8 Short CutsAll drivers like the idea of taking short cuts, or as my father used to say, “Going via the back doubles”. I have never understood the origin of that phrase, but I’m sure most of us will know what it means.
The idea of short cuts, or cutting corners can be helpful even to seasoned and very competent organists.
What I mean is, we recognize what notes we
have to play, but sometimes we need to recognize
what notes we can leave out to make our performance easier without affecting the final result. If you like, we can refer to it as the musicians sleight of hand!
First
The ChordsFor instance, if a chord is too big for you to stretch, you can either break it up between your two hands and feet, or simplify it, by pruning it to make it playable for you.
To read more about recognizing the notes that make up giant chords and how to distribute them over your fingers, click this link to open
Peters Pearls No 62 – Giant Chords in a new window:
http://www.ar-group.org/smforum/index.php?topic=2449.0I didn’t realize just how much has previously been covered in
Peters Pearls to accommodate this particular posting. It certainly makes this posting simpler.
To get back to how we play large chords, there is no point in playing all the notes in a chord like
F#m9/E, if we are going to have to wait for two whole bars while you get your brain and then your fingers round it.
Your listeners won’t remember your heroic efforts in struggling to play the chord, but only that the tune went haywire while you did so!
Now knowing which notes to ditch in a particular chord comes largely with experience.
But, here are some guides to bear in mind for this eventuality, starting with this simple rule:
When
pruning any chord keep the basic
core of the chord the same.
In the example above, namely
F#m9/E the basic note is
F#, so keep that whatever you do.
Also retain whether the
chord is major or minor. In this case the
m denotes the
minor.
I recognize that this particular chord is a bit extreme, but you will see how much simpler it can be to play.
For example,
F#m9/E could be played using
G# A C# E F# all over an E BassRemember
F#m is simply
F# A C#G# is the 9th.
While the
E played in the pedal board, is the 7th
In the next posting we take a small digression to, hopefully, simplify those 11th chords to show you easier ways of handling them.
Peter