When pianists play the organ, they miss the intimate “touch” of the piano keyboard and often become frustrated.
There are other things about the organ that make up for this. The organ has many different tone colors, whereas the piano has only one.
It is rare for organ and chime music to be written without pedals. With three things going on at once, two hands and the pedals playing all together it is hard to build up confidence. This can be frustrating as you are dealing with three issues — playing the melody, playing the accompaniment, and playing the pedals.
In this book, we will take you step by step through the process of choosing, mastering and enjoying playing contrasting tone colors against each other.
Typically organists play flutes or strings on the Swell, the top keyboard with the left hand and the melody on the Great Chimes with the right hand.
But there is another stop setting that is useful when playing chimes. Chimes do not ring out very long so you might try when playing adding the Swell to Great coupler so that the melody is heard on the chimes AND the Swell stops you have chosen, filling out the melody.
Try other stops as alternates to the chimes as the solo stop — the Oboe on the Swell and a balanced softer stop on the Great.
These pieces are composed to create confidence in playing melodies and to open up the world of different sounds for the pianist to enjoy playing.
And, pianists, note that with the expression pedals you can gradually crescendo and decrescendo louder and softer than on a piano!