The simplicity of practice

Russ writes that his goal is to give and receive pleasure from organ music and
introduce people to the magnificence of the organ. However, lack of self confidence, patience, and correct technique are holding him back.

I believe every organist should have a goal like Russ does. This is really excellent! It's graceful, elegant, and simple.

If you want to gain self confidence, you first have to know your instrument, your music, and yourself.

Knowing your instrument involves all the intricacies of combing various stops and stop combinations and knowing when to change the registration.

Knowing your music is of course being able to play it by heart (from memory).
In order to do it, you first have to master the piece from the score by repeatedly and extremely slowly playing various voices and voice combinations and the entire texture in small manageable fragments of about 4 measures of duration. A side effect of doing this is that you will gain patience and also develop correct technique.

So in reality it all comes down to slow, regular, and persistent practice. By doing this you will also come to understand yourself, your strengths and your weaknesses.

It's all very simple - when you practice, you move forward. When you give up, despair, doubt yourself, seek shortcuts, silver bullets, and shiny objects - then you are sabotaging your own efforts and success (until your next readjustment of focus).

Although it's a long road head, the pleasure comes from knowing that you are inevitably moving closer to your goal every day one step at a time.

What's your next step?

Sight-reading:
Introduction-Chorale (p. 2) from Suite Gothique, op. 25 by Leon Boellmann, French Romantic composer and organist.