Although attention to detail is crucial in practicing your organ music, it is not enough to be able to play without mistakes. You need to have a special kind of mentality. Here I am referring to the focused mind which can help you to reach that optimum performance state which in turn will empower you not only to play without the mistakes. In this article, I will explain this mental technique and how to achieve it.
The mentality or the mindset of a world-class organist is similar to the state of mind of an athlete or a martial artist. Athletes refer to it as "Being in the Zone". Martial artists say that "their body should be relaxed but the mind should be on fire". In other words, they have an alert but clear mind. They have to throw all of their thoughts, insecurities, and mental blocks away and simply be in the moment.
Various traditions have different techniques which can help you to achieve that state of mind. Some of the most popular are breathing, meditation, or prayer. In organ playing deep, regular, and slow conscious breathing from the lower abdomen will help you to improve your mental focus.
If you do the same in your piece, you will start to notice some really interesting things over time. Try to stay focused on your breathing and notice how your mind gradually calms down, your body relaxes, and you are be able to control your movements much better. In turn, the risk of hitting the wrong note by accident is much lower.
If you do play an incorrect note or two during your performance, let it go and force yourself to stay focused and not keep your thoughts on this mistake. Very often if we make a mistake, we think about it for a while when we are playing, we lose focus, and consequently make more mistakes. So no matter what went wrong you have to try to stay focused until the very end.
It is interesting how we can make mistakes even in a slow tempo in an easy spot. This is how it may happen. As we are playing, we might be aware how well we play or how easy is this particular episode and again, we may lose our focus. The solution is to keep your focus until the very end.
I understand that for most people it will be hard to achieve this level of focus on the organ. However, if you consistently practice slowly, work in fragments, give a great attention to details, and keep your attention on your breathing, eliminating mistakes actually is not too difficult. Simply change your focus from how not to make mistakes to fulfilling the musical needs of the piece, be in the current measure, and your performance level will improve dramatically.
By the way, do you want to learn to play the King of Instruments - the pipe organ? If so, download my FREE video guide "How to Master Any Organ Composition" http://www.organduo.lt/organ-tutorial.html in which I will show you my EXACT steps, techniques, and methods that I use to practice, learn and master any piece of organ music.
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