 In this video I teach you how to master Prelude and Fugue in C Major, BWV 545 by J.S. Bach in the most efficient way - in 9 steps. Here is the score with fingering and pedaling, if you want to practice it yourself.
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 Vidas Pinkevicius performs this online organ recital on Billerbeck Dom sample set by Sonus Paradisi. Program: 0:00 Introduction 2:55 1. Marche pour la Ceremonie des Turcs (Jean-Baptiste Lully) Score with fingering and pedaling: https://secrets-of-organ-playing.mysh... 7:37 2. Prelude and Fugue in C Major, BWV 531 (Johann Sebastian Bach) Score with fingering and pedaling: https://secrets-of-organ-playing.mysh... 17:13 3. An Wasserflussen Babylon, BWV 653 (J.S. Bach) Score: https://www.sheetmusicplus.com/title/... 24:14 4. Improvisation on Psalm 1 31:38 5. Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring (J.S. Bach) Score with fingering and pedaling: https://secrets-of-organ-playing.mysh... 37:05 6. Trio No. 5 (Juozas Naujalis) 7. Suite Gothique, Op. 25 (Leon Boellman) 42:15 I. Introduction-Chorale Score with fingering and pedaling: https://secrets-of-organ-playing.mysh... 44:39 II. Menuet Gothique 47:43 III. Priere a Notre Dame Practice score with fingering and pedaling: https://secrets-of-organ-playing.mysh... 52:35 IV. Toccata Score with fingering and pedaling: https://secrets-of-organ-playing.mysh... If you like my music making, you can support me on Patreon and get free organ CD's at https://patreon.com/secretsoforganpla... Buy me coffee: https://www.paypal.me/VPinkevicius My Hauptwerk setup: https://www.organduo.lt/tools.html Total Organist - the most comprehensive organ training program online: https://www.organduo.lt/total-organist Secrets of Organ Playing - When You Practice, Miracles Happen! https://organduo.lt  Thank you everyone for participating! You all made us very happy with your entries. We have all selected the following winners. You can congratulate them here.
 I hope you will enjoy practicing this beautiful chorale prelude by Johannes Brahms. I have prepared a practice score with complete fingering and pedaling written in which will help you save many hours, practice efficiently and achieve a perfect legato touch. PDF score. Intermediate level. 6 pages. Thanks to Jeremy Owens for transcribing the fingering and pedaling from the video. This piece is free for Total Organist students. Check it out here  I hope you will enjoy practicing this beautiful chorale prelude by Johannes Brahms. I have prepared a practice score with complete fingering and pedaling written in which will help you save many hours, practice efficiently and achieve a perfect legato touch. PDF score. Basic level. 2 pages. Thanks to Jan Pennell for transcribing the fingering and pedaling from the video. This piece is free for Total Organist students. Check it out here  These 2 short little gems are representative of German Baroque composer's Friedrich Wilhelm Zachow's choral writing style - chorale theme is treated in imitation between the voices like a small fugue. Perfect for preludes before the church service. PDF score. Basic level. 1 page. Thanks to Diana Danilova for transcribing the music and the fingering from the video! My early fingering will save you lots of hours and help you practice efficiently and effortlessly with correct articulate legato touch. This piece is free for Total Organist students. Check it out here
Vidas: Hello and welcome to Secrets of Organ Playing Podcast!
Ausra: This is a show dedicated to helping you become a better organist. V: We’re your hosts Vidas Pinkevicius... A: ...and Ausra Motuzaite-Pinkeviciene. V: We have over 25 years of experience of playing the organ A: ...and we’ve been teaching thousands of organists online from 89 countries since 2011. V: So now let’s jump in and get started with the podcast for today. A: We hope you’ll enjoy it! V: Let’s start episode 603 of Secrets of Organ Playing Podcast. This question was sent by Pieter, and he writes, Dear Vidas, Thank you for your email with week 11 of the sight reading course attached. I am persevering with the daily routine and I notice first of all a much greater stability and confidence with rhythm. Some of the figures in the exercises are complex from a sight reading perspective but this has definitely improved over the weeks. I think notation accuracy was not a major problem for me but I still have to be careful to observe accidentals etc. It is very easy to miss repeated ones. I am greatly enjoying the routine of the course and am always a little curious as to what the new challenges will be week on week. I will of course contact you if there are any queries but for now it is all very clear and the approach you take is very logical. My very best wishes, Pieter V: So Pieter is taking our Organ Sight Reading Master Course, Ausra, right? A: Wonderful. V: And he seems to get a great deal of enjoyment and also results from it. A: Well, I think it's very beneficial to spend some time every day on doing sight reading. V: You know, just recently these last few days, I was also beginning to pick up my sight reading routine again. It’s quite difficult to do it properly and regularly when you are doing many recitals every month and mastering many kinds of organ pieces regularly every week and uploading them to YouTube and perfecting them. But, I’ve still convinced that doing regular sight reading exercises will help me and anyone else in the long run, right Ausra? A: Yes. I remember a few summers ago, I spent in the village with my parents and I didn’t have an access to an organ, so I brought with me a few volumes of classical sonatas. So I sight read whole sonatas by Mozart and whole sonatas by Beethoven. And actually, it was fun and it was really beneficial. V: Absolutely. Sometimes people don’t realise the power of sight reading they have under their fingertips. Like for me, my eventual goal is to sight read an organ recital. A: Wow! What would you play on that kind of recital? V: Let’s say Widor symphony. Or Vierne. A: Maybe some Fantasy by Max Reger? V: Anything, yeah, anything that people would request. You know, some organists online, when they play live recitals, they take requests from their audience. And sometimes they take requests and their fans leave comments with their favorite pieces. And for the next recital, this organist would learn this piece, or a few pieces, you know? A: Well, it would be more fun if right before recital, audience could choose their program for particular recital. V: Yeah, post like a poll with some choices in some categories like baroque, romantic, contemporary, or 20th century and then contemporary, and plus improvisation obviously, and then people could choose, and I could play anything they choose. That would be really fun! A: Well, good luck with that! V: I’m not at the level just yet, obviously, where I could sight read a recital. But I am at the level where I could sight read a soprano part for the recital. A: Good! I think I could do that, too! V: Yes. A lot of organists that I know have decent sight reading skills. Sometimes better than we do, right, Ausra? A: Well, I’m pretty good at sight reading, but it’s still not enough to be really good. V: So, I just tried to sight read live and stream it on YouTube for a few days in a row, just soprano part. I took, I think Sweelinck’s pieces - Variations on Allein Gott - and this is a very long piece, with I think 14 or 17 variations. And I enjoyed playing and counting and playing at the concert tempo actually, the right tempo, with good quality registration, with nice sample set from I would think Rotterdam, St. Laurenskerk, by Sonus Paradisi. But only the soprano part, you know? It’s like one single instrument was playing. One melodic instrument. A: Yes. You love to do that kind of stuff, as I noticed. V: Yeah, and after awhile, when I go through all those collections of my favorite music, I can go back and sight read alto part. A: And then maybe to put things together, or not? V: Not yet, then the third step would be the tenor line, and then the fourth part would be the pedals. And then the fifth step would be soprano and alto part together. But that is many weeks away. A: Okay, we will see how it will go. V: Because my goal is not to master each individual piece, but my goal is to be able to be able to reach this level where I could sit down and play whatever I want at the first sight reading test. A: Well don’t you think you are a little bit too old to get such a kind of skill? V: As long as I’m living, I think I can improve. This is encouragement for senior organists, too. A: Yes, but it will take you many years, I think. V: Longer than… A: Sure, sure. V: ...in my childhood days. A: Yes. V: But now I have another advantage over my early days, because I’m focused. I know what my goals are. Remember when we were little kids, 6 years old, 7 years old, even 10 years old, do you think we could do some focused practice back then? A: Well, actually I don’t know about you because I didn’t know you at that age, but I was pretty good with focus since very early in my age. I didn’t have that problem. V: What was your goal in music playing, let’s say when you were 7 years old? A: Well, whatever my teacher gave me to learn, that’s what I learned. V: So that was not your goal then. A: Well, but you know, I always knew what I will want to play next. And if my teacher would ask, I would say that I want to play this, this, and that. V: Mm hm. So you had a good teacher. A: Yes. V: Me too. So anyway, we are now at the age of whatever, we are however old we are, and we also need challenges. Every age level needs challenges. Larger or smaller, it doesn’t matter, but it has to keep you on the edge and this goal has to be interesting enough for you to encourage you to get up out of bed in the morning. A: Well, yes, but people can have various goals. V: Such as? A: Just to live through a day and enjoy it. V: Yes, that’s one goal. To reach the end of the day. A: That’s right. V: Mm, for me, I need more adrenaline, you know? A: Well, I enjoy a slow life. V: I mean adrenaline, not like riding g a motorbike through the cliff and jumping from roof to roof, but challenges like this keep me also, keep me motivated to continue to practice. A: Well I enjoy looking at my flowers, watering them, observe my environment. It makes me happy. V: Very good. You feel relaxed like this? A: Yes, sure. I don’t need to count my YouTube channel subscribers like you do. V: Yes, she’s making fun of me of course. And I’m guilty of this, too. A: But I love practicing the organ and playing the organ. But it seems that Vidas sometimes enjoys more counting how many pieces he played, how many hours he had posted, and as I mentioned before, how many new subscribers he got, and so on and so forth. For me, there is all this not as important. I enjoy actually process. Because I am not practicing for anybody else, I practice for myself. V: So guys, you see, we are different. Right, Ausra? A: Yes. V: And I believe our subscribers are different. A: True. V: So if some people like what I’m teaching, staying focused and keeping yourself motivated with external goals, and accountability like public performances, then you can pay attention to what I’m saying. But if on the other hand, a person is more like Ausra, then of course, she can teach you some things, too. A: Well, let me make one remark about your teaching. Sometimes, it reminds me of preaching, not teaching. V: Define preaching. A: Like telling how many minutes per day you have to put on the YouTube channel, in order to get a larger audience. V: Oh, I know what you mean. Can I share this with our subscribers now? A: Please do. V: Okay. Before we recorded this conversation, we were talking about a strategy for Ausra’s channel, to grow it to reach 4,000 watch-hours in the past 12 months. Basically, within the year, she needs to reach 4,000 hours. This is 240,000 minutes. (laughs) 240,000 minutes per year, of watch-hours. I mean, total number of minutes that anybody watched your videos. Does this make sense? A: Well, not really, because when you start naming all those minutes and seconds and hours and all those numbers, my brain just shuts down. V: You know why? It’s important this number. Maybe not those 240,000, but 4,000 hours, watch-hours. Because this is one of the requirements that YouTube has since 2018, if you want to monetize your videos, your channel. If you want to show ads on your videos and get rewarded for people watching them. So one of the requirements is to reach 1,000 subscribers, and another part of this requirement is to reach 4,000 watch-hours within the past year. A: That’s why I don’t watch your videos, because we have all those ads before the real performance, and it usually advertises things like diets. And I’m thinking, do they really know that I am fat and I need to go on a diet? V: Now, you see ads because you don’t have a YouTube premium account. I have YouTube premium. I pay extra for this privilege, but I don’t watch ads. A: Well, I rather be just a regular user but don’t have to pay for it. V: I could pay for you. A: No thank you. V: I see. So anyway, this strategy to reach 4,000 watch-hours in the last 12 months is something we have to figure out. How often should we post, and how long the video should be? And it turns out that the longer, the better. Because if you post short videos, then even if you have, like, 100 views, you will have like maybe 100 minutes. A: But still, I’d rather prefer to sit down at the organ bench and practice instead of just keep counting as you do nowadays. V: Absolutely. So after we’re done recording this conversation, we will go to practice. And my hope is that Ausra will let me to record her practice, longer practice I mean, and she would get 15 or even 30 minutes of watch-hours from one organ practice lesson today. A: I guess I have no choice, just to obey you. V: No, it’s an experiment. And see if people will criticize you. And if not, you can continue, if you like. A: Am I your guinea pig? V: In a sense, we all are our own guinea pigs, so I do experiments with myself easily, and when it works, I can advise other people. A: And now it’s not enough just to do experiments with yourself, so you are involving me. V: Okay, guys. This was Vidas. A: And Ausra. V: (laughs) We will go to practice now, and we will of course report the results afterwards, in the next podcast conversation. Thank you guys. And remember, when you practice, A: Miracles happen. V: This podcast is supported by Total Organist - the most comprehensive organ training program online. A: It has hundreds of courses, coaching and practice materials for every area of organ playing, thousands of instructional videos and PDF's. You will NOT find more value anywhere else online... V: Total Organist helps you to master any piece, perfect your technique, develop your sight-reading skills, and improvise or compose your own music and much much more… A: Sign up and begin your training today at organduo.lt and click on Total Organist. And of course, you will get the 1st month free too. You can cancel anytime. V: If you like our organ music, you can also support us on Patreon and get free CD’s. A: Find out more at patreon.com/secretsoforganplaying  Today I was looking for some March to start my next online recital and remembered this wonderful March pour la Ceremonie des Turcs by Jean Baptiste Lully. I love it so much not only because it is delightful and masterful music but also because it is written in minor key. You don't see minor keys in marches every day so it's twice as fun. This piece is is very famous - you can hear it performed with period instruments in a French movie Tout le matin du monde (All the Mornings in the World) with Gerard Depardieu. I used to play this march from an open score with 5 staves and French clefs but today I arranged it for the organ notation so that other organists could also play it. Hope you will enjoy it! PDF score. Basic level. 2 pages. This piece is free for Total Organist students. SOPP602: Your organ duet recital was wonderful… so inspiring. You and Ausra are a great team.6/30/2020
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Vidas: Hello and welcome to Secrets of Organ Playing Podcast! Ausra: This is a show dedicated to helping you become a better organist. V: We’re your hosts Vidas Pinkevicius... A: ...and Ausra Motuzaite-Pinkeviciene. V: We have over 25 years of experience of playing the organ A: ...and we’ve been teaching thousands of organists online from 89 countries since 2011. V: So now let’s jump in and get started with the podcast for today. A: We hope you’ll enjoy it! V: Let’s start episode 602 of Secrets of Organ Playing Podcast. This question was sent by Wendy, and she writes: “Hello Vidas, Your organ duet recital was wonderful… so inspiring. You and Ausra are a great team. Many thanks for sharing your huge talents. I am one of 3 organists who play for services at a Catholic church in Ipswich Queensland Australia...St Mary's. My training is as a pianist. I don't have an organ at home and my organ pedal skills are very limited. Enjoy your coffee!! Best wishes, Wendy” V: So, Ausra, Wendy sent us a donation for our recital! Remember? A: Yes! Thank you very much Wendy! We enjoyed our coffee that you gave us. V: Coffee is important, right? We have to keep up our strength before and after the recital. A: True! V: Do you enjoy decaf coffee or regular, Ausra? A: Well, I enjoy decaf more. V: Me, too. So, we tend to drink all kinds of decaf coffee, usually in the morning, but also in the middle of the day sometimes, after a good day’s work, too. A: Yes, but not so much now, when the CoViD-19 is all around us. V: You know, while thinking about this recital, our 12th recital, which was so inspiring to Wendy and I hope to other people as well, it’s so wonderful that people are appreciating our organ playing as a duet, right? A: Yes! We are very excited to play together. It’s so much fun. Although it’s probably harder to play a duet rather than solo work, but it’s more satisfying, at least for me. V: Would you prefer playing solo or as a duet? A: Well, I like to share responsibility during a recital, so I think it’s nice to play a duet. V: But I mean if we play together in one recital, would you rather play solo or as a duet? A: I could go either way. V: So, yeah! Usually people who watch our videos enjoy looking at our solo performances as well as four-hand and four-feet performances as well. This is really very exciting to watch a couple of organists make music together and do all kinds of Secrets of Organ Playing tricks. A: True! So do you enjoy playing duets? V: Of course, playing duets with you is one of the highlights of my day. A: Then we should play more often together! V: What are we playing? Can you share the secrets behind the scenes with our subscribers right now? A: You mean our solo work or our duets? V: Yes, as a duet. A: Well, we will have to play two recitals in August if the COVID-19 won’t prevent those from happening, you know… so we will play the huge program, which will include Mozart—two pieces by Mozart—one by Beethoven, then one piece written by Vidas, four pieces written on the theme of Lithuanian folk songs. And what else, Vidas, do you remember? V: I think we need to specify what kind of Mozart pieces we are playing. A: Well, “D Major Sonata” for four hands, and we are learning the “Eine Kleine Nachtmusik.” V: This is a very famous piece. Sometimes people play it as a solo work arrangement, sometimes as a duet, too. A: So basically, this is the one piece on our program, so… V: Originally it is written either for string quartet or string orchestra, so we can play it easily as a duet—two parts each. A: Yes, but we need to do it and start learning actually, not to talk about it, but to play more. V: You mean the third movement is very hard, right? A: Yes, it’s very fast. V: Yeah, that’s what I’m afraid of a little bit, too. On our Hauptwerk setup, the touch on these keyboards is very light. So there is no resistance like you would find in mechanical action organs. A: Well, we just need to turn on our tracker and practice on our tracker organ! V: And we do that sometimes. A: Yes. V: You know what? Maybe we could also share with our subscribers the fact that we might get a new organ frame, wooden frame! Remember, our friend yesterday, a carpenter, came over and he promised to build a wooden frame for our Hauptwerk setup. A: I think that will be great, because I was afraid that you are going to build one by yourself, and that might end up as a big disaster! V: Plus it would take me many weeks, and to do it with a regular saw, and our friend, the carpenter, has special equipment and gadgets and especially experience! A: True! V: And this way our Hauptwerk keyboards won’t be sliding backwards and forwards when you play Franck. A: Yes, true, because now the more difficult the piece, you play them more careful you need to be. V: Yeah, but it’s fun watching you play romantic music with these keyboards. A: Do I look like an elephant in a china shop? V: More like a hippopotamus on ice! A: Thanks for that! Good to know! V: Yes! So you guys will see it soon enough. Obviously, we’ll play an online recital as well, even though we are scheduled to play this piece August 1 in the festival in Anykščiai, Lithuania, and then later, August 23 in Rokiškis, Lithuania. But we obviously will play it online, first. A: Yes, we have to do that in order to practice. V: So, talking about Wendy’s concerns and challenges, I think she doesn’t have an organ at home, and this is a hindrance to her, and her pedal skills are very limited. What would you say to her, keeping in mind that she’s working as a Catholic church organists in Ipswich, Queensland, Australia? A: Well, one of the solutions would be to get a MIDI pedal board, and at least one keyboard. V: MIDI keyboard, like the ones we use for our Hauptwerk setup. A: Yes. V: And then you could connect those two things to your computer, usually MIDI keyboards connect via a USB cable, very simple, nothing else is required, but if you need to connect a MIDI pedal board, like we have at home, for example, you need a MIDI-to-USB converter. That is a special cable, another cable, that one side goes into the MIDI instrument, and another side goes into the USB of the computer. We use a USB hub, which actually is a powered hub. It connects to a power outlet, and it has many USB slots. We have two hubs, actually. One is with 10 USB slots, and another is with 7. And we need a lot of them. Right? Because we have many keyboards and other gadgets, too. A: True! Too many, I'm thinking. V: Yeah. And if we would plug only those to the computer, not into the power outlet, then the computer would probably be overheated, and it would consume too much power. But now, this hub is consuming the power outlet’s power, and it works just fine. So, we really recommend this. Right? A: Yes. V: If she doesn’t have an organ at home, yet, Wendy could maybe practice more in the church! A: Yes, that would be a possibility, of course we don’t know how far from the church she lives! V: Obviously not far enough, because she is playing there, at least, for services. A: Yes, but if you, let’s say, play for service once a week, maybe you don’t have to go to church every day. V: Probably not. Yes. As an emergency situation, I would also practice on the table. If nothing else is available, I would probably print out paper keyboards and pedal boards, and glue to them together. They are real size. You will find them in our website https://organduo.lt on the front page on the side bar on the right. Just scroll down, and you will find those paper keyboards and pedal boards. They’re very helpful for people who don’t have any instruments at home, at least temporarily. A: Yes, that might help actually. It’s better than not practicing at all. V: So, guys, please apply our tips in your practice. They really help. And keep sending us your questions; we love helping you grow. And stay tuned for our next online recital as a duet or a solo. We frequently post them on YouTube, so please feel free to subscribe to our YouTube channels. My channel, Secrets of Organ Playing, and Ausra’s channel as well. This was Vidas, A: And Ausra, V: And remember, when you practice, A: Miracles happen. V: This podcast is supported by Total Organist - the most comprehensive organ training program online. A: It has hundreds of courses, coaching and practice materials for every area of organ playing, thousands of instructional videos and PDF's. You will NOT find more value anywhere else online... V: Total Organist helps you to master any piece, perfect your technique, develop your sight-reading skills, and improvise or compose your own music and much much more… A: Sign up and begin your training today at organduo.lt and click on Total Organist. And of course, you will get the 1st month free too. You can cancel anytime. V: If you like our organ music, you can also support us on Patreon and get free CD’s. A: Find out more at patreon.com/secretsoforganplaying Total Organist and Secrets of Organ Playing Midsummer 50% Discount (until July 1).  Thank you everyone for participating! You all made us very happy with your entries. We have all selected the following winners. You can congratulate them here.
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