Organ Playing: What Is the Ordinary Touch and When You Should Use It?

Although there are many technical elements in organ playing, one of the most important and noticeable is articulation. Knowing what kind of articulation to use in any specific organ piece is indispensable skill any organist must strive to achieve. One particular type of articulation, the Ordinary Touch, is commonly used in certain organ music. In this article, I would will explain what it is and when you should use it.

Articulate Legato in Early Music. If you play music which was composed before 1800s, the general traditional touch is articulated legato. Writers of the Baroque period used a term "Ordinary Touch" to describe such an articulation. As a general rule of thumb you might think of articulated legato as having small distances between the notes. It is not non legato because the spaces between the notes are very delicate which does not make the music sound choppy. Actually, this playing manner is quite vocal and Bach refers to it as "Cantabile".
The authors of the Baroque period called this touch "Ordinary" because it was widely accepted and there was no need to indicate it in the music score. For this very reason you will rarely see any articulation markings in early music. But you should not assume that although the score is clean, you should play everything legato, which some organist still do even nowadays. The habit of playing legato comes from our background of piano playing. Actually, people who have experience with articulated legato touch use it for playing early music even on the piano.
Emphasize the Meter. Although the ordinary touch is very important for early music, you need something more to make the music come alive. You need to emphasize the meter and the strong and weak beats of the measure. Because the organ pipes cannot sound louder or softer depending on the level of strength that you are using with your hands, there are three primary ways to make accents in organ playing. First, you can make the strong beat longer which will have the impression of accent on the listener. Second, you can make the weak beat shorter which will have the opposite effect. Finally, you can come in a little late on the strong beat which will make it even more accented.

As you can see, not all the notes have the same length in early music. Some notes are longer or shorter than the others depending on the beat of the measure. In syncopation, the weak beat becomes accented. Therefore, make the weak beat longer and the downbeat shorter.

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