Fingering, Pedaling, and Sight-Reading on the Organ

If you have ever tried to practice sight-reading regularly on the organ, you undoubtedly have discovered the tricky question of fingering and pedaling. More specifically: when you play unfamiliar organ music at sight, how do you know which fingers and pedalings to use?

Here is the thing: if you play a normal organ piece which you practice for a long time, you would most likely figure out the fingering and pedaling in advance. Of course, you can write in all your fingering and pedaling in advance OR you could write in them only in specific spots as you are progressing through the piece OR you could mentally fingure out fingerings and pedalings without writing them down.

Not taking the time to figure out fingerings and pedalings would be counter-productive because you would be making unpredictable and inefficient choices which would result in a sloppy performance.

Whatever the case might be, you might have a difficult time sight-reading organ music precisely because of this issue - there are no fingering and pedaling indications in the score.

So the question is this - how can you play a new score, if you don't have the time to figure out the fingering and pedaling? Is it even conceivable to hope to be able to play an unfamiliar organ music and figure out fingering and pedaling as you are playing?

My answer is yes, if you practice sight-reading wisely and systematically.

First of all, you should pick the music for sight-reading very methodically. You should assess your level of accomplishment very strictly and choose a collection to sight-read which is FAR EASIER than you would normally be able to practice.

Second, don't attempt to play all voices at once. Start with playing solo parts. After a while, graduate to 2-voice combinations, 3-voice combinations and so on.

Third, since the tempo should be slow, choose a convenient fingering but avoid finger substitutions in an early music piece which are not suited for this type of composition.

Finally, the feeling of choosing the right fingering and pedaling for the Romantic and modern music comes from an extensive training in playing scales, arpeggios, and chords because in every passage you can recognize a pattern from these technical exercises.

By the way, do you want to learn my special powerful techniques which help me to master any piece of organ music up to 10 times faster? If so, download my video Organ Practice Guide.