Have you ever wanted to start to practice on the organ but found yourself sidetracked after a few days? Apparently your inner motivation wasn't enough.
I know how you feel. I also was stuck many times. What helped me was to find some external motivation as well. In order for you to advance your organ playing skills and help you motivate to practice, my wife Ausra - @laputis and I invite you to join in a contest to submit your organ music and win some Steem. Are you an experienced organist? You can participate easily. Are you a beginner? No problem. This contest is open to every organ music loving Steemian. Here are the rules
Comments
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 had a really hard time yesterday transcribing my Christ lag in Todesbanden, Op. 73 from MIDI to Sibelius notation. In the MIDI file that was generated from the Hauptwerk recording there are 3 tracks with 3 separate staves: all but the top track had every note that I played written in. The problem was that there seem to be no intelligent way to assign this music from one stave of MIDI to the 3 staves of organ score. I cleaned up the score with one plugin called Renotate Performance but everything else had to be done by hand. Creating this thing took me maybe 10 minutes but transcribing into Sibelius - entire day. I hope I can adjust some settings in Hauptwerk in the future so that less manual work would be needed.
I improvised this piece the first thing in the morning using Hauptwerk 5 software and worked all day long on producing this score. There is a canon between the right hand part and the pedals which I hope you will appreciate. Dedicated to James Flores who inspired me to create it.
PDF score. Basic level. 3 pages. This piece is free for Total Organist students. Check it out here
Although this is not the first piece I have ever created, it has the first opus number. It's structure is based on Marcel's Dupre's method of teaching improvisation on the free theme. Back in 2007 Dupre was very influential to me when I was teaching myself how to improvise. I recorded it this morning.
The score is available here: https://secrets-of-organ-playing.myshopify.com/products/op-1-veni-creator-spiritus-2007?_pos=2&_sid=3621970b7&_ss=r
Vidas: Hi guys, this is Vidas!
Ausra: And Ausra! V: Let’s start episode 570 of Secrets of Organ Playing Podcast. This question was sent by Albert, and he is our Total Organist student now. He writes: “Dear Vidas, I was browsing on your website and just have a couple of questions. I just want to know if I were to subscribe to your program, there are two things I want to develop. My Technique (left and right hand manuals and both feet pedal playing) Sight Reading Learning Hymns faster What kind of materials will I expect to improve these from your programs? Also I currently have a 61 key Hammond Organ/Keyboard and a 20 note Hammond Pedal will this be enough for me to make use of your program to achieve my goals? Thanks Albert” V: Well, first of all, I wrote an email afterwards to Albert with the suggestion that he would become a Total Organist subscriber, so he did subscribe to the program, which is very nice. Hopefully he will get a lot of things out of this program like many other people are doing. But to answer his question, Ausra, what do you think? Sight-reading, for example. A lot of people seem to enjoy my Sight-Reading Master Course. A: Yes! I think that’s a great course based on the “Bach’s Art of Fugue,” and if you can manage that, then it definitely will help you to learn hymns much faster. V: Exactly, yes. Although his primary objective is playing hymns, maybe through sight-reading real organ pieces he will gain additional skills that will enable him to play real organ music later on. You see, when people say they want to learn hymns faster, they don’t necessarily mean that real organ music is not interesting to them. Maybe they don’t have the direct practical application to organ music, let’s say, during liturgy. But imagine if you were a church organist, Ausra, and you could play something from the real organ repertoire. Would you sometimes play it? Would you do it? A: Of course I would do it. V: As a prelude. As a postlude. A: Postlude. V: Why not, right? A: Or during communion. V: There are thousands of organists who don’t do this, and actually, the services then become a little much more boring, I think… service playing… A: I remember when I was serving as an organist in Lithuania before our studies in The United States, I would mostly hate the time of Advent and of Lent because it was the hardest time for organists in Lithuania, because you were not allowed to play solo organ repertoire during Mass. And we had to sing a lot, because most often, churches could not afford to have a choir or a soloist. That would leave congregational singing, so the organist would have to do it, and it was tough, really. After singing the entire Mass and all the hymns during communion, and the opening hymn, ending hymn, it was really hard. V: I think it’s unfortunate sometimes that people don’t play a real organ repertoire or improvise, let’s say, more sophisticated stuff, because after a while, you get used to playing hymns. You know all the hymns in your hymnal after a few years, and the cycle continues. You continue playing that in circles, and you no longer improve, actually, and it becomes boring, not only for musician who visit your church, as members of the congregation, or listeners, but to yourself, as well, because you’re not longer improving. And I ideally recommend making use of your sight-reading skills, and little by little starting to play preludes and postludes, and even communion pieces if there is a time for it in your congregations. A: What about technique? Do you think your courses are useful in developing technique of your hands and pedals? V: Well, I have this Pedal Virtuoso Master Course, which of course includes pedals scales and arpeggios over one octave, and two octaves. This is a really great course for improving ankle flexibility, which is the secret of perfect pedal technique. A: And what about the manual part? V: Well, for manuals I have Left Hand Training and Two Part Training! Those two courses are based on Bach’s Trio Sonatas. I transposed all those trio sonatas into all the different keys, and in the first course, Left Hand Training, I present them as just one single melody. So for people who want to improve left hand, they can practice with the left hand, but it’s not necessarily limited to that, you can practice with the right hand… the same melody, maybe one octave higher. You can even play with the pedals… the same melody. It would be more complex, but it’s possible, because let’s say in a trio sonata, there are three parts: Soprano, Middle part, and the Bass. I present all three of them in a specific order to play for a single voice for left hand, so there is no, let’s say, there isn’t any limitation for you to omit pedal playing for this. You can make it as a complete left hand, right hand, and pedal playing course out of it, if you want. And then comes Two Part Training. Two Part Training includes also different keys, much transpositions, but only for two voices: left hand and right hand, or for right hand an pedals, or for left hand and pedals. See? A: So I guess this course would be really beneficial for Albert’s needs. V: Yeah, sure! A: And then he asks if his organ is sufficient to practice these courses. What would you say about it? V: With manuals, there is no problem with 61 keys, obviously enough, but with 20 note pedals… 20 note… 2 octaves is 24 notes or 25 notes if you want to go up to treble C, right? So 20 note what… up to tenor G or something. A: It’s from C to G. It’s an octave and a half. V: Uh-huh. So you still can practice all those courses, but you sometimes have to drop either one note, or one motif or an entire phrase one octave lower, depending on which piece, or more musical. A: Yes, so you have to adjust a little bit, you know. V: And adjust your pedaling as well. Sometimes, if you drop a high note to a lower octave, it’s no longer useful to play it with your right foot. Maybe your left foot has to take over. A: But still, you can learn a lot even having such an organ with a short pedal keyboard. V: Definitely. Yes. So I hope this will be useful to Albert and to everyone else who is looking to improve their technique. So total organist is doing what it says to do, to try to develop total organist skills. Whatever you want to become, you can become with the Total Organist program. And not only that, it’s not limited. You can study music theory, harmony, and also improvisation training. You really will become a complete musician. Right Ausra? A: Yes. V: Thank you guys, this was Vidas, A: And Ausra! V: Please send us more of your questions, we love helping you grow. And remember, when you practice, A: Miracles happen!
Yesterday after the recommendation of my friend James Flores, @contrabourdon on Steem, I downloaded Hauptwerk 5 which is a leading virtual organ software. Got curious about it because it allows to play with a lot of almost real-sounding organ sample sets from the comfort of my practice room.
A month or so ago I talked with @laputis about getting Hauptwerk for our practice purposes. The problem is that we don't have much space for a separate organ console. But then idea of midifying our 2-stop mechanical practice organ came up and it would seem it would fit our needs - we could still practice on a mechanical organ whenever we wanted but would also enjoy virtual organ capabilities too. I consulted with the organ builder from Marijampole Algis Stepanauskas, who built our practice organ and he said they are busy with some restoration work but after a year they might be able to do it. I wasn't planning on using Hauptwerk before it as I don't have full MIDI organ console with multiple keyboards and pedalboard but James pointed out that it would work with any MIDI keyboard too. I have this 61-note Nektar Impact MIDI keyboard which I use for composing and arranging with Sibelius software. So I decided to give it a try yesterday. Hauptwerk 5 has various pricing options and all of them include 14 day free trial. I guess this will be enough for me to evaluate the program and to see if it would augment my creativity at this point in my life. The installation wasn't very intuitive to a non-technical person like me plus I had to figure out iLock licence that is required to activate the software.
However with some help from James, I was able to configure Hauptwerk just in time I had to leave for Unda Maris organ studio rehearsal. I downloaded the free sample set of St Anne's Moseley which is a nice English style 30 stop 2 manual and pedal instrument.
I was almost out of the house when I thought maybe taking a laptop and this MIDI keyboard with me to Unda Maris would be a good idea to trying it out together with my students. So I went back to the house and grabbed them and went to church.
Sure enough, everyone who came had a chance to play using Hauptwerk. The most curious seemed to be @drugelis and @storm66. She even brought her headphones from her office and everyone could play without disturbing the rest of the studio.
I also wanted to try out recorder/playback option so I improvised a few times and later listened to the result. At the end of the session I showed @drugelis what I can do with the last improvisation which was played on a FF registration. I was quite happy with the result as it sounded powerful, colorful and exciting. After some thinking I named it "St Anne's Vision" and opened the MIDI file on my Sibelius software. After cleaning up the score a little, I realized I could make it into a proper piece at home. So this morning I edited a score, made it more legible and playable and exported the video from Sibelius.
Then I synced the video with the mp3 file so that the sound would be coming from my Hauptwerk improvisation. Here's the result - St Anne's Vision for organ, Op. 72:
Let me know what you think!
Oh and by the way, the score is available here, if you want to play it: https://secrets-of-organ-playing.myshopify.com/products/st-annes-vision-op-72-2020-for-organ-by-vidas-pinkevicius If you sign up for an Secrets of Organ Playing Affiliate account, you will earn 50% from every successful sale: https://secrets-of-organ-playing.goaffpro.com/
Vidas: Hi guys, this is Vidas!
Ausra: And Ausra! V: Let’s start episode 566 of Secrets of Organ Playing Podcast. This question was sent by Dave, and he writes: “Vidas! I did your year-long subscription some years ago… and after that found a local organ teacher. I just wanted to let you know that after 40 yrs, I successfully accomplished (another) audition for going back to college to get a Bachelor's degree in Church Music with an Organ Performance certificate. I just started this new semester at a college here in North Carolina; where I have an opportunity to practice on a wonderful Fisk instrument (currently enrolled in Music History, Harpsichord and Organ.) Your course was very helpful in getting back to my “roots” and kick-starting this entire adventure. So, while I’m not currently enrolled, I do get your weekly messages (and even read them) and I do look at the weekly competitions. Just wanted to say “thank you” for your “nudge” back into the world of organ playing. Dave” V: What are your thoughts, Ausra, for starters? A: Well, I think you should be very pleased to receive a message like this, because it’s a direct praise to your work, and I think it’s a very nice letter! It’s nice to help people, and to get this feedback, because otherwise you would never know if your courses work or not. V: You know, what’s a amazing to me is that after 40 years, he got back to college! That should be done more often, I think, in the world, when senior people have more time in their days and can study things! A: Now it’s becoming more and more common, and let me correct you a little bit. I think that in the future, we won’t have seniors at all, because nobody can retire after the economy is changing so swiftly, and people are living for more years. So, let’s see… now in Lithuania we have to retire at the age of 65. Yes? V: Yes. A: But I think until the time we will be getting to retire, I think that age will be probably 75. V: Is it even possible? A: I don’t know. V: How will they approve it? A: But I think they will find their ways to do it in order to save money from the pension funds. V: Won’t the community protest? A: Well, who cares about community. But what I’m trying to say is that the life is changing basically everywhere, and people have to stay in business for more years, and therefore they have to change their major very often, or to find new possibilities to make a living and to earn an income. So I think playing organ can be one of the options. V: Especially if a person likes playing, likes music, then this passion can become a side income for him. A: Sure. V: Or her. Have you have ever heard Fisk instruments before? A: Yes, I have heard them. V: Where? A: In the United States, of course. V: I think I heard at Oberlin. Yes? A: Yes. V: We’ve been there. It’s actually been more than once. At Oberlin, it’s a French style instrument. And also, at Rochester. Remember? This church where Hans Davidsson played? A: The 3rd part of Clavier-Übung, yes? V: Clavier-Übung, yes. A: Yes, I remember that. Anyway, often the people who live in Europe think that America has no fine organ instruments, and they are so wrong! Because America has all these extremely good organ builders such as John Brombaugh, and Gene Bedient and Fisks, and Taylor and Boody, and now Martin Pasi is building all these wonderful instruments in America, and Bruce Fowkes, and all others! They are extremely professional, and their instruments are splendid! V: Yes. They all congregate under APOBA – Associated Pipe Organ Builders of America. Yes. A Fisk instrument, I haven’t played it before, but heard it a few times, and of course, we have heard recordings. A: Sure. Many times. V: Excellent. So it’s great that Dave is back in organ playing studies. What can we wish for him? That he participate in our weekly competitions! Yes, he does say that he looks at that. I think our contests give people opportunity to record themselves and to get better at playing different repertoire every week. For example, if he’s studying at the college level, bachelors degree, he might not be required to prepare a new piece every week. He can have a program for let’s say, one semester and then after the semester, he would play a jury or a recital or something. But with weekly contests, you need to prepare at least something—at least a short piece—a minute, two, three, four, five minutes, whatever you can, and this in time greatly facilitates your learning process, and with time you can learn longer pieces faster. Remember like @partitura, or Auke Jonbloed, was playing just a couple of minutes per week. Right? His recordings were really short. But now, he’s easily playing 5 minutes, and difficult trio compositions, and chorale preludes. A: Could he also submit harpsichord pieces for our competition, or not? V: Not for The Secrets of Organ Playing, but there is a Sonic Groove Live contest on Steem, that accepts all kinds of live performances on all kinds of instruments. A: But couldn’t he perform, let’s say, some of his harpsichord music on the organ and then submit to our competition? V: Oh, that would be wonderful! Yes! Sometimes it works. Cross instruments, yes! Wonderful, so that’s an idea for people like Dave who are following our messages, even reading them, and even listening to the people’s performances but haven’t taken the step towards submitting their own entries. Maybe they are hesitant, maybe they are afraid what others will think. We can assure you that we never criticize harshly. Right Ausra? A: Yes, that’s right. V: If we ever have to say anything about your performance, it would be a constructive criticism with points to improve on, which is really valuable, right? A: Yes, I wish so many times that people would tell me what they really think about my playing and not just telling me nice things. V: Okay guys, this was Vidas, A: And Ausra! V: We hope this was useful to you. Please send us more of your questions; we love helping you grow. And remember, when you practice, A: Miracles happen!
This morning when I was working on our weekly newsletter that I send every Wednesday for our email subscribers, I noticed there are a few videos by me and Ausra from my and her YouTube channels.
Earlier, it was fairly easy to choose the videos for the newsletter because I wasn't creating much and Ausra had put her YouTube channel with 130+ videos on hold. During a week I would normally create only a couple videos so they would naturally end up in our newsletter. But people who follow me had probably noticed that this year brought a change in the way I create. Now I try to improvise every day and upload sometimes several videos to YouTube. For example, this morning I already improvised 3 settings on Genevan Psalms 67, 68 and 69. These are two part improvisations in note-against-note-counterpoint. I intend to gradually make more advanced settings with these beautiful psalms and hymns which will show people how to improvise on any chorale tune they want.
On top of that, recently Ausra has renewed her YouTube channel and started creating harmony videos which I have the pleasure to record with my camera. We are grateful for people who have been commenting about her videos that they are helpful and they could be the basis of a nice harmony course for her. For example, over the weekend she has created 2 videos - one on how to harmonize C major scale in 4 parts and the other on how to harmonize C minor scale in 4 parts. I'm not sure why but the C minor video is more popular than C major.
All of this now makes it very hard for me to pick and choose some videos to our newsletter and to our blogs because I don't want to overwhelm our subscribers. But some people are our biggest supporters and don't want to miss anything we create online. So if you really want to stay in touch with everything we create nowadays, subscribing to our channels would be the best option.
Here are the links to my and Ausra channels if you want to take a look: https://www.youtube.com/c/secretsoforganplaying https://www.youtube.com/c/ausramotuzaite Have you ever wanted to start to practice on the organ but found yourself sidetracked after a few days? Apparently your inner motivation wasn't enough.
I know how you feel. I also was stuck many times. What helped me was to find some external motivation as well. In order for you to advance your organ playing skills and help you motivate to practice, my wife Ausra - @laputis and I invite you to join in a contest to submit your organ music and win some Steem. Are you an experienced organist? You can participate easily. Are you a beginner? No problem. This contest is open to every organ music loving Steemian. Here are the rules |
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
May 2024
|