfecting your pedal technique today. To achieve such level when you can play the pedals fast and effortlessly may take many months of practice but I can assure you that you will start seeing some tremendous changes in your pedal playing very soon. 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. Are you struggling with your pedal technique and have a temptation to look at your feet while playing the organ? It is important that you overcome the need of looking at the pedals and focus your attention to the organ score. If you are experiencing such problems while playing pedals, it means you are at the stage of development as an organist when you don’t know your pedal board well enough. Therefore, you naturally want to look at the pedals. The sooner you get over this challenge, the better your organ technique will become. So, how to look at the score and be able to play the correct notes with your feet?
Play with the inside of your feet and point your knees inward. Very often organists who struggle with their pedal technique place their feet in such a way that the pedals are depressed by the outside of the feet. Such habit is especially common among men. This is because men are normally larger than women and they have different sitting habits. Usually when men sit, they do not keep their knees together. If you sit this way on the organ bench, this simply means, you will depress the pedals with the outside of the feet. However, the precision in pedal playing can be attained if you play with the inside of your feet. So this means, that even men have to try to keep the knees together or at least point their knees inward. Therefore, try to depress the pedals with the inside portion of your feet or with the big toes. If you play this way, gradually your technique will become much more precise, you will get used to the pedal board faster and will not need to look at your feet. Do not use force. It is not uncommon for organists with previous piano experience to use excess power in their playing. They transfer their background from piano to the organ and press the keys in the same manner. On the piano, dynamics can be achieved by using more or less power but on the organ this method is useless because the keyboard does not react to the applied force. We can see the same situation in pedal playing when organists depress the pedals with so much energy that there are unnecessary sounds. Such playing can even damage the pedal action. Is you use too much force when playing with your feet, you might feel some strain and tension in your legs and ankles which might lead to mistakes. So, if you want your pedal technique to become very precise, play the pedals mezzo piano. In other words, use only the amount of energy which is needed to depress the pedals and not more. If you want to achieve the level when you will feel and know your pedal board very well, focus on the organ score, point your knees inward, play with the inside portion of your feet, and do not use unnecessary power. If you are interested in perfecting your pedal technique, an invaluable resource is Organ Technique: Modern and Early by George Ritchie and George Stauffer. 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. If you are new to the organ playing, chances are that you naturally try to look down to your feet while playing pedals. This is not a very good approach which will hinder your progress as an organist. However, it is not easy to resist this temptation and to look at the score instead at the pedals. You must know the correct way of practicing which leads to success in pedal playing. In this article, I will give you 3 tips, which will help you to feel the pedal board without looking.
Practice repeatedly in fragments. This advice is very important. Whenever you play a challenging pedal line and make a mistake, try to resist the temptation of going all the way through the composition without stopping. Instead, force yourself to pay attention to details and work in smaller fragments. This is a great way to get used to the pedal board and stop looking at the feet. Practice smaller units, correct your mistakes, and make your pedal playing automatic. Do not lift your feet off the pedal board. As you practice your fragments of pedal lines, make sure that your feet stays in contact with the pedals at all times. When you have to move your feet to the next position, slide them while slightly touching the pedals with the toes. This way of playing is like reading books by touching the pages written in Braille language with the fingertips for the blind people. They can feel the shapes of the special signs which then convert to words in their minds. By the way, there are many blind organists who manage to play the organ successfully because they feel the keyboards. The same applies in pedal playing – feel the pedal board and you will know the right position of particular notes. Stay close to sharp keys when playing naturals and play on the edge of sharp keys. When you play the pedals and stay in contact with the pedal board you can try another technique which will help to make your playing very precise without the need of looking at your feet. If you need to press a natural key, stay close to the sharps. In fact, you can almost touch the sharp keys when you play the naturals. When you play the sharp keys, do not go too deep with your toes, just place your feet on the edge of the keys. This way it will be easier to orient yourself on the pedal board and gradually the need of looking at your feet will diminish. I understand that it may seem like a tiresome way of practicing but I can assure you from personal experience that it is well worth the effort. Just keep your mind focused on your goal and in a few months you will start noticing some tremendous changes in your pedal technique. If you are interested in perfecting your pedal technique, an invaluable resource is Organ Technique: Modern and Early by George Ritchie and George Stauffer. 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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Drs. Vidas Pinkevicius and Ausra Motuzaite-Pinkeviciene Organists of Vilnius University , creators of Secrets of Organ Playing. Our Hauptwerk Setup:
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