John Higgins asks a question about playing arpeggios in the piece:
If you are in a situation like John, I recommend to practice playing the chords consisting out of these notes. Play them together, without starting on the lowest or the highest note. Aim for at least 3 correct repetitions in a row and do it extremely slowly. Another technique which helps is transposition of these arpeggios. But don't start transposing to other keys right away. Instead, try to analyse the arpeggios mentally and understand what kind of chords they comprise. For example, in the above case, E-C-G-E-C-G-E-C is a C major root position chord and D-B-G-D-B-G-D-B is G major 1st inversion chord. Even better, you can identify each note not only as belonging to a particular chord but being a certain scale degree in this key (G major). For example, these two arpeggios would consist of 6-4-1-6-4-1-6-4 and 5-3-1-5-3-1-5-3. Naturally these chords are the subdominant chord (C major) and tonic 6th chord (G major). Since scale degrees really help "to translate" the music you are playing, I am pretty sure that playing them without looking at the fingers will become for you much easier as well. Ausra's Harmony Exercise:
Comments
Can an organist save the entire event? Watch the video below to find out what kind of musical adventure I was part of a week ago. I shared this story with my students of Become an Organist: Ausra's Harmony Exercise: "I am following your demonstration of chords, but I am not able to reproduce it so quickly. I would like to practice it step for step. Do you have some written material about this? I am very interested in it!" (Eberhard) I have found this book by Paul Hindemith extremely valuable. Minimum of text and rules, lots of exercises. Very practical. Especially, if you not only write the exercises but also play them. Do you have a question about harmony for Ausra? You can reach her by email. Is it possible with the help of the mysterious sounds of the pipe organ to create a musical story on the sufferings of Mary, mother of Christ, under the cross? This Saturday, February 20 at 6 pm at Vilnius University St. John's church for the first time in Lithuania I will improvise an organ recital "STABAT MATER". The basis of the concert will consist of musical poem being created on the spot after the themes and text of the Gregorian chant "Stabat Mater". The lovers of organ music with the help of colorful meditations will be exposed to the musical story which will reveal the poetic world of suffering suitable for Lent. The largest pipe organ at Vilnius University St. John's church allows me to create real musical canvases during which the listeners can see the scenes in their imagination. Some of my listeners like to listen to my improvisations with their eyes shut - this way they sort of disconnect from the environment in which the music is being created. But even with the eyes open, the special lighting of the organ can reveal their carving ornaments which becomes part of the experience keeping in mind that the pews in this church can be turned both sides - to the altar or to the organ. Ausra's Harmony Exercise: "Thanks very much for adding your harmony lessons to Vidas' organ coachings. I had hoped to start more focused harmony learning this month, but February is now more than half past. But with today's third review of this lesson, I finally get it. In addition it came to me that this is a method for changing from closed voicing to open voicing. Thanks again!" (Leon) Thanks Leon for taking action and trying out these exercises. I'm not saying it's easy to play a chord progression in 4 parts but over time this skill becomes one of the most important assets an organist can have. Over the next few days look forward for Vidas' story of how he recently experienced the need for harmony in one of the events at Vilnius University and how he literally saved the day because of that. Do you have a question about harmony for Ausra? You can reach her by email. As a result of my example, a few people have decided to start a blog about organ playing. I'm very happy for them because they help make the world a better place. With this in mind, Francois has a question about blogging and intellectual rights: "I know only about blog hosters who claim that the contents bloggers send are their property, or others that put automatically contents as free for all. Do you have recommendations about blog hosters that: - grant intellectual rights of blog owner AND - are not under GNU or other license?" On my site everything is free to share as long as a person doesn't charge for it and gives a link back. Links from other websites pointing to your own blog can be really helpful. So this could be the prerequisite for sharing information on your site. It doesn't make sense to me to forbid people to share it because they will do it anyway. In a connection economy, if you feed your network often enough, the network turns back and feeds you in many ways (in making a difference, in a community, in a privilege of doing work that matters). But first you have to be extremely generous with sharing your ideas. I hope you care enough to put yourself on the line. [Thanks to Francois] Ausra's Harmony Exercise: I have received the following question the other day from Mark and I think his situation is relevant to a lot of people so I decided to share it and my advice: "Personally, I would like help with "quick study" techniques, which means learning a piece more than just to sight reading standard, but perhaps less perfectly than for an exam. In other words, how do I learn a piece to play on Sunday morning before the service, without hours of practice? Incidentally, my sight reading, while not brilliant, is not too bad." What I find works best in addition to sight-reading a broad range of repertoire regularly is harmony. You see, if you understand harmony and voice leading, you can look at the composition of your choice and immediately understand the meaning of individual notes, intervals, and chords. This in turn helps to read the music in patterns which greatly speeds up the learning process because you can sort of PREDICT what will be played next. Note that I write "sort of predict" because of course all great music is unpredictable. But there are some patterns which over time can be found in many compositions of various composers and if you understand this, the music will suddenly start to make sense. So what you can do is not only to study these exercises that Ausra is creating but also look at the piece of music that you play and try to analyze it in terms of key changes, cadences, chord progressions, sequences etc. [Thanks to Mark] Ausra's Harmony Exercise: Welcome to episode 29 of Secrets of Organ Playing Podcast! Why does telling stories work so well when we want to demonstrate the organ, play recitals, or simply connect with people? Listen to inspiring conversation with the organ enthusiast John Higgins from South Australia: Go to conversation Ausra's Harmony Exercise: Have you ever had an experience when you play an organ in public and start losing your train of thought? You might not be very tensed or scared but suddenly you no longer have a sense of the musical phrase or harmonic progression that you're playing. What can you do to help yourself in such a situation? Well, ask yourself, how are your harmony skills? It's important to assess them because they are related to playing in public. People often learn the music note by note, perhaps listening to the beautiful sounds that the composer notated. However, it's very rare that a person would pay attention to the harmonic outline behind the notes. It's very rare that an organist would try to follow the functions of chords, chord progressions, cadences, modulations and other concepts of harmony. Because let's face it, this kind of approach requires specialized knowledge which many people don't have yet. Usually one would just learn the notes and try to recreate them in private or in public in the best way one can. That's a good start but not sufficient for a calm and convincing performance. If you study harmony at the same time as organ playing, then it helps you understand the music that you play. One more thing really helps here - transposition. Try to transpose the piece into as many keys as you possibly can starting with zero accidentals. Then see what happens. See what happens over time to your performance, to your technique, to your mental understanding of the music. I predict that chances of losing your train of thought and playing note for note during the performance will be smaller because you will know the meaning behind the notes. [Thanks to Alan] Here are the questions I received so far for Become an Organist: 1) creating a vision, goals & plan for yourself as an organist at a level appropriate for you 2) how to practice efficiently 3) sight reading, how to do it, how to improve, how your eyes scan/move across music (esp with open staves) 4) hymn playing, basics of how to prepare and play, with and without pedals, how to play hymns at short notice 5) public concert performance, dealing with nerves, how to connect with audience, playing strange/new organs, preparation of program, how to deal with a crisis, how to eliminate mistakes. 6) finger and pedal technique, exercises to improve technique without spending hours playing Hannon. 7) improvisation, how to get started, how to plan one, how to practice art of improvisation in private, how to create an improvisation from a simple hymn tune or catchy melody Thanks to John Higgins who submitted these thoughtful questions. Join us if they seem relevant to you. Ausra's Harmony Exercise: If you look deeply at your practice, you will see that you have to be able to play the items for the next Sunday at least 4 days before. Not on Saturday, but on Wednesday, for example. On Saturday is too late. With the stress while playing in public your fingers should be much more acquainted with the pieces than it would seem. Performance is not the same as practice. If you want to be sure that on Sunday it will go fine, you have to play the pieces or hymns on Wednesday at least 10 times in a row correctly. I'm sorry, if it feels a lot and it is. But that's how human nature works. And remember, you don't have to play all 4 parts together yet, focus on Soprano and Bass only for now with loud principal chorus registration with mixtures. When you play 2 voices only, playing louder than usual helps to make up for the loss in texture. [Thanks to Katharine] People are already looking forward for Become an Organist: "This is awesome Vidas!! I'm convinced that your always ahead of the curve. Wish there more people so willing to help those who want to reach the next level but need that boost and support. Keep up the great work!! It's definitely has helped me." (Christopher) "I'm really looking forward to this "Become an Organist" training it's a fantastic idea! I couldn't see how to register in the blog email, I assume I need to log into Total Organist and enrole in the training? I assume it's free as part of Total Organist?" (John) Thanks to everyone who responded so warmly about this initiative. It means a lot. Yes, it's free with any membership of Total Organist. Simply login to your Total Organist profile and you'll see a link to register for Become an Organist. Time - it's this Monday 10 AM Vilnius time. Hope it works for you. If not, the recording will be waiting for you in any case. You can register here. I hope that our questions and answers will help you get unstuck and move forward with your goals this year. Ausra's Harmony Exercise: UPDATE: To help you get unstuck and reach your dreams in any area of organ playing I will be holding a series of 12 live webinars called Become an Organist. You can check them out and register here. Don't miss - it's the first time I'm doing my training live and I'm not sure if and when another opportunity will be for you to attend. The first webinar of Become an Organist is going to be this Monday, February 15. Why does some advice about stress management work for one type of person and doesn't for another? Why one organist can forget that there are people listening out in the room while another can literally hear one's heart pounding which throws one off balance and causes strange mistakes to happen? You see, we all are different. And finding a treatment which works for everybody is very rare. But you can always ask yourself for advice. Sometimes if you look deeply at your practice and performance, you can find a trick or two which work for you personally. For example, I like eating bananas and drinking mineral water before performances. Keeps me light and but alert. What about you? [Thanks to Christopher who found that playing pieces at concert tempo during practice lets him to be calmer during the performance itself.] PS Do you like the above drawing? Watch the video of me creating it live. Irek asks whether there is a recommendable, in my opinion, a book for self-teaching the difficult but highly rewarding subject of harmony, that is written in a language that is accessible for an amateur? I found this book by Paul Hindemith extremely valuable. Minimum of text and rules, lots of exercises. Very practical. Especially, if you not only write the exercises but also play them. Do you have a question about harmony for Ausra? You can reach her by email. A lot of my subscribers have many questions for me.
I know this from my daily emails I receive from you. In fact, I'm beginning to drown in them. Anonymous hecklers are asking questions which are instantly deleted (sorry, life's too short - I don't deal with anonymous people). Loyal and sincere readers of this blog ask questions which are generated from my posts. Students of my courses ask questions which are generated from my training programs. Members of Total Organist ask questions about all of the above and beyond. It's a lot of fun. Many people ask questions about their challenges and dreams. Without my support they get stuck and can't easily advance with their organ practice. However, I've also noticed that a lot of questions are the same but are asked by many different people from 89 countries. There are common patterns and to answer them and to help you get unstuck and reach your dreams in any area of organ playing I will be holding a series of 12 live webinars called Become an Organist. You can check them out and register here. Don't miss - it's the first time I'm doing my training live and I'm not sure if and when another opportunity will be for you to attend. The first webinar of Become an Organist is going to be this Monday, February 15. |
DON'T MISS A THING! FREE UPDATES BY EMAIL.Thank you!You have successfully joined our subscriber list. Authors
Drs. Vidas Pinkevicius and Ausra Motuzaite-Pinkeviciene Organists of Vilnius University , creators of Secrets of Organ Playing. Our Hauptwerk Setup:
Categories
All
Archives
April 2024
|