It seems there are a lot of discussions about the value and the nature of sight-reading these days. That's great! I really believe that over time it can empower you to surpass your current expectations of what you are capable of.
I'm very proud of the achievements of each and every subscriber and student of mine who share their experiences with me. And this is just the beginning. If you continue this practice, miracles WILL happen to your technique, music theory skills, and general musicianship. Last night we had a practice with our organ studio Unda Maris. At the end of practice, I told my students about these daily sigh-reading pieces I include in my English articles. So I explained what would be the benefits of sight-reading just 5 minutes a day for 30 days! They made a pact to try this experiment for 30 days. They all agreed that 5 minutes is something almost anybody can commit to. We'll see... Shall you join too sight-reading from your hymnal or from my selections in a methodical manner that I teach here? I don't think you need to wait for New Year's resolution to start this practice. Just start it now. By the end of the year, the experiment will be over and you will have formed a new important habit of sight-reading. Only 5 minutes (15 minutes maximum if you see that you have more time that day)! Drip, drip, drip like water on the stone over time... Thanks to Franco sent me a link to the article about the scientific analysis of sight-reading. If you ever were curious about whether the success in sight-reading depends on your innate talents or is it a skill which can be acquired with practice, I strongly recommend it. In this article you will also find out fascinating data of what related and unrelated abilities help to develop great sight-reading skills. Sight-reading: Movement 3: Allegro (p. 9) from the Trio Sonata No. 1 in Eb major, BWV 525 by J.S. Bach
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Charles Talmadge: I am learning many things from your daily messages. Many thanks. I am assistant organist here at All Saints by the Sea Episcopal Church in Santa Barbara, California (4 man./60 ranks). The sanctuary dates from 1900 and we are the third largest church in the Los Angeles Diocese. Steve O'Connor took my photo and is the excellent Music Director. Harlene wrote me the following message:
"My dream for playing the organ is to be a more than just adequate church organist. I've been playing the organ for several years now in church, but I still consider myself a pianist who is playing the organ. I guess what I'm doing is okay, but I want to do so much more. One thing holding me back is that I work full time and have a couple of part-time jobs, also, so finding time to practice is difficult. Another thing is not having an actual teacher to show me how to play correctly, although I am learning a lot from your lessons. Again, I just don't have a lot of time to study them and practice. Any help and advice you can give me would be greatly appreciated. Thank you." Here's what I wrote to Harlene: Finding time for organ playing can really be difficult for a working person. But the thing is that you don't necessarily have to practice for several hours a day. In fact, short sprints of 15 minutes done daily might be something that almost every person can fit into their schedule. Also you can practice more on the weekends when there's more free time available. Sometimes you can practice just using the score but without the actual instrument (visualizing the activity and imagining the sound inside your head). This saves time and develops inner hearing. Concerning finding a teacher: these days when so much learning is amplified by technology, you can be in one part of the world while your teacher is in the opposite part of the world. It even doesn't matter where you live as long as you have internet connection available. That's why I have started teaching organ playing online so that people like you who don't have the resources and a good and experienced teacher in their area can still enjoy the learning and the practice. The first step is to admit to ourselves that we need this, that this activity enriches our lives and the lives of those around us. What do you think? Do you also feel this obstacle to find time for self-improvement (and not only in organ playing)? And what helps you do it nonetheless? Your insights and personal experiences will surely be of tremendous help to others for whom this obstacle stops them from reaching their full potential. Please share your thoughts in comments. Sight-reading: Concert Fantasy on the St. Venceslas chorale by Josef Klička (1855-1937) who was a Czech organist, violinist, conductor, pedagogue, and composer in the late Romantic style. Not having a strong foundation is not the reason why you can't progress in organ playing. Not developing good practice habits and techniques is also not the reason for this.
If you have started playing organ only recently without having a privilege to work systematically on your manual and pedal technique, it's not too late to change this. The first step is deciding that you need this, that you can imagine yourself taking on a professional attitude towards practice. It doesn't cost anything extra and it doesn't take any more time. The only thing that's needed is to care enough to be content for failure again and again and again. Because you will fail. But the person who fails the most and still continues to practice, wins. Sight-reading: Kyrie I (p. 1) from the Mass for the Parishes by François Couperin (1668-1733), one of the most influential French Classical composers and organists. Dinko, one of my subscribers yesterday sent a question concerning sight-reading. He writes that he is new at learning to play organ, it is just one year that he has started learning how to play keyboard instrument at all.
For him the most frustrating thing is that he's able to learn to play hymns in all 4 voices but he's not able to follow it in the score while playing. He memorizes the music and plays without looking at the sheet. Dinko is working on sight-reading 371 chorale harmonizations by J.S.Bach and started "reading" it like a book when commuting to and from the work. He noticed some improvements in reading a single voice, but reading all 4 is still extremely hard to him. If any of my subscribers are frustrated like Dinko in learning how to sight-read hymns, here's is my advice: You need to stick to your 371 chorales for a while (or your hymnal, or my daily sight-reading selections). But first practice just one voice. Do this until it's easy. Maybe for 100 or so chorales. Then come back to the beginning and play another voice and so on until every voice will be played. Then practice all two-part combinations as well as three-part combinations and only then all parts together. If you do this for 100 chorales in each of the 15 steps, I have no doubt you will succeed in being able to sight-read any hymn you want (perhaps even more). Another thing which would help you simultaneously is beginning to learn some chords and harmony and start looking for them in the scores. This way you will start to understand what you play. It's like reading books in another language - you can easily learn to read books and pronounce words, phrases, and sentences in a foreign language but if you don't know what each word means, then you can't really appreciate the full impact of the book. The same is with music - scales, intervals and chords are part of the musical language in which composers and performers communicate. Whatever you do, avoid the temptation to look at the fingers and at the keys. Look only at the score. Don't lift the fingers off the keyboard and keep the contact with the keys at all times. If you will play extremely slowly, it will actually be quite enjoyable. The tempo will take care of itself later on when you are ready to play a little faster. By the way, you can do what Dinko does - read the music without touching a keyboard. Just look at the score and try to hear the music in your mind. This really helps a lot. This is called mental practice. It's similar to what basketball players do when they visualize the ball and the basket and how they throw the ball and how the ball hits the basket without touching the ball. According to one experiment, this practice (one hour a day daily for a month) produces 22 % of improvement in a month (as opposed to physically throwing the ball which gets them 25 % of improvement). Incredible, isn't it? Just 3 % difference! I find it quite inspiring... How do you learn to sight-read on the organ? Is the process for you as frustrating as for Dinko? Are my daily sight-reading selections helpful to you? I would love to hear your story. Sight-reading: Praeludiums Nos. 1-7 (p. 2-3) by Johannes Barend Litzau (1822-1893), a Romantic Dutch organist and composer. Recently I received a message from my Australian student John (an engineer by profession), who wanted to share an interesting experience he had the other night. I think he makes really good points in his message so I decided to recount them in this post because perhaps other organists are in a similar situation.
John writes that he has been asked to play for the wedding some 9 days from today, including some quiet music for 15 minutes before the service. He was going through his music folder looking for pieces he already knows that would be suitable, including a few hymns. He had this profound realization of how his repertoire has grown! It has only been 2.5 years since he started playing the organ (Ich ruf zu dir by Bach was his the first piece), and he could only really play 2 or 3 other pieces at that point (and not very well). He now has a short list of 11 pieces he could play before this wedding, and that is much more than he needs, however he thought it would be wise to have plenty of back up in case the bride is late! And there are many more pieces he can play apart from these 11 pieces! It is so easy for him to feel overwhelmed when we talk about so many composers and pieces, many of them he has never heard of before! But this night was a very special realization of his growth. John also writes that unfortunately he knows deep down that he would be struggling to pick any one of these pieces and play them really well immediately. He was a little bit surprised how hard it was to play a couple of these pieces that he hadn't played for over a year. He knows these pieces were once part of his repertory but it will require some "re-learning" and practice. For him, life is about keeping a healthy balance between recognizing some good progress and achievements, and this realization of how far away from “excellent” his playing is, and how much work there is to be done to broaden his repertoire and discover other composers… He is so excited about further developing his skills including sight-reading, so that more and more of the organ repertoire becomes accessible to him! I thanked him for sharing his experience in reflecting back on his achievements. I wrote that for him progress seems so slow because we are in the middle of it. But when you step back and watch yourself from the distance (perhaps through recording or video), you will notice how much stronger your playing has become since your humble beginnings. One thing he writes about is particularly true - regardless of how much of repertoire we have accumulated over the years, it takes a significant time to refresh them to the concert level so we have to plan our practice accordingly if we are asked to play in public and want to refresh our old repertoire. Have you ever had a similar experience like John? How do you realize that you are progressing in organ playing? I'd love to read your thoughts in the comments. Sight-reading: Praeludium F Ionian by Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck (1562-1621), the Great Orpheus of Amsterdam, also called Maker of German Organists (Deutsche Organistenmacher). Today I'd like to share with you the 5th and final part of my video series on Creating Processional March in C major for manuals only. If you want to access all videos in one place, you can do it here. The score is completed now. You can print out here.
Sight-reading: Fantasie by Leon Boëllmann (1862-1897), a famous French Romantic composer and organist. Choose a comfortable tempo in which you can avoid making mistakes (for most people this means extremely slowly). Beginner organists may sight-read only one part at time. Intermediate level organists - two parts at a time. Post your time to comments. Today I'd like to share with you Part 4 of my video series on Creating Processional March in C major for manuals only. If you want to access all videos in one place, you can do it here.
Sight-reading: Böumgarter (p. 25) from Buxheimer Orgelbuch (ca. 1450), a German Renaissance collection of organ music. Play this piece at a tempo, in which you can control it and avoid making mistakes. Assign the two lower parts for the left hand and don't use pedals. Watch out for voice crossings between the tenor and the bass. Post your time to comments. Our video series in Creating Processional March is moving along quite smoothly. Video 1 set the tone for the entire composition for which I had to create a theme first. In video 2, I created Part B for this piece and managed to get out of some quite problematic situations with voice leading. In video 3, I will show you how to transpose Part A to the Dominant key which in itself will present additional challenges with regards to voice range. Sight-reading:
Fantasy on an Old English Carol by Arthur Eaglefield Hull (1876-1928) who was an English music critic, writer, composer and organist. I hope you found Part 1 of Creating Processional March helpful and are getting excited to test your creative skills. Part 2 of Creating Processional March is ready for you to watch here. We'll deal with Part B in our composition which according to our plan has to be in e minor. In this video, you will see the problems I got into when trying to connect Part A from video 1 with Part B. The goal was to create a smooth bass line and avoid forbidden parallel octaves, fifths, augmented intervals, parallel motion of all voices, and accommodate the reach of wider intervals between the two hands since it's a piece for manuals only . It wasn't always easy, but the end was worth it. Sight-reading:
Duo III (p. 3) by Antonio de Cabezón (1510-1566), a blind Spanish Renaissance composer and organist. A few days ago my good friend Dr. Steven Monrotus asked me to create a few Processional Marches that he could play on organs without pedals - for manuals only. From his message it was evident to me that he would gladly create them himself if only he knew how to do it. In order to help people like Steven, I decided to create a few videos showing my process of creating a Processional March. Part I is ready for you to watch now. In this video, I will deal with the first section A of the March (there will be total of 5 sections in this March: ABACA). I will share with you the score of this piece once it's completed. I hope you will find it useful. Sight-reading: Andante and Toccata by August Klughardt (1847-1902), a German Romantic composer and conductor. |
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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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