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anyone else teach pipe organ?

kas

New member
Hi:
I've been teaching a local High School girl, who has already had many years of piano training, to play organ. She loves it and has learned her way around the console relatively quickly. The biggest problem has been learning to incorporate pedals with the manuals parts. This is presenting coordination problems and is coming slowly.
The amazins thing is, if I have her only play pedal parts, she can do it. She has an incredible spatial feel for the pedals. I can ask her to randomly play any combination of notes I think of, and she puts her feet right on the correct pedals....never looks down once. Isn't this a bit of an unusual ability for a beginner? Especially being that she is not really using pedals yet in any of her music!
Any tips or advice on teaching organ would be welcomed. I've played for many years and am currently organist at my church (Pennsylvania, USA), but this is my first time teaching someone. It's been a great and rewarding experience. I am a public school instrumental music teacher, so the pedagogical aspects of this are second-nature to me.

Best,
KAS
 
Thomas Dressler

Thomas Dressler

New member
I'd say maybe it's unusual to have such a feel for the pedalboard right away. Is this on a flat or AGO pedalboard? (After all these years, I still find AGO pedalboards more difficult to figure out than flat ones.)

In my experience, the most difficult part of the coordination that has to be learned is left hand and pedal. Even the lefties I've taught have more trouble with that than right hand and pedal. So the way I learned and the way I've taught it is to isolate left hand and pedal. Take a trio, for instance, and learn the manual parts alone, then one hand and pedal, then the other hand and pedal. It always seems to be left hand and pedal that gives people trouble. Many years ago I learned from a method book by John Stainer. This book is not regarded highly these days by many people, but I do seem to remember some left hand and pedal exercises that got me over that hump.

It would be interesting if you'd check this out with your student, isolating the hands and pedal, and let us know if this student has the same difficulty.
 

kas

New member
teaching pipe organ

Hi Tom:
The student I referred to (that can hit notes accurately at random) is learning on an AGO pedalboard. You're right about the left hand/pedal coordination being more difficult. I also want to get her to eventually forget about covering the bass part of a hymn on the manuals since it's sort of redundant. Don't most organists only play the SAT parts, and just do the B in the pedals? She is totally scared of even trying this so far. I think undoubtedly the piano training causes some of this inhibition - used to playing every note that is in front her. It'll take time.

Thanks for your input,
KAS
 

pb05

New member
Thomas Dressler said:
In my experience, the most difficult part of the coordination that has to be learned is left hand and pedal. Even the lefties I've taught have more trouble with that than right hand and pedal.
Click to expand...
Quite interesting. Is there something inherent (and known) to the cerebral function that controls left hand movements, or the combination left hand-feet, and explains this?
 
Thomas Dressler

Thomas Dressler

New member
Yes, I do think it's important to learn not to double the bass part with the pedals and left hand. It's good discipline to learn to play the bass line with the feet and share the other parts in the hands. I had trouble with that, too, when I was learning, but it's important to learn to do that--it's a part of learning independence of hands and feet. Otherwise it would be too difficult to, say, play a tenor cantus firmus on the pedals and the other parts in the hands, or whatever.

I think a good exercise would be to have her play only the tenor part with the left hand and only the bass part with the feet, as an exercise, skipping soprano and alto for awhile. I believe you often get the quickest results by tuning in to what is the source of the difficulty and leave the other stuff out until you can conquer the problem.

Pb, I don't know what the actual cerebral function might be that causes this difficulty, but it would be interesting to find out.
 
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