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Do you feel like you can't play your organ piece fast enough? You worked in fragments and in separate parts and different part combinations diligently, right? But somehow your fast piece doesn't sound well. Is it that your technique is not strong enough?
Maybe. But it also might be something else. Maybe you need another practicing approach here. This video will help you to solve this problem and move to the next level in your organ playing.
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Many of my organ students ask me for an advice in reaching the fast tempo in their organ pieces. They often struggle to achieve this level of fluency either because their technique is not developed enough or because they do not know how to practice the piece in order to reach fast tempo. Today I will share with you one particular method of practice which will help you reach the fast tempo in practicing organ compositions.
Practice in Fragments If you have difficulty playing in a fast tempo any particular organ piece, here is a special technique you could use. Try to work in shorter fragments like one beat first, then practice this piece in half of measure, then the entire measure and so on until you can play an entire line without stopping. Let me explain how it works. You see, if this composition has to be performed in a fast tempo, then playing the entire work might be too difficult for you at the moment. However, you may notice that you can play all voices together very quickly just for one beat easily. Play just one beat, then stop and hold the chord. Look at the next beat. When you are ready, play another beat and stop. Look at the next beat, prepare and so on. So you will practice stopping every beat. If you have never tried this before, this kind of practice might seem strange to you. You maybe wondering what is the point of stopping at every beat. What happens is that although you stop every beat, you can play the notes of that beat very quickly. And so practice a few times playing the piece this way until you feel comfortable enough. Then make your fragment two beats and stop every two beats. Then one measure, two measures, four measures, one line, two lines, one page, two pages and so on. While practicing this way, you will begin to notice that your ability to play the piece in a fast tempo improves gradually over time. When you stop and hold your chord, do not rush to play the next fragment. Instead, make sure you look ahead and understand in your mind what the next fragment is. Only then play it. In other words, play only when you are ready. Reaching the level when you can play organ music fast is not so easy. As you can see, the system is simple enough for most organists to understand but not too many people reach that kind of proficiency. However, you must persevere and practice with never-give-up mentality. Although there are many techniques in achieving this mentality, one thing in particular is helpful to me – having a clear goal in mind. In other words, you have to have a vision or a goal what it is you are trying to accomplish. If you say that your goal or dream, for example, is to be able to play that wonderful prelude and fugue by Bach or Toccata by Widor at a concert tempo, then you will have the necessary motivation to persevere. No matter how boring, how tiring it will be to practice, you will stick to the plan and successfully accomplish your goal. By the way, do you want to learn to play the King of Instruments - the pipe organ? If so, download my FREE video guide: "How to Master Any Organ Composition" in which I will show you my EXACT steps, techniques, and methods that I use to practice, learn and master any piece of organ music. Every organist wants to be able to play technically challenging pieces with precision, accuracy, and most importantly in a fast tempo. Organists who have this skill deserve much respect from their fellow organists and from their listeners. If you are curious to know how to achieve the fast tempo in organ music, read on to find out.
Practice Slowly The most important thing to remember here is this: you should practice slowly. No matter how boring it may sound, you simply have to have patience and practice at a tempo in which you can avoid making mistakes. If you make a mistake, very often (but not always) it means that the tempo is too fast. Achieving a fast tempo and fluency is similar to lifting weights. If you try to lift a weight for which you are not ready, you will hurt yourself but if you say to yourself “OK, even though I am lifting only that much, this is my current level. I will stick to the plan, and see it through.” This is so true because it is generally believed that you should raise the resistance level by only 10 percent every week for safe exercise. In other words, if you can currently lift 50 pounds, you should add 5 pounds after one week of exercising with this weight. Then add another 10 percent after another week and so on. The same thing is valid for organ playing. Even though you might think that you are progressing too slowly and you are not able to achieve the fast tempo yet, you are making progress, if only you are practicing correctly and slowly. You can even use the metronome for choosing the tempo. Just like with lifting weights or any kind of physical exercise, increase the speed of your metronome by 10 percent every week. When you are ready, the faster tempo will seem natural. Just have patience and you will succeed. In fact, very often people give up playing a certain organ piece only days before a real breakthrough. Build up Your Technique If you feel that achieving the fast tempo is too challenging, it might mean that you need to work on improving your organ technique. Try practicing daily exercises like scales (natural, harmonic, and melodic versions in both major and minor keys), and chromatic scales in parallel and contrary motion in octaves, thirds, tenths, and sixths over four octaves. Also play regular and long arpeggios and chords on a tonic, dominant, and diminished seventh chord. When these exercises become easy, later add scales and chromatic scales in double thirds, and sixths. All of these exercises can be practiced either on the organ or on the piano. Take a pair of major and minor key with the same number of accidentals and practice all of the above scales, chords, and arpeggios for a week. Then every week practice different keys according to the circle of fifths. If you have very limited practice time, work on your technique at least for 30 minutes a day. After a few weeks you will start to see some real changes in your organ playing. A wonderful collection for improving your manual technique is Hanon: The Virtuoso Pianist which include all of the above scales, and arpeggios in part 2 and 3 plus many more exercises for finger dexterity, evenness, and strength. I recommend playing the exercises from Hanon: The Virtuoso Pianist before your regular organ practice because it also serves as a fantastic warm-up. By the way, do you want to learn to play the King of Instruments - the pipe organ? If so, download my FREE video guide: "How to Master Any Organ Composition" in which I will show you my EXACT steps, techniques, and methods that I use to practice, learn and master any piece of organ music. |
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 Photo by Edgaras Kurauskas
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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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