 Somebody asked me where I get my ideas for my drawings and comic strips. Are they autobiographical? Are they taken from the lives of others? My drawings and comics serve me as a tool to capture ideas that come to me in various ways throughout the day because my biggest regret is when I forget the idea and don't take action on it. One only has to keep one's eyes and ears open and ideas come. Good or bad. It doesn't matter. I don't know the worth of the idea until I share it. All of us come up with at least one interesting idea during the day. The question is then what do we do with this idea when it pops up in our mind? Usually, we choose to do nothing, we let it disappear. But on a good day we act, on a good day we share. [Thanks to Leon] Ausra's Harmony Exercise: Modulation from D Major to G Major: I-V65-I=V-V7-vi-IV65+-I64-V-V7-I-IV64-IV64--I 
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 Is perfect pitch needed for an organist? This is the question I hear asked a lot. What is perfect pitch, by the way? They say one has perfect pitch when one can say which note is being played exactly. You can play in any octave with any instrument - this person would tell you right away. There's no question that this skill is fun and helpful to have. But it can be a blessing and a curse: not every organ is tuned like a piano. Some might sound half-step or more higher, some - half-step or more lower. An organist with perfect pitch would hear a completely different key, right? It's quite disturbing, unless you play this instrument yourself - the strange feeling disappears and you adjust your hearing right away. What is more important than perfect pitch is the skill to tell the meaning of the notes - the keys, the cadences, the modulations, or the sequences. That's far more useful than perfect pitch to any musician because you can tell not only what you are hearing but also why these notes are there. Nonetheless, I know quite a few of musicians who brag about having perfect pitch but are clueless about how the piece is put together. And frankly there isn't any useful way of explaining to them what they're missing either. I guess if you were a gold fish and you would be put in a round aquarium, your entire world would be round, right?   Articulate legato traditionally was called the Ordinary Touch in the Baroque period. Composers seldom wrote in articulation marks in the scores. Instead, everyone knew how to perform - all the notes should be slightly separated unless notated otherwise. The distance should not be wide, just enough to hear the articulation. Bach referred to such manner of playing as Cantabile style. It's like playing a violin - we don't hear the rests between the notes but the bow is moved up and down. Wind instruments also have this tonguing technique - a silent "tee" is made when the tongue strikes the reed or roof of the mouth causing a slight breach in the air flow through the instrument. That's why we use articulate legato when playing early music on the organ. Ausra's Harmony Exercise: Chromatic Sequence in F Major: I-V64-I6   One of my best organ students is a strong pianist too. He almost doesn't have any technical problems and he can play whatever he wants with pedals. But the thing which is still underdeveloped is his sense of organ touch. Too often I find him lifting the fingers off the keyboard. Too often he releases the chords not together. This is especially obvious in middle voices. In piano playing it's not so easy to notice but the organ, especially the tracker instrument is unforgiving. When I said to him that his pianistic habits are stalking him, he agreed and promised me to keep an extra eye on it. The thing is, he often practices organ pieces on the piano. This is fine except when he forgets it's an organ, not a piano. So here's my advice to all of the pianists who play the organ: Try to imitate the organ touch you get on piano. Avoid making dynamics and play mezzo piano. Keep a contact with the keyboard at all times. This will help you get rid of the pianistic habits when you play the organ..   Has your church sold an old pipe organ which required money for repair which the church didn't have and bought a new electronic substitute? I feel sorry that your church didn't raise enough funds required for its keeping in the old place. Maybe the organist didn't earn enough trust of the congregation when there was a chance. Or maybe the congregation were the wrong people to earn trust from? Whatever the case, not enough people cared. Despite all those technical innovations digital organ lacks a soul and that's something you can't replace no matter how megabytes will go into it's memory for the sound of one pipe. Try to treat it as pipe organ though: Avoid artificial transposition and do that transposing yourself. Avoid using Manual Bass button as your foot technique will slowly decay. These skills will serve you well in the future when you will have an opportunity to play a real pipe organ somewhere else. [Thanks to David]   My student improvised for me and our "Unda Maris" organ studio. Seeing that her playing lacked direction I suggested, "Take only one mode, say Pentatonic - all black keys - and improvise something interesting." We set the timer for two minutes and she began to play in a Pentatonic mode. As time passed by, I observed the reaction of my other students. For about 90 seconds they seemed to be absorbed by the music, they could hardly blink. But then something happened and their focus was lost. When the student finished playing, I suggested to her, "Change the mode or the texture or the rhythm no later than after about 90 seconds." It's like in a good action-oriented movie - every bit is somewhere between 15 and 90 seconds long. The general rule of thumb is this: If it's starting to be boring, it's already too late to do something about it. Make a change when it's still interesting. That's how you keep listeners glued to your improvisations.   Welcome to Secrets of Organ Playing Podcast #39! How to balance parenting and organ playing? Listen to my conversation with Dr. Heather Hernandez, an organist from Phoenix, Arizona.   How many hands does an organist have? Many think that two but Samuel Scheidt wrote that both feet should be treated as a third hand. This makes sense when you think that in every chorale setting or a hymn the feet could play any voice in the appropriate range, be it the bass with 16', the tenor with 8', the alto with 4', or even the soprano with 2'.   My organist friend doesn't like heels. He always pounds the pedals with his toes. Whatever the style of music, his technique is exactly the same - always staccato in the bass. Why does he play like this, you might ask? I guess somebody at the early start didn't do the job of earning his trust of convincing him to use correct technique. Or perhaps he was taught correctly but the daily routine of church playing crept in and he didn't find enough courage to think harder about the choices of pedaling he had to make. Is there a hope for this student to make a transition into a better technique? Not until he feels that the pain required to change his current technique is lesser than the benefits associated with the results this change will provide. Ausra's Harmony Exercise: Transposing Sequence in Eb Major: I-iii-IV-V   I once observed a student play the organ: His head was down all the time - it was evident he had to look at the pedals constantly. Was he afraid to pound the wrong note? Was he unfamiliar with the instrument? I think he formed a habit gradually by practicing this way day in and day out. Can you form a new habit? Can you resist the temptation to look down? For starters try implementing pedal preparation technique as often as you can. This is one of the keys to perfect pedal technique.  Peter Jones: Having your own organ at home = regular practice!  |
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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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