How/when did you learn the organ.

[Albert]

I was wondering if you organ players started playing before you went to college, or if you were taking piano lessons in highschool and then started learning the organ in college. I have to taken an organ lesson before when I was at my staying at my Grandma's in the summer, but other than that and playing on my grandma's electric hammond (I think it's a hammond or something else really old) I don't any organ experience except "piano experience"

I was wondering if any of you started taking lessons before highschool, privately or learned by yourself, or when etc etc etc

basically how you learned the organ...

I met the organ for the first time when I was 25. I had played the piano, of course. I was in West Germany, near Soest, in the NATO forces (Royal Canadian Army Medical Corps). The organist who played at the RC chapel in Fort Chambly was posted back to Canada.

The music director of the chapel at the time was Charles Villeneuve, the director of the Royal Canadian Ordnance Corps band. He had heard me tinkling the ivories, and drafted me. The instrument was a 2m/P electronic with a plethora of switches with interesting names and numbers on them, and 30 keys to play with the feet, not to mention 3 expression shoes - Hw, Pd, Sw left to right.


I looked at this monster (as it seemed then) and promptly went to the music store in downtown Soest, and asked about instruction books. The one he sold me was Ernst Kaller's Orgeschule in two volumes. The preface to the book said "This book presupposes a certain facility on the piano".

I got hooked. On return to Canada I took formal lessons, and still try to learn more about the king of instruments.

My present personal instrument is a small Johannus Opus 10, a two manual and pedal digital instrument. The instrument is in the avatar, and larger in my profile.

[AeroScore]

For me, it was in 1966, when I was three years old, at the very first restaurant of it's kind: Ye Olde Pizza Joint, in Hayward, CA...I believe it's my earliest memory, and it twisted me for life. It featured a 3/13 Wurlitzer from the Warfield Theatre, San Francisco, and was the very first restaurant of it's kind, inspiring probably hundreds of such establishments all over the U.S.: only a handful remain, the closest of which is in Mesa, Arizona; not exactly convenient.

My dreams of organ playing would wait until 1979, when I was 14, and my parents had finally had enough of listening to me bugging them about getting an organ for the house. For Christmas that year, they bought me a small Conn spinet, which came with free group lessons. A year later, the teacher of the group told my parents, apparently, that I had some talent at this, and convinced them to trade up, which they did. This time, after much shopping around, they bought a Lowrey Celebration console organ, which introduced me to the man who would become my life-long friend and music teacher: a composer, jazz organist, and film-score fanatic named Chester Smith; he was making a living at the time selling home organs. He's still, after almost 30 years, my primary music teacher.

He didn't teach me organ, per se, and he still doesn't; he taught me orchestration, so I found myself gravitating naturally to theatre pipe organs, which are far superior for performing orchestral transcriptions, with their imitative orchestral stops, traps, and percussions, than their classical ancestors.

Here's a pic of my home practice and composing setup: Conn Model 652 Three-Manual Theatre, with KORG Triton Music Workstation on top...

Dean

[Serassi1836]

I played piano from I was five.
Five months ago, i've knowed an organist. I asked him on organ and he took me to see some organs (a 1836 Serassi and Cremona cathedral's organ, also). Then a priest asked me if i wanted try the organ for play it in ferial masses. A month late I was playing in a mass. Two month ago started a school music when I'm doing a piano exam, then I will pass to organ. Three weeks ago another priest asked me if i wanted play on sundays on an "organ" (it's an electronic keyboard only) in a small church. I accepted. So I play organ.

[jvhldb]

I took piano lessons for about 9 months when I was 11 years old, we moved to a new town and there were no music teachers so I quit. Later my parents bought a chord organ, which I used to torment everybody with for about 20 years (without any training). August 2007, at age 38, I decided to take up organ lessons as we always have a problem when the church organist (which happens to be the founder of the local music academy, director of the Cantu Maluti Youth Choir, etc.) is away. At the academy they started me of on a piano for three months so I could learn to read the music for the left hand and in January 2008 I took my first organ lesson.

To get me used to playing in front of an audience my teacher usually let me play the pieces I learned that week to the congregation. One thing I learned from this is that it's totally different playing a song and accompanying the congregation.

[musicalis]

Hi !
I started playing organ in PAU (FRANCE), without any teacher when I was 11 or 13 yo (I do not remeber exactly). On sunday, when I went to the office, my goal was not to pray but to listen to the organ. I became a friend of the organist, he let me seat on his bench and turn his pages (I had learn music theory in the music school of the city). Then the organist and the priest let me play the organ in the sunday afternoon when the church was empty. I usually improvised. I also played harmonium in the chappel of my catholic school. When I was about 14 yo, my parents moved to a small and young city near by BORDEAUX. There was no church. I studied a little the piano ( 3 teachers, and 3 monthes with each one). Then , when 15-16yo a new church was built in my city, and a new priest arived. He was a cousin of my father. He has no organist, and he asked me to play harmonium at the office. It is so that I started to be an real organist.

[JONESEY]

Hi,

Like most of you, I started as a Pianist. Lessons started for me around 5 or 6 I guess, then I changed teacher to one that encouraged exams. I started on Grade 2 with the London College of Music, and took exams up to and including Grade 8 by the time I was 15.

The first encounter with the Church Organ was when the then Vicar of our local village Church arrived on our doorstep with a bunch of hymn books explaining that he had no organist for Evensong that week - I picked 4 hymns I could play, started learning the Magnificat and Nunc Demitus and the rest as they say is history.

I have also played in a Prison Chapel (not a resident!) and for a community church of around 10 people in my time.

There you have it - my organ life story in a nutshell!!!!!

[Corno Dolce]

The organ and I go back aways - Single digit age when I first started playing the organ and had good fortune with excellent private tutelage.

[methodistgirl]

I started to play the pipe organ last summer at my church. Now I play
the piano and I still play a little organ called the harmonica.
judy tooley

[musicalis]

Is it an harmonica with pipes or an electronic harmonica ?
Do you also play it with the mouth ?
Sorry, Judy,It's only a joke.


PS : have you seen my latest painting (my avatar) ?

[Mush]

My mom was an organ teacher. Her mom was an organ teacher. My dad sold Hammonds. His dad sold the first Hammonds. So before I knew any better, I was playing. Later when I was seven, I went into the music program at Immaculate Heart College. After that I studied with composers whos' works were published by my moms company. I always had access to good instruments. When I was bored with all the ones in the house, down in the basement of my dads store there were twenty or so concert grands I could choose from, as long as no visiting Steinway artist was not down there. When there was someone down there, I would secretly sit at the bottom of the back stairs and spy on them as they prepared for concerts. I was always curious about how the greats practiced. Next door to the store there was a nice fat wooly E.M. Skinner, a Shlicker and later a Hrodetzsky to practice on. When the Shoenstien 'Chour de Orgue' showed up at my home church, I hijacked that as my personal practice machine. Then I went to college for a degree and now I'm an engineer.

[Krummhorn]

Hi Mush ... and welcome to MIMF - certainly happy to see another Arizonan join our ranks here

What a wonderful experience you had while growing up ... a plethora of instruments to play ... a childhood (and adults) dream for sure.

Hopefully you still play piano and/or organ?

[Flute'n'Pedal]

I became an organist in a rather remarkable and roundabout way. For many years I had been a part-time piano teacher, and I had also played piano for the local church. The priest had several times said I should learn the organ, but I wasn't interested. Then, 3 years ago, a new organist came to the cathedral, and I got a job singing in his cantory. I was so impressed with his playing that, finally, 16 months ago, I asked him to teach me the organ. He agreed to it, but I don't think he expected much of me. However, I was very persistent and practised quite hard. Just one week ago, I was asked to take a position as organist for two small local churches. And that's how I became an organist.

[JONESEY]

Congratulations on the job! - it's good to know that your hard work has paid off.

[musicalis]

Congratulations too.
I was sure you'll get such a function. I am very happy and proud for you.
Jean-Paul

[Krummhorn]

I became an organist in a rather remarkable and roundabout way . . . . . However, I was very persistent and practised quite hard. Just one week ago, I was asked to take a position as organist for two small local churches . . . . .

Congratulates Flute'n'Pedal

Persistence is the name of the game ... and justly rewarded, too.
So, what kind of organs do these two parishes have? Anything interesting about those you would like to share?