Learn to Play the Church Organ

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Learning the Church Organ from a Pianist’s Background.

The church organ is an instrument that most people come to already having some experience on the piano. To begin the instrument without any keyboard experience or knowledge would be a very difficult and long task indeed.

However, many people struggle, especially with learning to play the bass pedals - it’s amost as if you are playing two instruments at the same time instead of one.

It is not that bass pedals are difficult to play on their own, it’s just that when the manuals have to be played too, it becomes really very difficult.

It is my opinion that too much attention is placed on technique and not enough thought given to what is going on in the students mind and how he or she can make natural connections between hands and feet, in a more harmonic and useful way.

There is a sense of “the organ is a piano with bass pedals” approach - the pedals being the extra part that makes playing the organ so difficult.

This, of course, is not true, the organ is very different from the piano, and serves only to make it more difficult to play manuals and pedals together - am I a pianist playing the pedals or an organist?

The main function of a church organist is to play hymns so that the congregation can sing along. This is where, I suggest, someone new to learning the church organ should spend their time, and put Bach to one side for a later day. If you can’t play hymns with pedals, the organ music of Bach will be far too difficult anyway.

The first step is making connections between hands and feet - I am not talking syncronisation or technical know-how, I am talking harmony.

Harmony and chord knowledge put into practice (and practise) immediately as it is learnt, will make connections in the mind between the hand and feet that will, in turn, make the independence required secondary.

Do you consider the independence between your fingers when you play a hymn? probably not often. The fingers do it together because that’s the way they’ve been trained. The feet should also be trained in a similar way to respond to a chord as the fingers do ... they should be an extension of the fingers.

There is of course a good pedal technique to be learned, but it is my viewpoint that just playing chords on the manuals and using the pedals at the same time will enable the student to get something connected in their minds ... you have to learn to walk before you can walk in a straight line.

As soon as the feet and pedals become part of the same mental thought, playing hymns becomes much easier.

Arms and legs flying in all directions ... you need to be on form on a Sunday morning for this instrument!