Category Archives: Newsletter

Models and Anchors

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Composers create music for many different reasons. Occasionally, they write pieces to demonstrate techniques for their students, either as examples of instrumental technique or compositional practices to master. The Orgelbüchlein of Johann Sebastian Bach is a fabulous place to look for simple chorale treatment ideas. L’Orgue Mystique by Charles Tournemire offers a wealth of ideas for how to work with chants. As improvisers (and composers) we need to spend some of our time studying the masters that came before us and learning to use the material (notes, harmonies, and sound colors) that we have available to us.

Paul Manz

One of the great American composers and hymn players of the twentieth century was Paul Manz. He produced countless volumes of pieces based upon familiar hymn tunes. Published with the title of Improvisations, many of these pieces could be models for us to follow, suggesting ideas and techniques for us to learn and apply to other melodies. One of his collections that I’ve had in my library for many years is his Improvisations for the Christmas Season, Set 1. It includes settings of the chorales Nun Komm der Heiden Heiland, Veni Emmanuel, and Wachet Auf along with a few others. Though the volume is labeled for the Christmas season, these are Advent chorales, so I typically will use them in the weeks leading up to Christmas. (That is, if I remember to take my score out of the file cabinet and bring it to church!)

Veni Emmanuel

One of the settings in the collection that fascinated me was a very simple setting of O Come, O Come, Emmanuel. It is a short one page piece. The pedal part consists entirely of a single note, the tonic E. The melody is presented on a solo stop and the chordal accompaniment on a softer registration. I found a performance on YouTube that you may hear by following the link here. What fascinates me about this composition is how Manz begins and ends with cluster harmonies and triads from within the mode, but then ventures quite far afield in the middle, using chromaticism might otherwise be out of place in a modal piece.

When evaluating an improvisation (or composition), I like to fall back on the four C’s that I outlined in the first newsletter issues: competent, convincing, coherent, and colorful. The mixture of chromatic and modal harmonic language could make this Manz piece incoherent and perhaps not very competent either, yet our ears accept the chromaticism. Why?

Anchors

This improvisation gives our ears two anchors to hold on to: the pedal point and the melody. Being a familiar tune, the melody (as the loudest voice) clearly has the strongest pull for our ears. The pedal point also orients us just as the north pole orients a compass. Regardless of which way we may turn, the pedal will enable us to gain our bearings and return home again. The chromaticism also has a direction to it – the chords continue moving up – giving our ear an expected resolution to the dissonance as well. All these together combine to create the color of the piece, enabling it to be coherent, competent, and convincing, in spite of the rather simple and perhaps uninteresting ideas that are combined to make the composition.

Try it for yourself

How can this piece serve as a model for us? What can we practice following this example?

While normally, pedal points can be boring and would often be discouraged, they can be useful in times of very chromatic movement. What sort of harmonic tension can you create over a pedal point? How long can you keep a listener’s attention with only one note in the pedal? Explore chromatic harmonies by changing one note at a time in the accompaniment. Does this work better with the melody in the soprano or tenor range? What difference does it make if the theme is in a major mode? What if the chromatic lines move down instead of up? Here’s a technical challenge for you: play the pedal point with the left (or right!) hand and the melody in the pedal. Choose different themes and try out all the different combinations of pedal point, melody and accompaniment that you can imagine!

May all your improvisations be competent, convincing, coherent and colorful!

Glenn

 
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Newsletter Issue 30 – 2014 12 01
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Thank You

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This week in the United States, we celebrate Thanksgiving. While it has become a commercialized holiday that at one point marked the start of the Christmas shopping season (which now begins before Halloween), I believe it is very useful for everyone to spend a few moments from time to time to express gratitude to others. Today, I’d like to thank you for visiting organimprovisation.com. If you enjoy the content, would you thank me by sharing it with your friends and colleagues and asking them to subscribe? Every time I see a new subscriber or get a note from someone, I feel encouraged because I believe in some small way I’ve been able to help someone become a better organist. Thank you for your confidence in my abilities to offer you useful information. Please feel free to email me with your ideas for topics or lessons that would be most helpful to you.

Now Thank We All Our God

One of the most popular hymns sung at Thanksgiving is the German chorale Nun danket alle Gott, and one of the most popular settings of the chorale for organ is the Virgil Fox transcription of a movement from Johann Sebastian Bach’s Cantata no. 79. (Here Virgil Fox play it on YouTube here or the original Bach Cantata movement with orchestra here.) I’d like to use this piece as our model to imitate this week. How can we break this piece down and use the pieces to build something like it with a different choral?

Language and Form

Being composed by J.S. Bach, the musical language is very tonal. Secondary dominant seventh (or ninth) chords are about as adventuresome as we get harmonically. If you wish to treat another tune in this style, make sure the tonal language of the theme is consistent with the style.

For form, the piece basically alternates what I will call concerto material with phrases of the chorale. The second half of the chorale is also repeated, creating additional length for the piece. The chorale theme always appears in the left hand on a solo stop and is also given a half-note pulse. This allows time for the right hand to provide concerto material for each note of the theme, but the harmonic rhythm does not move any faster than the theme itself. In some other forms, doubling the length of time a melody note is played gives the composer the opportunity to fit more chords in the harmony, but this is not the case here. Bach keeps it simple.

Getting Started

The opening concerto material is actually the same material that is used to accompany the first phrase of the chorale. Rather than play the chorale, the left hand just played a rhythmic idea to keep the piece in motion:

FoxNunDanket

Perhaps a first step to try if you wish to do this with another chorale is to simply use the left hand accompaniment figure to above to play through the harmonies of your new chorale theme. For example, here’s the opening of All Glory, Laud and Honor (Valet will ich dir geben):

FoxAllGlory

After this, it’s time to experiment to find a motif or idea that you can play with the right hand. Bach uses both rising and descending thirds as well as neighbor notes to create his concerto material. Try using similar material for your harmonic progression, but keep the idea simple so that you can remember it and use it or reference it again and again in between each of the phrases of your chorale theme.

Pulling It All Together

One of the other details I noticed about the Bach cantata movement is that each full phrase of the chorale is interrupted at the halfway point by a short phrase of concerto material. At the end of a phrase of the chorale, there is a longer section of concerto material before the chorale returns. This makes it easier to modulate to the dominant where the second half of the chorale begins and is an easy way to create a longer piece if you have more time that you need to fill. To shorten the piece, leave out the additional concerto material that interrupts the theme at the midpoint of each phrase.

Thank you again for visiting organimprovisation.com. I hope you find these tips helpful and that your improvisations fill those around you with gratitude for the musical gifts that you have been given!

Happy Thanksgiving,
Glenn

 
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Newsletter Issue 29 – 2014 11 24
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Thriving through Severe Limitations

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The more constraints one imposes, the more one frees one’s self. And the arbitrariness of the constraint serves only to obtain precision of execution. -Igor Stravinsky

I have always felt that one of the biggest obstacles for the beginning improviser is the fear of the unknown. When there are no longer notes on the page giving instructions to the fingers and feet, how do we choose what to play? Will we start with a bang or quietly? Do we use our feet from the beginning or let the hands start first? How about a pedal solo to begin? Are we in major, minor, or some other mode? What form shall we try to follow? What meter will we use? Are we going to play fast or slow? Will the rhythm be simple quarter notes or will we use syncopation. triplets, or other more complicated rhythms?

Even if we make it past the fear of creating music on the spot, we may be overwhelmed by the choices.

Decisions

A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. -Lao-Tsu

By making a first decision about any aspect of the improvisation, we have begun the journey. Even something as generic as choosing an emotion we wish to convey through the improvisation can guide our selection of key, tempo and dynamics. Each decision after the first becomes easier and comes quicker. If we wish to create a happy piece, perhaps we choose a major key and play faster than if we are sad. By making a decision about one aspect of the piece, we have narrowed our field of choice and further reduced the stress of getting started. As improvisers, we can remain open to the possibilities we might discover while creating a piece that might send us down new paths, but in order to start the journey, we must make at least one decision. How much do you decide before you begin to improvise?

Restrictions

When I began my composition studies, my first assignment was to write a piece for clarinet using only the intervals of a minor second, major second, perfect fourth or tritone. My memory may be slightly faulty on the exact list of intervals, but there were certainly no more than four options, and I’m sure that no third was included, major or minor. Can you improvise a melody using only those intervals as you move from note to note?

By being assigned to write for a specific instrument, a first decision was made for us. While an advanced clarinetist might be able to create multiphonics, the instrument basically produces one note at a time, so any sense of pitch center or key would have to be established by the melody without any harmonic support. By restricting us to only moving by certain intervals, our tonal language was restricted, even if it wasn’t restricted in the same way as identifying a key would have limited us. Even as constraining as these requirements might seem, they still left tempo, dynamics and rhythm all completely open ended. The variety that the class brought back and developed as we continue to work on this project was amazing.

Thriving

When we complained about how difficult this first assignment seemed, I remember by teacher telling a story about Igor Stravinsky. At some point, someone asked the great composer if he would write a piece of music for them. Stravinsky responded with the seemingly absurd answer that he didn’t know how to write a piece of music, but then explained that if you asked him to write a piece for X,Y, and Z (insert the strangest combination of three instruments you can imagine, such as accordion, tuba, and xylophone), he would happily accept the request. While the story may be apocryphal, I believe the quote at the top of this newsletter supports that idea that Stravinsky thrived under restrictions.

Try your hand at improvising a single melody following the rules for the clarinet assignment above. How many different moods can you convey with those same restrictions? Can you create an ABA form lasting more than two minutes with the same limitation?

If you are having difficulty improvising, try making it more difficult to improvise. Create more restrictions for yourself before you start. Describe your improvisation as completely as you can before playing the first note. While it may actually be more difficult to improvise under these restrictions, you will also know exactly how you did not meet them, and that will make it easier to learn from your mistake(s). Being clear in your intentions will enable you to be precise in your execution.

Hoping constraints lead you to creativity,
Glenn

 
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Newsletter Issue 28 – 2014 11 10
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Modulations with Motive

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Whether you are looking to fill a little time, transitioning from the choir anthem to the doxology, or creating a larger form, one of the hallmarks of a good improvisation is the virtually constant presence of thematic material. By using recognizable material, your improvisation becomes more coherent, more competent and more convincing, thus improving your skills in three of the four C’s of improvisation.

Cadences

One of the patterns I practiced when learning piano were standard I-IV-I-V-I cadential patterns. (If you need an explanation of Roman Numerals for music, there is a lesson available at www.8notes.com.) I learned to play these in every major and minor key in multiple inversions. These cadences are basic building blocks to have in your ears and fingers, especially if you are looking to establish a new key center. I had to play them for the key of every piano piece I learned. If you need to practice them, you could play them for the key of every hymn or piece you plan to play this Sunday.

Thanksgiving

At the end of November here in the United States, we will celebrate Thanksgiving. While the story of the Pilgrims and Indians sharing food together is likely more fiction than fact, the idea of giving thanks for all that we have is something we should probably practice more than once a year. One of the hymns closely associated with the holiday, Nun danket alle Gott, also happens to open with a harmonic progression that requires only I, IV, and V chords of the cadential patterns mentioned above.
NunDanketPhrase

Thematic material can be melodic, but it can also be harmonic. Try playing the first phrase of Nun danket followed by a similar I-V-I-IV-IV-I pattern in a closely related key (D minor, C major, Bb major, or G minor)? Congratulations! You just made a modulation with motive!

As this phrase ends with a plagal cadence, you’ll probably wish to continue playing in your new key or keep moving to another closely related key if you haven’t arrived at your destination yet.

Reharmonization

Another way to modulate while using ideas from a theme is to reharmonize the melody. Here’s the same opening phrase in A minor:

NunDanketAMinor

or C Major:
NunDanketCMajor

Same melody. New chords. And while C major might make it a little easier to get to G major, the reharmonization in A minor opens up the option of E major for us which would normally be considered a very distant key from our start in F major. How many other harmonizations can you find for this melody? Where will they free you to go?

Q and A

Often musical phrases are described as antecedent and consequent or question and answer. When making transitions, it is helpful to be able to answer the same question in many different ways. If the first four measures of Nun danket alle Gott is the question, can you find answers that get you to any other key at the end of four more measures? Which of the thematic material is most helpful when modulating to different keys? Can you keep the first three notes and chords the same before modulating? How does this exercise change when you use a different hymn tune as your theme?

I want thank those of you who have responded to my sign-up survey. It is helpful for me to know about my audience, and I was also alerted through the comments to two other improvisers that I’ll be adding to the website soon! Because the survey is anonymous, if you would like a response from me, please leave your contact info in the final response box or simply email me directly. If you are not yet a subscriber and would like to take the survey, please uses the boxes to the right to get your free lesson and a link for the survey.

Hoping your improvisations inspire people to thank you for your music!
Glenn

 
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Newsletter Issue 27 – 2014 11 3
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Moving to a new center

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Did you have any time to fill this week? Did you fill it with song? Did you kill time or follow a form?

The key to filling larger blocks of time or creating large scale forms is the ability to move to different key centers. While staying in the same key is acceptable for certain styles and forms, even a simple ABA form can benefit from modulation to a different key.

Ready? Go!

The quickest way to change keys is to simply change keys! No preparation or transition necessary. This works well in tonal schemes when moving to a closely related key: tonic to dominant, major to relative minor, major to parallel minor, or vice versa. From C major, that enables us to simply move to G major, F major, A minor and C minor. If you are using a richer tonal palette (like Messiaen’s Mode 2), movements by thirds can work as well. This would add Eb major, F# major, A major, E major, and Ab major as possible direct jumps.

One Chord Transitions

A very common practice in some traditions is to modulate up for the final verse of a hymn. Often the easiest and quickest way to do this is with a deceptive cadence at the end of the verse, concluding on major chord on the flatted sixth degree of the scale. This makes the old tonic the leading tone for the new key one half-step higher and enables everyone to jump back in to the next verse with no further segue needed.

A dominant seventh chord can actually serve as a pivot point for a transition to any other key. While you might need a little more time to lock in the new key after the shift, I’ve made a handout available here showing the resolution from a G7 chord to all 24 major and minor keys.

In his Cours Complet d’Improvisation à l’Orgue, Marcel Dupré suggests using symmetrical chords for modulation. The diminished seventh chord built of minor thirds functions very much like the dominant seventh chord above, so I won’t elaborate further on it. The other symmetrical chord Dupré uses for modulation is the augmented triad. Built of major thirds, this is an unstable sound because it lacks a perfect fifth. The lack of stability helps create the motion to a new key, and once again this chord can get you to any other key that you would like. (See the handout here.)

Smooth Transitions

Of course, if you are not looking to shock your listeners, you may wish to take a little more time and venture through several keys before arriving at your final destination. Exactly how much time you can take will depend upon the form you are aiming to follow and the expected duration of your improvisation. Composer Max Reger offers a guide on how to modulate from one key to another, even providing different progressions for enharmonic key relations! In his book Modulation, he offers 46 potential progressions from a major key and 54 progressions from a minor key. If you don’t know how to get from one key to another, this is the place to look. If your time is short, you can employ his progressions as they are. If you have more time, you can create a phrase in the key for each of the chords of his suggested progressions. The key to smooth transitions will be to use melodic thematic material whenever possible. Referencing familiar musical material will make it easier for the listener to accept and process the harmonic changes. By playing thematic material in different keys, you will also be practicing skills necessary for larger forms such as sonata allegro or fugue!

May your move from one place to another pass smoothly!

Glenn

 
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Newsletter Issue 26 – 2014 10 27
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Are you killing time or following a form?

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No one likes to wait, and silence can be deadly.
When that unexpected silence arrives in a church service, who is asked to fill the void?
Why, it’s the organist, of course!
This might mean extending a piece for a few more measures, or it might mean creating a new piece just long enough to fill the gap (even when you don’t know how long that gap might be).

Aimless Wandering

At the most basic level, any organist should be able to fill time. Creating an additional repeat in a written piece of music or even starting again at the beginning and bringing the piece to a successful cadence when the time is up are the simplest ways to start. While I recommend aimless wandering as a way to explore new modes or when searching for your own harmonic language, when the organist just meanders meaninglessly around the keys to fill time, it becomes killing time and I think silence might actually be a better option.

Following a form

The much better option is to actually follow some sort of form in the extension that you need to create, or if you expect to have the time for an entire piece, then you definitely need to have a form in mind. I find one of the easiest and most flexible forms is AABA or song form. There are many hymn tunes that follow this form (HYMN TO JOY and NETTLETON to name only two), and unless your B section is radically different, there’s a good chance that you can end your piece at the end of any section without too much concern.

Simple Structure

If you are in need of an extension, the easiest material to use for the A section is a phrase or idea from the piece you just played. If you need to start from scratch, here is a simple harmonic scheme that you can follow:
AABASimple

You could plan out more elaborate structures according to your ability level, and of course, this can be adapted for any key or time signature. One easy way to stretch this form would be to double the phrase length to eight measures. For example:
AABADouble
At a moderate tempo, either of these examples could provide you with 1-2 minutes of music. I prepared a PDF that you can download here to print both of these on one page to take to the console and practice. Feel free to create your own patterns to practice the form.

Longer Songs

Once you are comfortable creating a 16 or 32 measure song form, you can then practice stringing them together to create a larger ABA or even AABA form. If you choose to follow a larger AABA form, be sure to differentiate your two A sections by changing the accompaniment pattern or the register of the melody or perhaps even both. By doing something slightly different, you help to keep the listener involved with the piece. By using the same material again, you will be making your job as an improviser easier, so it becomes a win-win situation for everyone!

Silence can torture, but so can rambling aimlessly. If you have a gap to fill, make sure you are following a form rather than just killing time.

May all your songs be filled with beautiful melodies,

Glenn

 
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Newsletter Issue 25 – 2014 10 21
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Shifting Gears

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Yesterday, I had the opportunity to play part of a Sunday Matinee concert at the Cathedral Church of St. Luke in Orlando, Florida. I opened the program with one of my own compositions which I had written as a gift for the music director at the Cathedral. For the rest of my portion of the program, I was to improvise on hymn tunes suggested by the audience. While several people offered compliments to me after the concert was over, I actually discovered something that I’d like to offer as a practice tip for this week.

Random Selection

If you ever accept theme suggestions from the audience, you have to be prepared for just about anything. By requesting that people submit something from the hymnal for the drawing, we made an attempt to limit the realm of thematic material I would be working with. When I showed up to practice, I would open the hymnal randomly and improvise on whatever tune was in front of me, so I thought I had covered this random selection process well in my preparation. By asking for the person’s favorite hymn, I also suspected that many of the suggestions would be familiar tunes that I had practiced before. (Now that I have the complete set of index cards with the audience submissions, I have a few tunes to add to the list of hymn and chorale themes at organimprovisation.com.)

Caught off Gaurd

Having improvised on a submitted theme at the end of numerous other concerts in addition to improvising multiple pieces for church services every week, I thought Sunday’s task of filling 15-16 minutes with improvisations on potentially four different themes would be easy. After all, that’s really only 4 minutes each. A simple ABA form or even an ornamented chorale variation could take that long, and I’ve done those every week for years. What I failed to realize was the time compression that was required for the concert. Rather than knowing the hymns for the week several days in advance and having other elements of the service to provide time for reflection in between improvisations, I now basically had to choose an order of the themes, and improvise the equivalent of the prelude, offertory, communion, and closing voluntaries all strung together. No breaks.

Shift

My challenge became not how fast can I play, but how fast can I mentally change gears? Whether you break out the metronome and ratchet up the speed gradually or look for efficiencies while playing slowly, physical technique for speed seems a lot easier to tackle than mental agility. While I’m still contemplating how I could have better prepared for yesterday’s mental challenges, here are a few ideas that I plan to practice before doing this again:

  1. Practice improvising while watching the clock. Choose not only a theme and form, but also a duration and make sure the improvisation runs for the allotted time.
  2. Open the hymnal at random, count to ten, then start! Practice giving yourself the least amount of time possible between discovering the theme and starting to play.
  3. Use a random number generator (like http://www.random.org/) to generate a list of page numbers from the hymnal. Improvise on each of the tunes in the order given on the list.
  4. Practice in “performance mode.” No stopping. No redos. Play straight through from start to finish.
  5. Set a timer to beep every two minutes (or an even shorter interval). Every time it beeps, change theme, change key, and/or change form. Practice this doing dramatic shifts as well as doing more subtle shifts.

One of the practice ideas I heard in a masterclass with Tom Trenney was to make a deck of cards with forms or improvisation techniques written on them and then to draw randomly from the deck to see what you would improvise. I think you could also have a deck of themes and even a deck of keys/modes. The weakness I discovered at yesterday’s concert was not with any of the cards that were in the deck, but in my ability to flip from one card to the next quickly.

The Fix

The remedy I see at the moment is to use a timer to force me to change ideas quickly. We are all used to practicing with a metronome for technical speed, so why shouldn’t we use something to measure our mental speed? How else can we train ourselves to think faster? I’d love to hear any ideas you might have.

Hoping all your improvisations shift gears smoothly!

Glenn

PS. In case you’re wondering, the four hymns that were selected by the audience were Holy, Holy, Holy (NICAEA), Be Thou My vision (SLANE), Rock of Ages, and All Creatures of Our God an King (LASST UNS ERFREUEN). What would you have done with these themes?

 
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Newsletter Issue 24 – 2014 10 13
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How Fast Can You Play?

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Over the years, I’ve been fortunate to study with many different improvisation teachers. The encounters have been in short masterclass lessons, intensive workshop immersions, and regular weekly lessons. Only once, however, has a teacher ever made an attempt to asses my improvisation skill level.

I met Franck Vaudray when I was in Lyon to audition at the conservatory (CNSM). I was in town on Sunday morning, so made a visit to St. François de Sales. I sat in a pew for mass and went up to the organ afterwards, expecting to find Louis Robilliard and planning to ask what pieces he had played. Instead, that’s when I met my next improvisation teacher.

Franck Vaudray

As I arrived at the organ while he was still playing the sortie, I instantly discovered that I was hearing an improvisation. No score by César Franck was on the music rack. (I had dismissed Charles-Marie Widor as an option once the canon appeared.) After we exchanged introductions, I learned that he also had improvised the lovely baroque trio sonata movement at the offertory. These improvisations were both so polished that they could have been written pieces, so when he offered to take me as a student, I was more than happy to begin commuting to Lyon for lessons whenever I could.

The Evaluation

When I came back to St. Fraçois de Sales a few weeks later for my first lesson with Franck, he started by placing a piece of paper on the music rack with something like the following written on it:
FranckAtonal
(I had the original paper for many years, but it seems to have gotten lost in my last move.)

My instructions were to play single notes as fast as I could with my hands in an atonal style and then add in the theme in long notes with the pedals. While the instructions may seem simple, it can be very easy to fall into tonal patterns if you are not careful with the hands. Likewise, this duo may not seem very impressive, but with all the foundations and swell reeds coupled together, it could be the start of a very nice toccata!

Increasing Difficulty

So ends the easy part. Every step thereafter basically served to make the task more difficult. It’s hard for me to remember the exact sequence of steps, but here’s a few basic ideas of what I went through:

  1. Increase to trio texture. Both hands play independent atonal lines of fast notes. No rests allowed. Pedal plays them in long notes.
  2. Duo: Right hand and pedal alone, but this time, play the theme in retrograde (C, E, F#, Eb…)
  3. Duo (left hand and pedal) with the theme played from the outside in (G, C, Ab, E, F, F#…)
  4. Duo (both hands and pedal) with the theme from the inside out (A, Bb, Eb, D, F#, F…)
  5. Duo with the theme inverted (octave transposition permitted so as to not run out of notes) so it becomes: G, F#, A, C, E, F…

Is your brain tired yet? Now, it’s time to do it all over again, but this time observe the numbers as the duration of the notes of the theme. Starting again with the basic theme, this means that you would play five notes with the hands for the G in the pedal, followed by ten for Ab, seven for F, six for D, and so forth through the entire theme. I’m guessing this will slow you down a little, because it certainly decreased my speed! Be sure you go through all the retrograde, in-out, out-in, and inversion steps following the numbers as well.

Texture Inversion

For the final task, I could disregard the numbers (Yeah!) and was told to start again with long notes in the pedal and fast notes in the hands. Instead of ending after playing once through the theme, however, I was to continue playing more notes of shorter and shorter duration with the feet while the hands were to play longer and longer notes until eventually I managed to reverse the texture and could play the theme in long notes (in octaves) with the hands while the feet played the quick atonal notes. Here was the final speed test: how fast could my feet move?

To Be Continued

So that you can try this easily yourself, I created a pdf with the theme and instructions above that you can download here and print to take with you to the console. How fast can you play? Is it easy to play atonal lines with your hands? How about with your feet?

These exercises turned out to be only the first part of my first lesson with Franck Vaudray. We continued on for at least an hour more through challenges involving dictation, motives, transposition, canons and harmonization. (If I can find the sheet he gave me as homework, I’ll share more of these in a future newsletter.) I walked out of St. Fraçois de Sales mentally exhausted. When was the last time you tested your improvisational limits?

Hoping your improvisations set new speed records!
Glenn

 
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Newsletter Issue 23 – 2014 10 06
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Release the Tenor!

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Except for the times when I’ve worked with an auditioned choir where the number of members is kept closely balanced, the smallest section of most choirs is usually the group of tenors. The women usually outnumber the men with most of the women opting for the “easy” soprano melody part, unless it gets too high, then they might sing alto. The few men that show up often feel more “manly” singing the low notes, even if in most operas, it’s the tenor that plays the heroic role and saves the day.

Why all the talk about choir membership and stereotypes in an organ improvisation newsletter? Because I suspect when we improvise, we follow the same distribution of thematic material. Most often the theme appears in the soprano or uppermost part that we play. If we play the theme in a lower range, it becomes the bass part. Very often, the middle gets ignored. Think back over the last 25-30 improvisations you’ve done and assign each one a voice part. What would that choir look like? Would it be all sopranos? Would there be a tenor (or bass) present?

Finding the Tenor

If you aren’t used to having a theme in the tenor, then probably the first step would be to engage a soloist: Simply play the theme in the tenor range with the left hand unaccompanied. While the organ may allow you (depending upon its tonal resources) to use a sub-coupler or 16′ stop and play the theme in the tenor range using the right hand, I encourage you to actually use your left hand for the theme. This will engage different brain cells in the activity and may lead to new ideas for accompaniment and/or development of the theme.

After you’ve found your tenor soloist, introduce him to the soprano and the bass soloists. Let them carry on a polite conversation where each one speaks after the other. Don’t let any of them join forces against the other one yet. Keep the conversation civil and focused on the topic. Be sure no one dominates the conversation either.

Let the Tenor Lead

Once the conversation can pass quickly from one soloist to another, then we can work on ways to give the tenor the starring role. Choose a solo stop so that the tenor can sing out above the other voices. If your theme is a hymn like Kingsfold, one of the simplest ways to start is to give the bass a pedal point and have the soprano (or alto) play notes a sixth or tenth above the melody. You can even have the bass change notes at the end of phrases so he doesn’t get too bored. For example:

KingsfoldTenorExample
If that seems a little too easy, increase the motion for the soprano and/or bass. You could eventually try a little toccata:

KingsfoldTenorToccata
As tenors often have to read the treble clef (and most themes are typically given that way), I used the treble clef for the examples above. If you ignore the octave lower indication, these also happen to work as alto solos….

Nurture the Tenor

No one likes to feel left out of a group, and any time that you are trying to welcome a newcomer to a group, it is very wise to let the person speak up more often. Regardless of whatever form you might be practicing, be sure to include the tenor in the discussion. The more times he gets included in the conversation, even if only briefly, the more comfortable he will feel and the more often he will be willing to chime in with a potentially significant contribution to the piece. Give the tenor some practice time to find his voice so that he can speak with confidence and assurance when the time is ripe for the hero to enter and save the day!

Hoping your improvisations are like a well-balanced choir!
Glenn

 
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Newsletter Issue 22 – 2014 09 29
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Do Something Different

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I am always doing that which I cannot do, in order that I may learn how to do it.
― Pablo Picasso

My mantra throughout these pages so far has focused on treating the practice of improvisation like we treat the practice of repertoire: choose a passage, practice it over and over again until we get it right and then move on. Because improvisation is the art of instant music, far too often I suspect we finish the task at hand and never consider how we could do it better if we were to attempt that same task again. Mastery requires attention to detail, and the only path I know towards mastery is through repetition.

The Flip Side

Even so, repetition should not lead us into ruts. If we have acquired some degree of mastery creating a fugue on Alma Redemptoris Mater, we need to move on to trying a scherzo on the same theme or perhaps a fugue on Amazing Grace instead. If a passacaglia with ten variations happens to fill the time needed this week’s offertory collection, how many more variations could you could do if your time were not restricted? 10 more? 20? 50? 100? How soon would they start sounding like an earlier variation that you’ve already played?

Do you have a favorite form to improvise for the postlude? How many toccatas on the last hymn have you played? While that may be a great way to practice your toccatas with different themes, how about doing something different?

Broad bases for soaring heights

For many years, I have considered acquiring skills to be like building a pyramid. When you focus on mastering one task, it is the equivalent of building higher and higher. When you expand to a related area, you build out the base. Anyone who has ever played Jenga understands the troubles associated with building too high on a narrow base. With a larger base, it becomes easier to reach the previous highs as well as to reach new heights. When we do something different, we expand our base.

The easiest way to start is by changing one element at a time. If most of our improvisations are in 4/4, how about only improvising in 3/4 for the next week? If you are comfortable in 3/4 and 4/4, how about making this the week of 5/4? Do you have certain keys you favor when improvising? How about choosing a key like F# major or Eb minor to be the tonic for your improvisations this week? These little steps outside of our comfort zones help us build a larger base and will make the tasks within our comfort zone seem that much easier.

Large Leaps

Tackling a task too far away from our current pyramid may not help us reach new heights quickly, but it might also be just what we need to do in order to add another ten layers to our pyramid. Going skydiving might not seem related to our music practice, but if jumping out of a plane can give us more courage to begin improvising with little or no preparation, I say go do it!

How many of last week’s twenty ways to improvise on a hymn are within your comfort zone? How many would be small steps outside? Are there any large leaps required for you on that list? Did you actually try any of the suggestions that were new to you? The road to mastery requires practice and repetition, but you also need to be sure you do something different!

Hoping your improvisations are as magnificent as the pyramids of Egypt!
Glenn

PS One of the best ways to grow is through competition. This week, I wrote a post about the new rules for the 2016 AGO National Competition in Organ Improvisation. I’d love to hear thoughts from other improvisers about the competition and my comments on the new rule set. Please comment at the end of the article, or if you are so inclined, contact AGO directly.

 
Recent additions to organimprovisation.com:

Organists:

Mode:

Themes

 
Newsletter Issue 21 – 2014 09 22
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