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 KZfaq 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.

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.

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.

All good ideas. Thank you so much.

Thanks for that. Very helpful!

Thank you Titus! Great advise!

Yes, more instructional videos like this. Thanks, Titus.

All useful advice. Many thanks.

Yes, interesting, thanks for sharing your experience....

Thank you for your help! I have been looking for suggestions to help me during my practice time.

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.

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.

yes, please more videos like this!

Thank you! Excellent advice!

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.

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 for the tips. Very useful for my Mass playing preparation 👍

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!).

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…;)

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 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.

Listen while reading score before learning to play or sing a piece

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

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.

What do you think about starting with pedal and manual together teaching the brain that they are supposed to be one single tool?

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?

❤️

play straight through Once Only

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

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”.

and directing a choir or orchestra

Anyone know the piece at the very beginning of the video?

May I suggest the correct spelling of 'to practise'. We are not yet America.

musical progress not just technical; stop changes are super tough when changing between instruments