Last weekend, I enjoyed a Meet&Greet; with a pianist from a suburb of Munich, where we had some fun together on both the main organ and a small positive organ of my local church first and switching to my Hauptwerk setup at home afterwards.
As he already owns a digital Johannus organ, he was very grateful for the possibility of a direct touch comparison.
Additionally, he's very interested in organ improvisation, but is still seeking for a starting point when it comes to improving his skills.
That's what this impro is about: Showing some basics, patterns and other general stuff.
Here's a (more or less) brief selection of my advice to him during the performance:
- Have no fear to hit the wrong notes.
- There's no such thing as a "wrong note" in an improvisation.
- When hitting random keys to form a chord, you can quickly correct "odd" notes by choosing an adjacent key.
- Volume dynamics are easy to implement, but have a valuable impact on the piece's statement and structure.
- Integration of famous/familiar pieces is not only helpful to generate new ideas, but very likely is an "ear catcher" for your audience, too.
- Tritones are fun! :-) (Olivier Latry seems to be a fan of them as well...)
- Same goes for seconds and minor thirds.
- Ah yes, and not to forget the "classic" 4th-up-5th-down pattern...
- You don't need to be a genius in music theory, but some basic knowledge is a great help.
- Don't forget the pedals... What about a cantus firmus melody or a solo?
- Again: Don't fear any wrong notes. (It's just your inner dragon, trying to convince you to not improvise.)
For those who own a 7.1 surround system, an 8-channel FLAC file can be picked up here to get an impression of what it will sound like in my living room:
- URL:
http://via.woody-mc.de/to/d47PldoX6x9Jz_iJ
- Player: Current versions of Media Player Classic are able to properly play multi-channel FLAC files.
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