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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 25 มิ.ย. 2024
- Today's video is instructional, so feel free to take notes, pause the video and rewatch to get the most out of it.
Practice is something that we all wish we could do less of - so with a few practice strategies, with an emphasis on efficiency, we can achieve our goals and remember that the true purpose of practice is to create captivating performances. These tips come from personal experience, from my tutors, and from teaching my own students.
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Hi Pep Organ, I liked your video on how to practice. I am an organist my self and I play regularly in my church here in Curaçao ( which is an island in the Caribbean just off the coast of Venezuela. I am 67 years old and have played for over 50 years in church. At some point I received lessons on pedal playing from a Priest who was very good at it. Unfortunate after 3 years he passed away and I was left a bit in the dark because the interest of playing pedal was not very high on the island. In fact playing organ in church was not very interesting for younger people. I am grateful to TH-cam sharing lessons and performances to learn from. In the last 25 years I was also the organist in the local Synagogue (|Mikve Israel Emanuel) which has an old 1866 Flaes en Brunjes organ in good playing condition. It is not usual to have an organ in a Synagogue but this Synagogue did have one installed years ago. I also use the IPad Pro 12.9 tablet and the forScore app for all my music being Secular, Christian choir,Jewish music, Policeband music and occasionally solo keyboard entertainment. Very good pointers for the practice routine! Keep up the good work. Best regards, Erich Menig.
Excellent suggestions. My organ prof, Emmit Smith at TCU in the early 1970’s, was a Fulbright scholar (USA) and at the time had more Fulbright scholarship winners than all other organ teachers in the US combined. One thing he always wanted was for his students to practice everything slowly with a metronome at a speed where you would get everything correct all of the time. You would gradually increase the speed until you were at or above concert speed. If you started to make mistakes, you slow down to a point where everything was correct again. The result was that under performance stress, your muscle memory would help keep your performance on track since you had only played correct notes in your practice. (Conscious memory to subconscious memory.) Of course your suggestions were also used to fix measures that were troublesome.
Good advice. I don't tend to advocate heavy metronome use, but it is helpful for music with a very strict tempo - I'm just worried that metronomes make us think too mechanically, when the musical syntax should demand more ebb and flow.
@@peporgan We were always encouraged to play musically, not mechanically, after we had a piece under our fingers and feet.
@@brassmanone using the metronome helps me become aware of where I tend to speed up or slow down. Also, slowing right down helps combat that despair of ever getting the hang of it.
The dean of my music faculty, the late Hugh Maclean (organist of Kings under Boris Ord) was so steady that people joked he had a metronome for a heart! No rallentando for him.
Great suggestions. I had a teacher that encouraged me to practice on a dumb division to make sure that the music was firmly in my consciousness and not only what I was hearing. This was particularly helpful for trios.
For the first time, many subconscious thoughts I've made along the way about practice, as a rookie learner, has been narrated in this video. A lot of these advices, I have already grasped on and were made profound into the concept, making it clear like.... now I know a lot of the solutions to my practice problems. Thank you! Looking forward for more content like this.
Thanks!
Yes, more instructional videos like this. Thanks, Titus.
Hi Titus, I was looking for advice on practise and was so impressed by the clarity and general delivery of this video, so thank you for that. I have adopted it and can immediately see the benefits. As a rank beginner with just one manual at this point, I note that another aspect to practising is an efficient process for developing muscle memory. I came across a short article 'How to Maximize Music-Related Retention' by Jacob Lamantia (Not organ related but general) which shows the same sort of clarity and calls upon multiple learning strategies to make the process of learning efficient. This also seems to me, a worthwhile related topic which I am sure would be useful to others too.
My suggestions are during the initial stage, don't learn manuals only and pedals later, learn all three parts seperately, then combine any two of them (either manuals only or one hand with pedals or the other), then all three together. And i'll add to start from the end not the beginning, it's more fun that way, and while you're learning one section you can just keep playing into the next (which will reinforce that section) and all the way until the end.
I've heard that some people like learning from the end first, that's interesting! Three parts separately is definitely a good idea if the piece is challenging -however for contrapuntal works like Bach, you really need to do as much both-hands practice as possible, since you make need to share the inner parts.
@@peporgan Well the division of the inner voices between the hands is something that should be decided on ahead of time, with pencil marks if necessary...after that, I don't think it is objectionable to play only some of the notes of the inner voices when playing one hand or the other.
@@peporgan My teachers lways stressed learning the from the end ot the begining because as you work the piece your piece becomes more and more secure as you progress since you know the end over the longest period of time.
Thank you Titus! Great advise!
All useful advice.
Many thanks.
All good ideas. Thank you so much.
Yes, interesting, thanks for sharing your experience....
Thanks for that. Very helpful!
Wow that was very insightful. I've been taking Organ lessons for many years. No one has ever mentioned silent practice before. Many people have told me that I need to break a piece down, that seems pretty logical but I like the silence practice concept. I'm going to give that a try. Thank you so much
Thank you. I use to make that mistake of playing a learned part of a piece of music again and again, and I always felt that what it does is actually disistimulate me to learn the rest of the piece. Greetings from Brazil.
Hello! Thanks for watching.
Thank you for your help! I have been looking for suggestions to help me during my practice time.
Thank you! Excellent advice!
Thank you so much!
yes, please more videos like this!
I loved to see someone else needs markings all over their pieces! I envy those that can just play from an iPad. I am a very good sight reader and extremely poor memorizer..I depend on my markings, as you well know, we are always reading ahead and comprehending a lot at any given time…I even put double forward slash marks above places I need to find fast when repeating to an (Da capo al segno), as it can just be anywhere on a previous page. Enjoying your vids. I am old enough to be your mom…;)
Interesting video. I have a few differences of opinion or additions which I will discuss
1) 3:29 Play the piece in sections--starting from the end. It is actually probably ideal to identify the problem spots and learn those sections first. There comes a time to play the piece all the way through, but you are right that it is not an efficient way to LEARN a piece in most cases.
Tip #1) 4:02 Have a plan -- set goals. I totally agree that this is a great idea, and one that is very difficult for many of us to do. Having a timer and spending X amount of time on each item on your list is probably a good idea as well, since it is very easy to get distracted or have unrealistic goals. Being able to check off the 10 minutes you spend on technique is great even though those pedal scales aren't as smooth as you were hoping they would be.
Tip #2) 4:30 Practice Pedals FIRST! Why? Because it is the "hardest part" (for beginners) but often the "easiest" part later on. We need to live with that coordination challenge as long as possible...so learn it first (in small sections of course). A good 7 part strategy for learning difficult section is:
a) Pedal alone; b) Left Hand alone; c) Ped & LH; d) Right Hand alone; e) Ped & RH; f) LH & RH together; g) All together.
Tip #3) 5:08 Always write in the (paper) score with PENCIL only! Why? Errors get fixed, fingerings change, registrations change, manual changes change, most EVERYTHING can change...SO have a good eraser handy!!
Tip #4) 5:54 Write in fingerings AND pedal markings, and accidental reminders, and anything else you need to play more accurately. However, always be willing and ready to erase and change if you find a solution that works better. Sometimes along your musical journey you discover new information which changes the way you want to interpret the music.
Great tips - thank you very much! Efficiency is certainly essential . . . but most of us stumble at the 'not enough self-discipline' hurdle as improvement, even when tackled efficiently, demands effort and I suspect many of us are cursed with a bit of a lazy streak (some, like me, more than others!).
Your suggestions are great.
I have started using blue and red pencils for marking scores: it helps my aging mind and sight a lot! Fingerings/pedaling , dynamics, and other marks get blue; rests and really troublesome spots that I really need to notice get red. I find that if I circle too many mistake areas there becomes a sameness to them and I don’t pay as much attention to them. Perhaps lightly with a regular pencil would be best for these?
I find that with certain pieces, especially longer ones, that it is beneficial to learn a piece in sections from the end back to the beginning. As you learn each section and add it to the whole, the piece becomes more familiar or easier as you reach the end.
When you have done the detailed practice and can play everything well, then I think it is important to play the entire piece through multiple times (not in each session) to experience and develop the impetus or flow of the piece and experiment with finding your interpretation.
Thanks for the silent practice tip. I will try to work that into my routines. Best wishes!
Thank you for the tips. Very useful for my Mass playing preparation 👍
Thanks Gerard!
toughest part for organists is finding a church who will let you borrow or rent time; or buying a digital instrument aside from general instrument players demands on our money job vs our music passions
Thank you sir, for a couple of very good hints - for example to write in the fingering - wich is not that very common in certain scores as in this piece I´m working on at the moment - Wer nur den lieben Gott lässt walten by J.S.
analyzing chords scales arpeggios melodies counterpoints a lot of practice can be fixed without the instrument . Fingering pedalling should be numbered as early on into learning a new piece , thus works no matter which instrument you play. also Simplify pieces and memorize songs taking away the fancy pieces
Listen while reading score before learning to play or sing a piece
play straight through Once Only
❤️
and directing a choir or orchestra
One of the things you didn’t mention was not to get carried away fiddling with registrations and wasting a lot of time trying sounds out. That can come later once one has the notes down pat. My first teacher started me with just 8’ and 4’ diapason when I was a beginner. Even at music school my most worthwhile practice was not on the large recital organ in the studio, but on one of the small trackers in a practice room where there was only a handful of stops so less temptation to “experiment”.
Good point.
What do you think about starting with pedal and manual together teaching the brain that they are supposed to be one single tool?
I think the brain can only comprehend a whole if its capable of executing all the parts individually. I discourage playing everything together at first for most people, because ultimately they will learn a piece of music much faster by breaking it into parts before putting it together.
Thank you for the advice! Just out of curiosity, as a pianist who is trying to break into organ, is it really okay to look down at your feet? Or should I be working hard to never look down?
Yes, that’s fine! Most organists still need to look down for difficult passages.
Anyone know the piece at the very beginning of the video?
It's my own recording of Knecht's Grand Organ Sonata: th-cam.com/video/h3F0CPXUvxI/w-d-xo.html
Wonderful! Thank you!
May I suggest the correct spelling of 'to practise'. We are not yet America.
Whilst I support independence from the Stars and Stripes, I do also believe language and spelling is a matter of preference, not just tradition. I think I'm tragically with the Americans on this one, as I really could never get the spellings right. Hope you're well, Hugh, good to hear from you!
I was taught (in Canada): Practise = verb, practice = noun. Not sure if facts back this up. I'll check my Cdn dictionary some day.
@@qwaqwa1960 You are quite right! The same English spelling rule is also true with licence (noun) and license (verb) and advice (noun) and advise (verb)! Quite often, what became 'rules' in English spelling long ago were the means of formalising what had originally been mistakes and/or confusions - something American English has (wisely!) sought to simplify. In English spelling, advice and advise (which happen to have separate etymological paths) had established the idea of a rule where the noun took -c- and the verb took -s- . . . and so practice/practise, and prophecy/prophesy and licence/license followed! Let's remember that even Shakespeare did not always put the 'e' at the end of his name!
musical progress not just technical; stop changes are super tough when changing between instruments