Secrets Of Organ Playing Podcast

Create, Share, Repeat by Vidas Pinkevicius

Welcome to Secrets of Organ Playing Podcast #131! Today's guest Belgian organist Daniel Vanden Broecke. Het Orgel in Vlaanderen ("The Organ in Flanders") is a non-profit association founded in 1990 in order to maintain and to improve the organ culture and the organ heritage in Flanders. This organ heritage should be re-valuated and brought to the attention of people who are not so involved like organists and musicians. The heritage contains a.o. organs who need to be restored or are already restored. A broader view contains the whole organ culture in Flanders, the instruments, the organists, as well professionals as amateurs, the organ students, and also the historical musical manuscripts and documents. Between 1990 and 2000 the most important issue was the realisation of "the Day of the Organ", organ concerts with free entrance (at first in Bruges, later on in different cities of Flanders), the making and distributing of photographs of Flemish historical organs, and the publication of a magazine for the

Today’s question was sent by Michael and he writes: “Good morning Vidas. Thank you for your email and Organ tips. I do not know if it too late to reply to your email. To answer your two questions I will first of all explain my situation. I am Organist at St Lawrence’s Feltham Roman Catholic Church and I play at 3 Masses at the Weekend for which I receive a small stipend. I also play for Weddings and Funerals and Kingston and Hanworth Crematoriums to make ends meet. I am also playing for a Funeral Director’s Carol Service this year. My dream is to get better and better and maybe perform at a Recital. I am a keen pianist and I believe I have nearly mastered Chopin’s Etude No. 1 Op. 10, but also like J.S. Bach of course and other composers. ​ Unfortunately what holds me back from my dream is that I can only manage to practise on the Organ for about an hour a week in Church, and not loud pieces because the Presbytery is joined to the Church and people are working there. So I content myself trying to master the

This question was sent by Barbara, and she writes: “Hi Vidas, I appreciate these copies of sheet music with fingering. I would like to see the fingering for traditional hymns.“

This question was sent in by Dan. And basically he comments after my question to him. I asked him ‘what is he struggling with in organ playing currently?’ And he wrote: "With the Walther piece I find concentrating on the manual parts when the pedal enters, to be a challenge particularly, as in this piece, he’s got the melody in the pedal. I’m taking it way way slower then this at the moment though. With the Bédard suite, were doing things a little out of order, its a four movement suite. So I covered the first movement, and am working on the third right now. The third movement has a lot of suspensions in it, and I’m finding figuring out when parts move in those suspensions to be quite a challenge, but I’m getting it. And with the Dubois piece, its just a case of getting it smooth and polishing it up. I’ve almost got it."

This question was sent by David. He writes: “I really can't thank you enough for making all this available. It has been my dream to be a proficient church organist (my wife is a United Methodist Pastor) and perhaps to do some recitals and some composing. I practice on a real Møller organ but where I play once a month is an electronic Allen organ. Your materials have kept me moving forward. You've spoken about lineage through you too Bach. Here, also is my lineage through Dean: 1. David Koch (me) 2. H. Dean Wagner 3. Barbara MacGregor 4. Marie-Claire Alain 5. Marcel Dupré 6. Louis Vierne / Charles-Marie Widor 7. Jacques-Nicolas Lemmens 8. Adolf Friedrich Hesse 9. Christian Heinrich Rinck 10. Johann Christian Kettel 11. Johann Sebastian Bach For all you do, thank you and God Bless, David”

Welcome to Secrets of Organ Playing Podcast #130! Today's guest is an American organist Randall Krum. He was born in Albany, New York and grew up in the nearby village of Ephratah where he studied piano and organ with local teachers. During high school he began focused organ studies with area organist, Dr. Elmer A. Tidmarsh, a onetime student of Charles-Marie Widor and a longtime friend of Marcel Dupré. ​Following graduation from high school and in preparation to audition for admission into college organ study, he studied with Willard Irving Nevins at the Guilmant Organ School in New York City. Subsequently he was accepted at the Peabody Conservatory, Baltimore, MD, where he studied with Professors Clarence Snyder, Arthur Rhea and Arthur Howes completing both the Bachelor’s Degree and Master’s Degree in organ and liturgical music. Mr. Krum has been organist at a number of churches in the eastern United States, notably St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church, Baltimore, MD, Sacred Heart St. Francis de Sales Roman

This question was sent by Peter. He writes: “I think the amount of time we waste on things which are of no benefit is frightening. I wonder why? What makes the difference between the things you want to do (like eating tasty food, lying in bed, drinking to excess, wasting time on the computer etc.) and the things which you ought to do (practicing the organ, eating healthy food, getting to bed early, getting up early!) etc? An interesting psychological question. I suspect that a great deal of the answer is forming the correct habits, from an early age. The more you put into life, the more you get out of it.”

This question was sent by Irineo, and he writes: Hello there once again, maestro Pinkevicius. Now THAT IS an interesting subject you chose for your podcast. Actually, I suspect different keys have different "taste" or meaning depending on each individual. For instance, Bach's splendid Toccata in G-minor BWV 915 has a fantastic Fugue which is not only splendid, but jocular. It's extremely witty as far as I'm concerned. It sure DOESN'T sound "sad" or "dark" a bit. But there's supposedly this "treaty" about different keys and the way they "taste" or are perceived by people. I couldn't locate a good friend of mine who told me about it many years ago, nor could I learn its name. But I recall having read about a luthier who developed a very special instrument (harpsichord) and stated that keys might actually have their own "flavor". Like C having a tart/sour taste, D being tasteless, E having a sweet one, F a bitter one and so on and so forth. Can you perhaps guide me here, maestro? By the way, I'm still working

This question was sent by Fr. Michael he writes: “Dear Vidas, I am writing today to inquire if you by any chance know of any resource that may contain church hymns (a hymnal, etc.) that contains fingering and pedaling written in? No problems at all if there isn't, I am managing fine, but just thought I would pick your brain on this and see if such a resource exists.”

I’m so delighted to be able to teach you about avoiding mistakes when playing in an equal tempo today. Listen to the audio version here. You see, recently one of my “Unda Maris” studio students played in our church and he had a trouble of keeping equal tempo and avoiding mistakes. I thought to help him with some of the tips which might be of value to you too because you also probably need to avoid mistakes and play at a constant tempo. So the problem is usually with the tempo that is too fast. A lot of people try to slow down when they practice and this is good. But this tempo still needs to be considerably slower. You see, when we play the organ we don’t necessarily feel the limits of our abilities and we pick the tempo that sounds well, the piece of music that we’re playing sounds well in this particular tempo but it doesn’t mean that this tempo is suitable for us at the moment. So when students played their piece and made mistakes usually it usually means they played too fast. So the normal tip would b

This question was sent by Rivadavia. And she writes: “I am studying at least 15 minutes a day as suggested and have discovered that sometimes laziness or tiredness goes away and I can study for at least 1 hour in all. I love reading your podcasts, because I learn a lot from the difficulties that advanced musicians have. As I said in another email, I am a beginner (some sheet music from Ana Magdalenna Bach's book is still a bit difficult for me…) and I am no longer a child, but I intend to study until the end of my life because I like to learn music more and more. I am also very happy to be in contact with renowned organists, as well as you, since I am in an early stage and, in another circumstance, I probably would not even come close to musicians like you. Reading one of the last podcasts, the name of Bernard Winsemius was mentioned. I had the opportunity to watch a video on YouTube of this organist playing a work by Nikolaus Bruhns and found it very cool the way he played. The mastery over the instrument

Welcome to Secrets of Organ Playing Podcast #129! Today is a special podcast. Our subscribers who know me probably are aware that I am quite a spontaneous person, I don't like to plan too much. So yesterday when I received an email from a Finish organist Airi Saloniemi asking for an opportunity to try our largest pipe organ in Lithuania at Vilnius University St John's church, I spontaneously said, "Yes". So now because of this Airi and her husband Tuomas Saloniemi are next to the organ bench besides me. Airi is an organist and cantor in Vantaa which is a city next to Helsinki, capital of Finland. There is an area called Korso and they have a small church (17000 members in a congregation). She works there every week, playing services and leading choirs. Tuomas, like Airi studied at Sibelius Academy and he plays tuba. It was at the Sibelius Academy that they met each other. Recently he decided to switch careers and now works in communications for a healthcare company but still plays tuba occasionally. In t

This question was sent by Dan. He writes: “Hi Vidas, just wondering, as of late, have you moved the podcast feed over to another provider? It looks like you have, as clicking the links to listen for example, on your latest post on your main site, takes me over to a site called musicoin.org. Apparently you can play directly from their site, but that for me, doesn’t seem to be working. I use a Screen reader, (VoiceOver on macOS 10), so I’m not sure if it’s an accessibility issue with their site, whether you have to have an account over there to listen, or what exactly is up with that. I was getting episodes just fine before, in my podcast app of choice, that being downcast, but lately I haven’t been. If a lot of subscribers are still on the old feed, and using apps such as downcast, overcast, iTunes, or Apple’s podcast app, or any podcast downloading apps available on the android side of things, they won’t be able to get your latest episodes. If you could, please provide me with a link that I can stick into my

During the last rehearsal of our Unda Maris organ studio, I asked one of our students who doesn't even read music to choose 4 notes and improvise something interesting. Would you like to know what this process is like and where it can lead you? If so, my tips are for you.

I didn't sleep well last night. So what happened is I got a nasty headache and no inclination to practice yesterday. But... I did it anyway. Can your practice help reduce physical pain you might be feeling? Listen to my thoughts.

Are you thinking of skipping organ practice today? Don't be. If you improve just 1 percent today, miracles will happen in the future. Listen to these thoughts to find out why.

This question was sent by Bruce. He writes: “Hi Vidas, I'm trying to download BWV 578 (little fugue in g minor), but I don't see it in the list of directly downloadable items on the Total Organist web page. Is this piece available to me with my total organist subscription? If so, I would like to take it with me on my travels. How can I get a copy of it? I would really like to review and understand your recommended fingerings while I'm on the road.”

Welcome to Secrets of Organ Playing Podcast #128! Today's special guest is John Higgins, who is the organist at St Andrew's Presbyterian church in Morwell, Victoria, Australia. John has been a guest a while ago on our podcast. We talked when he was living in another state of Southern Australia, in a small town called Whyalla. He has a tradition of playing Christmas concerts for his former congregation at Victor Harbor. John has been our loyal subscriber since the very beginning of this blog in the early 2012 and has since resurrected his passion for music and specifically for organ. He's an engineer by profession but through these years of organ practice, he's grown so much that now he has the skill to play for liturgy as well as recitals. Currently John is living in Traralgon, Victoria where he has moved with his family and I'm very excited to be able to talk to him about his recent Christmas concert that he played at Victor Harbor. Make sure you listen to the very end because you will get a lot of ins

This question was sent by Mike, and he writes: “When and When NOT to play the "Amen" of a Christmas Song/Carol? This has been a discussion. Some Christmas songs have an Amen at the end of them, some don’t. When playing one during a regular Church service, that has it at the end, I believe you play it. However, if you are playing this as a Christmas Carol, say for a choir to sing, then you don’t play it. Is this correct or not? Thank you very much.”