This is Part 2 of the article which deals with the most efficient fingering for Romantic and modern organ music. Please read Part 1 here.

Arpeggio and Chord Fingerings. When you notice a place with an arpeggio in it, think in terms of a chord. In other words, the standard way to play arpeggios is by using the chord fingerings. For three note root position chords, such as C E G, use 1 3 5 in the right hand or 5 3 1 in the left hand. For first inversion chords, such as E G C, use 1 2 5 in the right hand or 5 3 1 in the left hand. Second inversion chords, such as G C E are best played with 1 3 5 in the right hand and 5 2 1 in the left hand. For chords, starting on the sharp or flat note (B flat D F) we have to use the same fingerings.

Play chords with four notes, such as C E G C, with 1 2 3 5 (right hand) or 5 4 2 1 (left hand). Play the first inversion E G C E with 1 2 4 5 (right hand) or 5 4 2 1 (left hand). The second inversion G C E G is best played with 1 2 4 5 (right hand) or 5 3 2 1 (left hand). The main rule for using 3 or 4 in the middle of an arpeggio or a chord is an interval of the third. If the third is major (as in C E), play with 3. If the third is minor (as in E G), play with 4.

Finger Substitution. This technique allows achieving a perfect legato when playing more than one voice in one hand. Finger substitution basically involves changing fingers on the same note. The most common instance for finger substitutions are passages in double thirds, sixths, and other intervals. Sometimes when playing more chromatic music we have to change fingers on three or four note chords as well. 

Finger Glissando. Finger glissando is a technique of sliding from one key to another with the same finger. We use it to achieve legato primarily when playing more than one voice in one hand. Passages of chromatic scales in double thirds and sixths are typical places for this technique.

Finger substitutions and glissando in single voice passages are somewhat less orthodox. More often we play these passages using finger crossing, scale fingering, position fingering, or chord fingering instead. Moreover, very often when a person uses finger substitution or glissando in a single voice passage, it is evident that he or she did not give much thought about the fingering in advance.

I suggest you write in fingerings in every piece that you play on the organ, at least in the beginning of your organist career. This will diminish chances of playing with accidental fingerings which will hinder your progress. Choosing fingering, of course, should be done before the actual practice of the piece. If there are several options available, try all of them and choose the one which is the most efficient and comfortable for your hand.

By the way, you can write in fingerings for a shorter fragment and start practicing it right away without waiting to finish fingering the entire piece which might take a while. With experience you will start to feel the familiar patterns and you will instinctively choose the most efficient fingering automatically. Then it will be necessary to pencil in the fingering only in the most difficult places.

If you are really serious about not only developing your keyboard and organ technique but also your sense for fingering, I highly recommend playing scales in octaves, thirds, sixths and tenths, and also in double thirds, and double sixths in all 24 major and minor keys regularly. Playing in double intervals is an invaluable exercise for finger substitution and glissando. In addition, practice chords, short and long arpeggios on the tonic, dominant, and diminished seventh chords. A great resource with fingering guide included is The Complete Book of Scales, Chords, Arpeggios and Cadences. It includes all the major, minor (natural, harmonic, melodic) & chromatic scales - plus additional instructions on music fundamentals.
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Knowing how to choose the most efficient fingering is crucial to any organist. This skill is important because it makes a big difference both in practicing and performing. If you know how to play with good fingering, you will feel much more confident and your performance might sound effortless and efficient. In addition, the right fingering helps you to avoid mistakes and allows playing with precision and clarity. Today, I would like to discuss some ways how to choose the fingering for organ music composed after 1800 which will help you achieve such results.

Since the normal touch for Romantic and modern music is legato, every fingering technique is geared towards achieving the perfect legato. Differently from the piano where the legato can be achieved also by the means of the right pedal, the legato techniques that are used in organ playing are based on the fingering only. There are three most important ways to play legato on the organ - finger crossing, finger substitution, and finger glissando.

Finger Crossing. This technique is primarily used for single voice passages. It helps to achieve legato where you play just a single voice in one hand. The most common manifestation of finger crossings is thumb-under technique. Here you put the thumb under other fingers in order to change positions and move upwards or downwards. You can also use finger crossing by putting the longer finger over the shorter one or the shorter finger under the longer one.

Scale Fingerings. Probably the easiest way to play the single voice episodes in organ music is by choosing fingerings which are based on scales. This also involves chromatic scales. Here the most important rule is to avoid using the thumb on the sharp keys because it gives unnecessary strain to the hand. For example, in a passage in B flat major for the right hand, such as B flat C D E flat F D C D E flat F G A B flat it is best to use the B flat major scale fingering: 2 1 2 3 4 2 1 2 3 1 2 3 4. Notice that we start not with 1 but with 2 on the B flat. For the left hand the best fingering here would be 3 2 1 3 2 4 5 4 3 2 1 3 2.

However, in real music we often have to play with the thumb on the sharp keys (especially in music with many accidentals). A very useful exercise not only for finger dexterity and independence but also for fingering patterns is practicing scales in all major and minor keys. This can be done either on the piano or the organ. If you practice scales regularly, with time these fingerings will become second nature to you and many places in your organ compositions which earlier appeared problematic because of the fingering will be straightforward enough.

Position Fingerings. When you write in fingerings, think about the position. How to play the most number of notes without leaving your current position? Put a thumb under only when is necessary to change position. For example, consider the earlier passage in B flat major. Placing a thumb on C allows us to play 8 notes in one position using fingers 1-4 and only when we have to ascend higher we put a thumb again on F and start playing like in ascending F major scale.

For more fingering suggestions, read Part 2 of this article.
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Many organists understand the importance of playing pedal scales on the organ. Because they can help to develop flexibility of an ankle, pedal scales is one of the best ways to achieve the perfect pedal technique. However, very often organists hesitate to incorporate them in their daily practice because they do not know how to choose the most efficient pedaling for playing scales. In this article, I will show you the traditional way of playing pedal scales which will help you to move your organ playing to the next level.

Keep the knees and heels together. The traditional way of playing pedals is to keep the knees and heels together. In other words, both your feet should move as one unit. I understand that for some people it will be hard to do so. In this case, at least try to keep the heels together when playing pedal scales. This is necessary because we will choose the most efficient pedaling based on this technique.

Play legato. The next important point is to play with legato touch. This means that there should be no breaks between the notes. This is actually not always easy to achieve in pedal playing. I remember how hard I had to try to be able to play the notes evenly and without breaks even at a slow tempo when I was a student. It took me at least a week to master one scale. However don’t be discouraged and don’t give up. Just stick to it.

Toe-toe-heel-heel technique. The most efficient way of choosing the pedaling is to use toe-toe-heel-heel technique. This means that we play the first note with the left toe then with the right toe. The third note is played with the left heel and the fourth – with the right heel. After that just start playing with the left toe.

For example, in C major scale over 2 octaves, C would be depressed with the left toe, D – with the right toe, E – with the left heel, F – with the right heel,  G – with the left toe, A – with the right toe, B – with the left heel, C – with the right heel,  D – with the left toe, E – with the right toe, F – with the left heel, G – with the right heel,  A – with the left toe, B – with the right toe, and C – with the right heel. Reverse the pedaling for the downward scale. Another way to play this scale is to play B with the left heel (at the end of the first octave) and start the second octave with the left toe and proceed like from the beginning.

This technique allows us to keep the heels and knees together and to play with the inside of the feet. By the way, the C major is not exactly the easiest scale to play with pedals because it lacks accidentals. Try E flat major or A major, for example and you will feel how efficient this technique is.

Adjust the pedaling when necessary. Sometimes it will be necessary to adjust the pedaling according to the accidentals because we can’t play the sharp keys with our heels. For some keys you will have to start the scale with the heel etc. In these cases, I recommend you start choosing the pedaling from the middle of the scale and then work your way downwards. For keys which have 3 consecutive sharps or flats, such as D flat major or F sharp major, you will have to slide from one sharp to another with the same toe.

Take a slow tempo, and master one major and one minor scale a week. Try to achieve a nice legato and see that all notes would sound evenly. Next week add another pair of scales (in the order of ascending number of accidentals) until in about 12 weeks you can play all of them. Then it will be sufficient to play them only once during your daily practice. If you do this regularly, your ankles will become much more flexible and you will start to notice tremendous changes in your pedal technique.

Was this article helpful for you or not? Is there anything else you would like to know about organ playing? Please share your comments.
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This is the second part of the article “How to read music without looking at the keyboard”. You can read Part 1 here.

Feel the sharp keys with your fingers. This particular trick might help you to facilitate reading music without looking down. As we all know, the sharp keys are arranged in groups of two and three. For example, by feeling the edges on the left side of the group of two, you can find C, or on the right side – E. Similarly, feel the edge of F sharp and find F, or touch B flat and find B.

If you have to make a leap to some natural note, first try to locate the sharp note which is closest to it. All of this requires that you do not lift your fingers off the keyboard but keep them in contact with the keys at all times. In other words, our hand movements should not be vertical (like at the piano sometimes) but horizontal. Somehow feeling the keys with your fingertips helps you to achieve precision even in leaps. By the way, for managing leaps, I recommend to use the finger preparation technique.

Take a slow tempo. When you practice, I always recommend taking such a tempo that you could avoid making mistakes. At a slow tempo, it is easier to control your movements and to think where each particular note is. If you see a skip in your score, make an appropriate mental note and your finger will respond correctly. At first, your leap might be a little off, but still it would be a leap. If you make such a mistake, it is best not to go ahead and play the piece all the way through. Instead, go back, try to correct this mistake, and play with precision at least three times in a row.

Practice each voice separately. One of the reasons why reading music without looking at the keyboard can be difficult for organists is that they often play all parts (including the pedal line) together. If you struggle with it, obviously, it is too complicated to play the entire musical texture. How can you know if it is too hard to practice for you this way?

Make an experiment – take an organ piece of your choice with or without pedals (it could be a hymn, too). Now try to play it through it once in a slow tempo. If you make more than 3 melodic or rhythmic mistakes in one page, then my guess is either the piece is too hard for you at the moment or you should practice it differently. Instead of playing all parts together right from the beginning, practice each voice separately first. This should be easy enough for most people. Just play the soprano line slowly and count your mistakes. I bet they will not be too many. If you still make more than 3 mistakes in one page playing this way, the piece might just be too complex for you at the moment.

Should you change to an easier piece? It depends. You could try practicing in shorter fragments (perhaps 1-4 measures) at a time. Whether you choose an easier piece of organ music or stick with the current one is up to you. Just try to correct your mistake and play your fragment with precision and confidence at least 3 times in a row.

Later combine them in 2, 3, and 4 voices. After playing each voice has become easy, now it is time to start practicing your work in combination of two voices. Remember not to look down at the keyboard. If the previous step was successful, this combination should not be unreasonably hard either. The next logical step would be to practice in three part combinations and finally, the entire four part texture.

In conclusion, I believe you can be successful at reading your organ music without looking at your fingers. It just takes regular, slow, persistent, and wise practice.

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Quite often my organ students ask me how they can learn to play organ without looking down at their fingers. This is a common problem people face in the beginning stages of their organist career. First of all, let me say that it is not always a bad idea to look at the keyboard. If you play pieces from memory this is, of course, only natural. Where else should you look if there is no musical score present? However, if you play from the score, then it is best to look at the music (at least most of the time).

Playing from the score develops your ability to sight-read music. However, playing from the score and looking down at your fingers will slow down your progress at least in one specific area: knowing your keyboard and feeling it. This is crucial if you want to be a truly good sight-reader. Without this ability the task to sight-read music in fast tempo will be too hard. In this article, I would like to share with you my personal recommendations how to learn to read music without looking at the keyboard.

At this point, you have to understand why the beginners at the organ (or piano) always want to look down. You see, when we first start playing an instrument, we do not know where each note is located on the keyboard. In addition, usually we are slow on reading notes as well. All of this creates a situation, where we naturally want to see what exactly is we are pressing.

Just think how you first learned to type on the computer. Unless you were trained professionally, at first, you probably used to type with just two fingers. You did not know (or remember) where each letter or character on the computer keyboard was located. Therefore, you looked at them and at the screen constantly. Now, if you have much more experience with typing, it is sufficient for you just to look at the monitor most of the time.

Likewise, in reading music we first want to look down at our fingers. However, to facilitate your advancement, try to resist the temptation to look at your fingers. In other words, force yourself not to look down. Do not be discouraged if you hit the wrong notes; just remind yourself that developing this skill takes time. You see, the fingers have the ability to memorize the distances between the keys. Provided you are practicing regularly and resisting the temptation to look at the keyboard, after a few short months, you will already start feeling the difference in your progress.

Developing this skill requires time. The great blind organists like Louis Vierne, Jean Langlais, Helmut Walcha and many others have been able to master such a complex art. If they could achieve that level being blind, we obviously have a chance, too. We just have to have patience and practice regularly. I hope you understand that there is no magical way to learn to sight-read music overnight. The amount of time needed to see the progress varies from person to person but I think that if you spend at least 30 minutes a day for 3 months practicing sight-reading wisely (more on that in Part 2), you will start to see some real changes.

In 3 months that will be more than 44 hours of practice. Wouldn’t you think that you would be better at this skill if you had 44 hours of serious practice under your belt? Compare that to driving a car. After 44 hours of practical experience, we would still be at the basic level but certainly not freshmen anymore. I think that in my country they require 30 hours of driving with the instructor before you can take a driving exam. Anyway, you get the idea. Just keep practicing your organ music, stick to it for 3 months, and enter the next level after that.

This article continues in Part 2. Here you will find more tips on how to get better at sight-reading without looking at your fingers.
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This is Part 2 (steps 5 and 6) of the article about how to use hymns which help you to achieve hand independence in your organ playing. You can read Part 1 here (steps 1 through 4).

5. Take the tune in the left hand and use the thirds and the sixths in the right hand and repeat the steps 1 through 4. By now probably you are starting to realize that we are developing your left hand technique while the right hand plays the hymn tune only. This step will teach you how to play faster notes in the right hand as well. Now play the hymn tune in the left hand as written but add an extra voice in the right hand, first note against note as in step 1. You may sometimes use the notes from the bass line in your right hand, but it will not always sound nice.

By the way, the technique when you invert the voices and play the top voice in the bass and vice versa is called invertible counterpoint. Invertible counterpoint is indispensable polyphonic trick to use if you want to create any imitative polyphonic piece, as invention, fughette, or a fugue. As I mentioned before, this technique will not always work with your hymns, because there will be instances when you will find the interval of the fifth between the original bass and the soprano voice which in inversion will become a forbidden fourth (it is not actually forbidden, but its use is greatly limited and specialized).

At any rate, the best way to construct your new soprano line in this step is to use the thirds and the sixths against the bass which always sound nice and sweet. After note against note exercise becomes easy, play two against one, three against one, and finally, four against one as you did in the steps 2 through 4.

6. Alternate motion between the hands. Steps 1 through 5 will develop your hand independence and teach you about a special kind of polyphony – contrasting polyphony - where voices are independent but very different both melodically and rhythmically. However, if you want to move your hand independence and polyphony to the next level, step 6 will do exactly that. It is called imitative polyphony when voices are independent but at the same time they have much in common – they imitate each other either melodically or rhythmically or both.

In order to achieve that, try to alternate movements between the hands. For example, in measure 1 let the soprano move in faster notes, in measure 2, this will be done by the bass part etc. You see, one voice is stationary while the other moves; then they switch roles. After practicing this way for a while, you can alternate the motion every 2 beats and later even every beat. By the way, one hand can play step 2 and the other step 4 as well!

By practicing this way you can create nice choral partitas or variations which will also enhance your service playing. You can use these variations for hymn introductions or preludes. As promised, these steps will help you to develop your hand independence using two voice texture or bicinium, of course, but without knowing, actually, you will be improvising as well. In order to achieve the greatest results, I recommend you choose at least 10 different hymns and work your way through each of the above steps at a slow tempo. Do not proceed to the next step unless you can play slowly (but fluently) the previous step at least three times in a row correctly.

By the way, would you like to know more about any aspect of hymn playing on the organ? Please share them in your comments below and I will do my best to answer your questions.
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Many organists struggle to be able to play challenging polyphonic organ compositions. Music by such great composers, like Bach, Buxtehude and others has many independent voices and very often more than one in one hand. To be able to perform such pieces with precision and confidence requires good hand independence. An organist has to have the skill to play rhythmically and melodically independent parts in different hands. Many people choose to play special exercises from various method books which obviously is a good way to achieve hand independence. However, what they might not realize is that the solution to advance in building this skill is waiting for them in the hymns they play every Sunday. Today I am going to share with you my easy 6 step approach on how to use hymns to develop hand independence.

1. Play soprano and bass parts from the hymnal. Do you have trouble playing the entire four part texture of your hymns? If so, just play the outer parts one in each hand. That should be easy enough for most people. If not, practice one hand at a time until you can play each of the two voices correctly at least three times in a row. When this becomes easy, try playing both voices together. Notice how well the hymn sounds this way. It is because the soprano and the bass are precisely the most important voices in such music. The soprano is the most melodically developed voice and the bass is the foundation of harmony.

2. Play soprano and bass parts 2 against 1. When the step 1 becomes easy, try adding an extra note in the bass line using eighth notes. If you see the repeated notes in the bass, play the lower or upper neighbor tone. If there are notes in stepwise motion, you can play thirds upwards if the melody is ascending or downwards if the line is descending. If the bass has leaps of a third, the easiest way is to play passing tones. As you might already notice, the main rule here is to arrive at the next bass note by step, either from above or from below.

3. Play soprano and bass parts 3 against 1. It this step, you will use eighth note triplets in your bass line. The melodic figures can be quite different, but again, try to arrive at the next bass note by stepwise motion. The nicest melodic lines can be constructed when the bass moves by an interval of a fourth.

4. Play soprano and bass parts 4 against 1. After the previous exercise has become easy, the next step is to add sixteenth notes in the bass against one soprano note. Again, the options for melodic figuration here are many, but try to calculate how many notes you have to play in stepwise motion before the next bass note. Consequently, sometimes the first interval will have to be a leap but the next three will be adjacent notes.

This article continues in Part 2 (steps 5 and 6).
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One of the main difficulties an organist can encounter is a weak left hand technique. An underdeveloped left hand can lead you into a number of problems when playing organ music. Very often organists have trouble playing more than one voice in the left hand. Additionally, when they encounter fast passages in an organ piece, their playing might lack precision and clarity. Consequently, majority of organ repertoire is inaccessible to them due to the underdeveloped left hand. If this sounds familiar to you, read on to find out how the left hand technique can be improved.

Obviously you can improve your left hand technique by playing special exercises on the piano or the organ. A great resource for the left hand technique is Piano Music for One Hand: A Collection of Studies, Exercises and Pieces

It is important to understand that both hands should be developed at a similar level. My favorite collection of daily exercises which develops both hands equally is Hanon: The Virtuoso Pianist. This collection contains 60 exercises in three parts. The entire set takes about one hour to play in a concert tempo.

In the beginning, it may be enough for you to play just the first part – the basic 20 exercises which last about 20 minutes. Take one new exercise every week and master it. Practice it daily several times. With the following week practice 2 exercises without stopping, later 3, 4, and so on until after about 20 weeks you will know all 20 exercises. After that it will be sufficient to play the entire set of 20 exercises just once.

After they become easy, start adding more advanced exercises from the Part 2. I think you get the idea. When you reach the end of Part 2, your left hand technique will already be at the decent level. If you go even further and play the Part 3 (60 exercises total), you will achieve exactly what the title of this collection promises – the level of the virtuoso.

I have to admit that these exercises are a bit mechanical and it takes some willpower even to play through the Part 1, but the results are really great. It is a great way to develop your technique by only playing one hour a day. I can testify personally that whenever I have not enough time to practice my organ music, if only I continue to play through the set of Hanon exercises daily, my manual technique is in good shape.

I have to add that most of the time I practice them on my organ and not on the piano. Because organ mechanics might be lighter than the piano (at least on a small instrument), it is possible to add a coupler for more resistance. A great thing about practicing Hanon exercises on the organ is that you can turn the power off and play on the silent keyboard. That way you won’t annoy your family but the results will be the same.

A word of caution – always pay attention to how you are feeling. Some fatigue is OK but if you start to feel tension in your hands, you should stop at once and take some time to relax your hands and shake off the tension. This is really important if you want to reap the best results and not to hurt yourself.

Take a slow tempo at first (60, 50, even 40 beats per minute). Later you naturally start to play a little faster and faster until you reach 120 beats per minute.

If you continue practicing the exercises from Hanon: The Virtuoso Pianist regularly, I can guarantee that you will see the definite changes in your left hand technique already after a few weeks. Real pianists spend playing etudes and other piano music several hours a day just to maintaining their keyboard technique. With the Hanon exercises you will only need about one hour a day because of the diversity of the exercises. Every imaginable classic piano technique and figure is included in the set, including tremolos, octaves, and scales in double thirds and sixths.

You may be thinking that theses exercises are good only for pianists. However, just think how much the legato Romantic organ technique was influenced by the piano technique in the French symphonic organ school (Widor and Vierne, for instance) and you will have no doubt about the benefits of the Hanon exercises for the organists.

The good thing about this collection is that at the end of the second part there is a set of exercises devoted to scales and arpeggios. So people who are fond of scales and arpeggios will find benefit from this collection as well. By the way, I play scales and arpeggios on two manuals because compass of the organ manuals is a little too short for some exercises. I recommend playing the exercises from Hanon: The Virtuoso Pianist before your regular organ practice because it also serves as a fantastic warm-up.
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This is the second part of the article How to Achieve Accuracy in Manual Changes When Playing Organ. Make sure you read the first part because will find more useful suggestions.

Practice opposite changes. Because it is likely that you will encounter an organ where the Great is either the first or the second manual, it is also important to practice switching manuals the opposite way. This can be useful also because you will not always know which manual will serve you best in each specific situation. So you have to be prepared to jump upwards or downwards. I personally can testify how tricky it may be, especially if the organ is unfamiliar and you are mentally unprepared to make such adjustments.

I remember playing Bach’s D Minor Toccata and Fugue in one concert where the great was the second manual and the positive was the first. I thought I was mentally prepared for it but did not practice the actual manual changes the opposite way. In this concert, I had to jump downwards for echo effects in toccata. The first manual change was like a cold shower to me – I almost missed the manual. Luckily, at the last moment I remembered that this organ had positive in the lower manual and everything went well. Knowing that, I was on my guard for echo effects in the fugue. However, the feeling of having to jump the wrong way was quite strange. Lesson learned – always practice manual changes both ways, unless there is no other way to do that (like in thumbing down technique).

If only one manual is available, imitate manual changes. My organ students often ask me if it is really necessary to have a two manual organ at your disposal to practice manual changes. My answer is the definite NO. You can practice majority of organ repertoire on a one manual instrument, even on the piano. When the time comes to make a manual change, just imitate the movement you would do with you hands if you had several manuals. In other words, make a mental note of the change, physically move your hand upward or downward but continue playing on the same manual. This type of practice greatly saves time because it involves a powerful strategy – visualization. Using this technique, we visualize the manual switch and make appropriate movements with the hand but use only one keyboard.

Imitate the movements on the table. I explained how manual changes can be practiced on one keyboard but you may be surprised to find out that it could be done on the table as well. Just do all the movements of the hand and pretend you are playing the real organ and jump upwards or downwards for manual changes. This technique is a real time saver. You can practice on the table even during TV commercials. Imagine how much of your precious time that will save. Usually there are at least three commercials during a show or a movie each lasting at least 5 minutes. Practicing your manual changes this way will give you at least 15 minutes (most likely even more). This amount of time is surely more than enough to master at least one difficult manual change in the piece.

If you follow my suggestions, your accuracy will improve over time. Try to plan this in advance, practice slowly and repeatedly. When you hit the wrong note when changing manuals, always go back, correct the mistake and practice not until you play it correctly but until you can’t make the same mistake again. In other words, make your manual changes automatic. Take advantage of the piano or the table and the difficult jumps will become easy to you.

Was this article useful for you or not? Do you have any other questions regarding any aspect of organ playing? Please share them in your comments.  

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Much of organ music is written for more than one manual. Quite often manual changes are required within composition which might be challenging to perform accurately. Organist may hit the wrong note accidentally, especially at the beginning stages of organ playing. This is especially dangerous when jumping over two or more manuals. Just like any other skill in organ art, careful planning and practice are needed to achieve accuracy in manual changes. Today I would like to give you some tips which will help you to avoid hitting the wrong notes when changing manuals.

Mark manual changes in the score. Although it might be tempting to have a clean score, it is always best to write in manual changes in your music, however obvious they might be. Mark not only the graphical representation but also write in which manual you will use. For example, if the right hand has to jump from the first manual to the second, write in the exact manual separation by drawing a line. In addition, at the exact place when manual change has to occur, write “II” in your score. This is indeed necessary to avoid confusion when performing the piece in public, at least until you will have more experience in organ playing.

Stay close to keyboards when changing manuals. Once you know the place where the switch has to be made, make sure that you only lift your hand or hands as little as possible from the keyboards. The distance between the manuals is about 5 cm (sometimes more) so your hand has to make a rather noticeable movement in order to reach a different manual. This is even more obvious when jumping from the first manual to the third manual or vice versa. For example, the distance between the manuals on my organ is 6.7 cm (when a note on the lower manual is depressed). It is even greater when I have to reach the second manual diagonally – around 10 cm. I remember having a great trouble when practicing the last page of the notorious Motto Ostinato from Sunday Music by Petr Eben (the most important 20th century Czech composer). This particular episode has frequent jumps over three manuals which make an astounding echo effect on the organ. I managed to learn it with accuracy only when staying close to the keyboard.

Practice slowly. If there is one single most important point about accuracy in manual changes, it is slow practice. Practicing slowly can make a big difference in a challenging spot. Try to overcome the temptation playing technically difficult pieces in a concert tempo frequently. By applying slow motion in your practice you will be able to control your movements much better. You see, at the beginning stages of organ playing, your hand movements are still not precise and fast or medium tempo does not help here at all. In fact, you should take such practicing tempo that will not allow any or almost any mistakes and you will feel comfortable. It is precisely slow practice which helped me master the abovementioned page of Motto Ostinato.

Practice repeatedly. If you managed to play the difficult spot with manual change correctly, do not be satisfied with only one correct attempt. Instead, practice this episode repeatedly 10 or more times until it becomes automatic. Try to achieve the level when you can play correctly with precision and accuracy at least three times in a row. This means that if you play correctly twice and make a mistake on a third attempt, you have to start over and begin counting from one. I know from my personal experience just how frustrating this can be sometimes. Do not get discouraged by your mistakes. They simply mean that you need to take a slower tempo. If you insist upon making manual changes automatic, when the time comes, you will be ready to perform the piece with confidence.

This article continues in Part 2. If you found the first part useful, I suggest you read the second part also because you will find even more helpful tips there.
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