One of the main things that keeps many organists from practicing is the lack of time. They say they would want to play the organ more but their job takes so much of their time, not to mention commuting, their families and other important tasks they have to do during the day. However, I believe it is possible to squeeze in more organ practice time in your day. Try applying the following 6 tips and you will be able to spend more time playing organ without sacrificing your other important responsibilities.
1) Prioritize your time. Take a look at your daily tasks and try to make a list of them on the sheet of paper. You will have 10 or more things that you do each day. You will be surprised that some of the things are not really important. So number this list from the most important to the ones that can be omitted. This way you will be able to have more time for organ practice.
2) Practice during TV commercials. You may not realize this but TV commercials might be a great time to practice organ playing. Usually there are 3 or more times when commercials are shown during a show or a film. Each commercial might last at least 5 minutes. This gives you to play the organ at least for 15 minutes or even longer.
3) Practice longer on the weekends. If you work from 8 to 5 on weekdays, then the most productive time for your organ playing might be the weekends. You can spend even 2-3 hours on the organ bench this way. However, make sure you rest every 30 minutes, stretch, have a drink and relax your mind and body.
4) Limit distractions. If you look at the usual day of an ordinary person, you will soon notice at least several distractions which are serious wasters of time and energy, if used not efficiently. These are various social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, Youtube and many others. Note that I am not suggesting you should avoid them completely. Just check your email twice a day. The same applies for social networking sites. You can spend the time saved on your organ practice.
5) Get up earlier or stay up longer. The great times for organ playing during the day are mornings or evenings. 30 minutes might be all you need for practice. Note that you can spend this time doing other important tasks that you need to accomplish which in turn will allow for more organ practice time during the day.
6) Have a constant practice schedule. Whatever time you choose for your organ playing, make it constant. Put it on your calendar so that you will know the exact time each day for playing the organ. Let your family members know about your commitment and ask for their support.
Although these tips may seem self-evident, only surprisingly small number of people put them into action. Many of them would want to spend more time practicing the organ but they lack perseverance to see their commitment through. Just like anything worthwhile, organ practice takes conscious effort from the organist's part but if you stay focused on your goal, you too, can do it.
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.
For many adult organists having enough time during the day to practice the organ is perhaps one of the greatest challenges. I have written earlier about how to find time for organ playing . These tips might help you to realize that even when there is not much practice time available, playing organ is still possible. However, you will be surprised that actually organ practicing often can be done even without any organ at all. I hope people who have a very limited access to actual organ will find this article especially useful. Please read on to find out my suggestions.
Let me start by remembering recent experience I had while preparing a new, long, and challenging program for a concert of choral music at the Madeleine church in Paris. I was supposed to play organ accompaniments (many of them with an advanced organ part) and some solo organ pieces on the choir organ at that church. I was given the music quite early in advance but circumstances were such that did not have enough time to practice this repertoire. So I felt like it might be a bit of a challenge to perform it with confidence.
Our concert was supposed to be on Tuesday afternoon, but I arrived at the hotel on Sunday afternoon. Because this church is very popular among tourist groups, I was not given any time to practice organ until the day of the concert. Imagine that – two and a half days without an organ right before the concert. Oh, and by the way, I played a full solo recital in my church with completely different music on Saturday the night before my trip to Paris. So I had to use my practice time wisely to be able to prepare multiple organ pieces .
I am writing all this not because I want you to think that I was cool or something but just because I would like you to appreciate the seriousness of my situation. However, I was quite confident that my system of practicing will not fail me. And sure enough, the concert went well, and was well received. So if you are curious to know what method I used for practicing organ without having access to it for two and a half days - here it is:
Because the bed of my hotel room was not high enough, I put a few cushions, pillows and other things that I could find on the edge of the bed. The height of it became similar to that of an organ bench. Then I pulled the table next to my bed so that I could put my music on it. I think you get the picture now: the bed became my organ bench, the table – music rack and keyboards, and the floor… the pedal board.
So I sat there pretending that I played the real organ and began practicing. I imagined that the edge of the table was my keyboard and played just as I would on a real instrument. I also moved my feet visualizing the pedal keys accordingly. It was an interesting experience – the music sounded in my head.
You see, it is all about visualization. They use it in sports and martial arts all the time. In boxing they call it “shadow boxing”, in karate - “kata”. The athletes don’t always practice their moves and techniques with a partner. Very often they practice on their own. They visualize their opponent or multiple opponents.
The same thing applies to basketball as well. I once read about an experiment with 3 groups of people who liked shooting a basket. Before the experiment their abilities were measured. Group A was told not to practice shooting basket and forget about it for a month. Group B had to practice shooting the basket for one hour every day for one month. Finally, Group C was supposed for one hour every day to visualize the movements in great detail without actually physically shooting the basket.
Their abilities were measured after one month. As you can imagine, Group A tested the same as before. Group B showed 24 percent of improvement. And here is the most interesting part – Group C showed 23 percent of improvement. That’s only one percent less than that of Group B who were physically shooting the basket for a month.
I hope you can now see the power of visualization. This kind of practice not only gives you same results as you would be physically playing the real organ but also develops your mental focus abilities and inner hearing. It is important that we try to hear in our minds the music that we pretend to be playing. We don’t just go through the motions, so to speak. I am sure that practicing on the table and on the floor without mental visualization would give you some improvement, but not nearly as much as if you would practice with your inner hearing.
Let’s take another real life example: About a month ago I taught a group of adult students in our organ studio. These were adults, some of them professors at the university with some piano but no organ experience. Usually the way we worked was such that one person would play exercises from our method book , I would comment, correct the mistakes, play myself to show my students how it supposed to sound. While one person was playing, others would be watching him or her and make mental notes of the mistakes, my comments so on.
But one day I decided to do an experiment with them which would prove if my system was any good. And so, while one student was playing, others also were playing at the same time but on the table and on the floor. After a while I asked them to switch and another student took the place on the organ bench. Strangely enough, even though the exercise was new to her and she only practiced it on the table, she did not make any mistakes at all on the real organ. I thought maybe that was because she played only the manual part and that she will have more trouble with the pedals .
After a while it was her turn to play the pedal line of that exercise on the organ and as you can feel, she did it fine, too. So you see, it works not only for the finger work but also for pedal part as well.
This method of organ playing also saves time because we are not fixed to the location of the organ. Organ practice can be done anywhere where there is quiet. All you need is a table, a floor, your music, mental focus, and inner hearing. Of course, you can use this method to memorize music as well.
I hope my suggestions will be useful especially to organists who have very limited practice time on the actual organ.
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.
One of the most common reasons why people skip practicing the organ is that they don‘t have enough time. With all other important tasks and activities during the day it seems impossible to squeeze that extra time needed for organ practice. People who work from 8 to 5 are often too exhausted to play the organ after work. Our families also require much attention. Is there any recipe or solution how to find time for organ playing? Read on to find out.
First of all, we have to set firm priorities what is most important for us during the day. If organ playing is a hobby for you, then obviously you have other responsibilities every day. These tasks need to be done first, in order to properly fulfill our duties. If you love organ playing and tend to sacrifice other more important things in your life then you should consider setting firm priorities.
I am not suggesting that organ practice does not need any sacrifice at all as you will later find out; I am just saying that first things come first.
Do not prioritize your family. Your family is the most important thing you have in life and they need your special attention and care. If your spouse asks for your help and you are in the middle of your organ practice, don’t say “I will help you when I am done with my organ playing”. Or if your kids ask you to look at their homework, do it right away.
However, we also need to think about what we do when we work. That way we could be more productive in our work, accomplish more, and perhaps have more time for organ playing at the end of the day. Are we working seriously and staying focused on the task at hand all the time or we are reading our email, and newspapers, checking facebook, watching youtube videos during our work day?
All of this takes precious time. I may say, “It will just take a few minutes and I’ll be done”, but in reality I even won’t notice how I may spend 30 minutes or more doing things that are not necessary.
You see, these 30 minutes can be all you need for your organ practice after work. Some people work at evenings so they could practice organ in the morning.
What about playing organ on weekends? Sure you could play more on Saturdays and Sundays. Usually our weekends are not that full of activities and we may try to practice even for 2 hours. That would be great. Imagine, how your organ playing would improve, if you could practice that much every weekend.
You are probably wandering what is the minimum time required for organ playing? On weekdays, perhaps minimum time could be 30 minutes of wise and productive practice . You could work on your keyboard and pedal technique playing Hanon exercises , pedal scales , and sight reading for 30 minutes every evening and practice for 2 hours on weekends. This could be all you need to see constant improvement.
Even if full practice time is unavailable for you, repeating for 15-20 minutes what you learned the day before could be much better than to skip practice that day altogether.
Some people would rather practice in the mornings, other later in the evenings. Of course, this requires a little of sacrifice. But if you have a goal in mind, if you are trully passionate about organ, it is probobly worth it.
Do whatever works best for you. Whatever time you choose for organ playing try to make it constant. Put it on your calendar. This way you will know exactly when to practice. You will have a constant time for it and you will not have to worry about how to squeeze it into your schedule every day. Just write it down.
I know that we are all different and our needs are different, too. Every person has to find a special solution. But these are my personal recommendations and I hope you will find at least some of them useful.
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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