For many adult organists having enough time during the day to practice the organ is perhaps one of the greatest challenges. I have written earlier about how to find time for organ playing. These tips might help you to realize that even when there is not much practice time available, playing organ is still possible. However, you will be surprised that actually organ practicing often can be done even without any organ at all. I hope people who have a very limited access to actual organ will find this article especially useful. Please read on to find out my suggestions.
Let's take a real life example: About a month ago I taught a group of adult students in our organ studio. These were adults with some piano but no organ experience. Usually the way we worked was such that one person would play exercises from our method book, I would comment, correct the mistakes, play myself to show my students how it supposed to sound. While one person was playing, others would be watching him or her and make mental notes of the mistakes, my comments so on.
But one day I decided to do an experiment with them. While one student was playing, others also were playing at the same time but on the table and on the floor. After a while I asked them to switch and another student took the place on the organ bench. Strangely enough, even though the exercise was new to her and she only practiced it on the table, she did not make any mistakes at all on the real organ. I thought maybe that was because she played only the manual part and that she will have more trouble with the pedals.
After a while it was her turn to play the pedal line of that exercise on the organ and as you can feel, she did it fine, too. So you see, it works not only for the finger work but also for pedal part as well.
My student was so successful because of the power of visualisation. This kind of practice not only gives you same results as you would be physically playing the real organ but also develops your mental focus abilities and inner hearing. It is important that we try to hear in our minds the music that we pretend to be playing. We don't just go through the motions, so to speak. I am sure that practicing on the table and on the floor without mental visualization would give you some improvement, but not nearly as much as if you would practice with your inner hearing.
This method of organ playing also saves time because we are not fixed to the location of the organ. Organ practice can be done anywhere where there is quiet. All you need is a table, a floor, your music, mental focus, and inner hearing. Of course, you can use this method to memorize music as well.
I hope my suggestions will be useful especially to organists who have very limited practice time on the actual organ.
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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