On Teaching

Organ Method VI

As usual, this month’s excerpt follows directly from the end of last month’s. It includes the most important practical parts of the beginning of work on pedal playing. It covers similar ground to the columns on pedal playing that I wrote several years ago, but in a way that is addressed to the student directly. In preparing this excerpt I have been reminded of the importance of explaining everything to the student in as thorough a way as possible—not simply saying “play this exercise because I tell you to: you’ll learn why later on.” This is especially true for a Method that will mostly be used by highly motivated adult students, and that may be used without a teacher. However, I also want to be sure that this thorough explanation is not cumbersome and does not make for heavy reading. I would appreciate reader feedback about this, as well as about anything else.

This stage—the introductory practicing described above—is extremely important, and you should spend enough time with it so that it becomes easy and natural, as if you had been doing it your whole life. Though it is simple—just two or three notes at a time, slow, unmeasured—it is actually the most significant step in learning to play pedals. Stay with it long enough to master it: if that occupies several hours of practice time, or if it spreads out over days or weeks, that is fine. This will save you time later on.

Playing pedal scales

When you are comfortable with this playing of small groups of adjacent notes, then you are ready for the next pedal exercise—longer groups of adjacent notes: those that we call scales. Or, really, one set of scales in particular. 

Find the note “A” nearest to where your left foot rests naturally. This is the lowest A on the pedal keyboard. Now play—slowly, lightly, and steadily—an A-natural-minor scale starting on that note. That is, the natural keys from that A up to the next A. Play the first four notes (A,B,c,d) with the left-foot toes, the next four notes (e,f,g,a) with the right toes. Observe all that you have already learned and practiced about foot position—make appropriate decisions about which way to tilt each foot, and how much to tilt it. Move from one note to the next in the kind of small, smooth arc that you have already practiced. 

Playing this scale this ways adds one new element: in the middle of the scale, going from d to e, you follow a note in one foot with a note in the other foot. Many students initially fail to move the right foot in close enough—that is, far enough left—and accidentally play an f instead of the e. If this happens to you, then be conscious of the need to move the right foot a bit farther left when it is time for that foot’s first note. Again, it is not important, and in fact not fruitful, to be too calculating about this. Just move the foot closer to where the correct note should be.  

You will notice that as the right foot moves in to play the e, the two feet need to avoid bumping into each other. This can be accomplished in a number of ways: tilting the feet enough; releasing one note early enough to allow the next note to be played cleanly; or playing the two notes at different places along the length of their pedal keys—one closer to the sharps and flats, one closer to you on the bench. This is (like choices about whether and which way to tilt the feet) an individual matter: each player has to devise a method that is effective and correct for him or her, since it can vary with the individual physique of the player. For example, the larger your feet are, the more you will have to work consciously to keep them clear of each other when they are playing notes that are close together. In general, separating the feet along the length of the keys—one forward, one back—is the approach that is the most certain to be effective. In the case of the two middle notes of this scale, try that separation both ways: left foot forward/right foot back, and right foot forward/left foot back. Is one of them more comfortable than the other? (Here in the middle of the pedal keyboard it is quite likely that both will be comfortable. This is not always the case elsewhere on the keyboard or in more complicated passages of music. Later on I will discuss approaches to figuring this out under various conditions.) How far do you have to separate them to feel sure about the feet not bumping into each other? How does it change the situation if you tilt the feet more or less, or to the other side? (In general if you are playing both feet off the big toe side, they are less inclined to bump into each other than if you are playing them off the little toe side). 

After you have practiced this scale going up, try it also going down. The technical issues are exactly the same.

To recap, in playing this A-natural-minor scale you are continuing to work on moving each foot over the distance that takes you from one natural note to the next, but through more of the keyboard, and you are beginning to experience the feeling of playing two adjacent notes with your two feet in succession. You are also continuing to notice carefully the position of each foot in all aspects. All of the distances between notes are, so far, the same. The next step, however, is to begin to introduce different distances, by changing the minor scale to a major one. Both of these scales/exercises are encapsulated in Example 1. (Note: The key signature in parenthesis means that the exercise should be played both with and without that key signature. For most exercises that I notate this way it is best to start with all-naturals, since any sharps or flats change distances and introduce irregularities, which are better dealt with after the regular pattern has been learned.)

It is important to stay with this set of scales until they all feel really solid—minor, major, up, down. It is also important not to allow this exercise to become particularly fast. The awareness of distance on the pedal keyboard that this sort of practicing is meant to develop will be imprinted on the brain more efficiently and more lastingly the more slowly you carry out the physical gestures. The half notes in this exercise should probably never get any faster than 60 per minute, and should certainly start much slower than that: as slow as necessary to allow accuracy and comfort.

Alternating feet

The next exercise is shown in Example 2. Each foot is in fact doing exactly the same thing that you have already been working on: moving up or down by step. The new elements are these: that the feet are interpolated with each other—so that you have to keep track of both feet at more or less the same time—and each foot moves farther away from its natural side of the keyboard than it did with the first exercise. The first of these differences is one that requires only good concentration. The second also requires that you plan properly for the turning of each foot and for the positioning of the feet with respect to each other as you move up and down the keyboard. As you go up the keyboard, the left knee, leg, and foot naturally move away from the bench; as you go down, the right knee, leg, and foot do so. Pay attention to this in making choices about tilting and other positioning of the feet. 

An absolutely secure sense of what the distance between two adjacent notes feels like—for the toes of one foot travelling from one note to the next through a small arc in the air above the keys—is the foundation of confident, accurate pedal playing. It is extremely important that you stick with the exercises that I have outlined thus far until they have become utterly well learned, easy, comfortable, natural, and automatic. As always, keep everything slow and relaxed, and don’t look.

Larger intervals on the pedals

The next step is, of course, to begin to move each foot over a distance greater than that from one note to the next. The first exercise for this is shown in Example 3. Here each foot takes a turn moving the distance of a third: the left foot on the way up, the right foot on the way down. Meanwhile, the other foot continues to practice what we have already learned. The correct way to begin to learn and internalize the feeling of moving the foot from one note to the note a third higher is this: simply tell yourself that you must move that foot a little bit farther than you moved it to go to the adjacent note. If this doesn’t work the first time—if you move your foot too little and only play the next note, or over-shoot to the third note or beyond—then correct the motion the next time by moving farther or less far. This way of thinking about it works. It is not necessary to try to analyze the distances more precisely than this: that will happen at a not-quite-conscious level, and trying to be conscious about it is distracting. It is necessary to avoid looking, and to avoid bumping the feet along the keys counting notes or otherwise trying to rely on physical cues. Simply move the feet from one note to the next.

Example 4 is a similar exercise with the roles of the feet reversed. As you practice each of these exercises, notice everything that you can about the alignment and positioning of the feet. For example, do you want to tilt either foot differently depending not just on what note it is playing, but on what note it is going to play next? On whether it is moving up or down? How is this (or anything else about posture or foot position) different between the “all natural” and the “three sharps” versions? Notice that in any exercise (or passage) in which the feet move across the body (left foot high, right foot low) it can be necessary to turn your body. At this stage it is a good idea to use your arms on the bench to brace yourself while turning, to the extent that this feels necessary or helpful. Later on, when putting hands and feet together in pieces of music, this is of course impossible. That will not turn out to be a problem: the need to do it will largely melt away with practice and familiarity.

Each of these last two exercises, and all similar pedal passages whether exercises or pieces of music, can be practiced with separate feet. In fact this can be quite important. It is physically analogous to practicing manual parts (or piano or harpsichord pieces) with separate hands. It differs from that musically in that the separate foot parts are less likely to make sense on their own. However, separate foot practice is an extremely efficient technique for learning pedal parts, and following the sometimes bewilderingly abstract separate parts is good listening practice, and good practice at concentrating. For Exercise III, for example, the separate left foot part starts like this: Each of the quarter notes is to be played detached—more or less as eighth notes, but precise counting is not necessary. Just make them as detached as physical comfort suggests. You can extract other single-foot parts from these and all other exercises and from pedal passages in the repertoire.

Practicing repeated pedal notes

Example 5 is an exercise for practicing repeated notes on the pedal keyboard. Notice that each foot separately is doing similar things to what it does in Exercises III and IV. The feet are moving in thirds and by step. However, the way in which the two feet are interpolated with each other is different, in such a way that it creates a repeated note pattern. The repeated notes, always played with different feet, will be detached, as repeated notes always are. Try varying the degree of detachment for the repeated notes—everything from as smooth as they can be while still repeating on time to as short as they can be while still allowing the pipes to speak. Also try various articulations for the notes that are not repeated. They can be slurred, which creates pairs of slurred notes, divided by the repeated notes, or they can be articulated in a way that exactly matches what you are doing with the repeated notes, or they can be played in any number of other ways. 

Once you have practiced these exercises until they feel easy and reliable, you are ready both to go on to a selection of pedal parts from pieces—ones that are appropriate to play with toes alone—and to begin to work on a few simple exercises for heel playing. I cannot stress enough that it is important to become fully comfortable with the exercises above before moving in these two other directions. In most pedal parts in the organ repertoire—including in hymns and other accompaniment situations—almost all of the notes are accounted for by each foot moving no more than the distance of a third. Of course there are larger intervals between feet. But something like eighty percent of the time, or a bit more, each foot moves by step, or by a third, or repeats the note that it just played. The comfort with moving each foot over these distances that these exercises develop is the foundation for learning pedal parts from the repertoire and in general for playing pedals securely. 

You the student can find appropriate pedal parts to work on as material for continuing to learn pedal playing. Almost any pedal line from a pre-1750 piece can be played by toes alone, and therefore can work as practice material at this stage. Here are a few suggestions to start you off—though the best passage to work on is one that you like and enjoy, or one which is part of a piece that you would like to learn in full later on:

J. S. Bach, Pedal Exercitium

J. S. Bach, Toccata and Fugue in F Major, long pedal solos

Johann Pachelbel, Praeludium in D Minor (Perreault listing 207), opening pedal solo

Dietrich Buxtehude, almost any pedal passage, especially from free (non-chorale based) works

Georg Böhm, Praeludium in C Major, opening pedal solo

Vincent Lübeck, pedal solos from any praeludium, especially those in C major and D minor.

Next month’s excerpt will discuss how a beginning pedal player should approach pedal passages such as these, and go on to the beginnings of heel playing.

Using excerpts from repertoire as pedal exercises, and a bit about pedal playing

Gavin Black is the Director of the Princeton Early Keyboard Center in Princeton, New Jersey. He can be reached, to offer thoughts about the column or for any other purpose, at [email protected].

Organ Method VII

This month’s column starts with a discussion of the ways of using excerpts from repertoire as pedal exercises—even very early in the process of learning to play pedals. I have always suggested this to my own students, and, as long as it is approached correctly from a technical point of view, it has the great advantage of being really interesting, more so than most scales and exercises. 

We are, these days, in a kind of flux about availability of printed music, and it is not absolutely clear how to best provide students with written musical material. I am inclined to direct students to the various ways of finding pieces, especially those that are Internet-based, and thus convenient, being almost instant. That is, I do not expect to include as part of this method an anthology of pieces or to publish one separately. The wide and easy availability of music makes it simple for students to choose their own pedal passages, for example, though of course with as much guidance as a teacher (or a method) needs to give. All the passages that I mentioned at the end of last month’s column, for example, can be found through the Internet with ease. I am very interested in readers’ thoughts and experiences on this point.

The method will contain several “sidebars” or charts and explanations of various practical matters. These will include a definition of the pedaling notation—including mention of my own preference for O for heel, rather than U. (I think that it is less likely to be confused with or mistaken for V), and a description of the pitch notation that I employ (C meaning the lowest c on the keyboard, c′ meaning middle c, and so on). These are all matters that are not needed in the context of these column excerpts, and the question of where and how to include them will in the end be one of layout and typography. However, if anyone reading these columns sees something that I appear to have failed to explain, I would certainly appreciate hearing about it.

This month’s excerpt ends with a bit about heel playing, which will then be the main subject of next month’s excerpt. That will round off the chapter on learning pedal playing, though of course pedal playing will be discussed later on in the context of putting hands and feet together and learning pieces.

Analyzing a pedal passage

The key to using passages from repertoire for pedal practice in the early stages of learning to play pedals is to approach the process systematically. Working on passages like this will move your pedal playing along most quickly and lead to the most solid results.

As an example of how to analyze and practice a pedal passage, let us look at the Bach Pedal Exercitium. The opening of the piece is shown in Example 1. Through this much of the piece, and indeed for most of the rest of it as well, a pedaling in which the toes of the two feet alternate—an “alternate-toe pedaling”—is suitable. If the left toes play the first note, and the toes alternate from then on, the pedaling is very comfortable. Once a pedaling is set, then it is possible to practice the feet separately. This is often a good idea for learning any pedal part, even for experienced players. It is a crucial part of good practice technique for the early stages of learning pedal playing. 

The left-foot part of the opening of the Pedal Exercitium begins as shown in Example 2, and the right-foot part begins as shown in Example 3.

(I have written these as eighth notes. They should be played detached, since they represent sixteenth notes and, in effect, sixteenth-note rests in between the notes. Of course, the pedaling in which you use the same toes for successive notes creates detached articulation. If you keep your pedal touch light, the detached articulation will not seem choppy or artificial or abrupt. Move each foot from one note to the next with the small arc motion that you learned from the exercises above [see February and March issues]. Note that these right-foot notes would be staggered against the beat in the piece itself.)

Each foot’s part should be practiced separately—slowly, lightly, not looking at the pedal keyboard, bearing in mind all of the things that you have learned about foot position—until it feels comfortable. Then the two feet should be combined, that is, you should play the passage as written—all of the notes, still slowly and lightly. Work on a little bit at a time—a measure or two at first, then three or four measures. 

Later on in this piece there is a passage that requires a different sort of pedaling (see Example 4). With these notes it is not possible to use a consistent pattern of alternate toes. There is a common-sense pedaling that is probably appropriate musically and is certainly right when using the exercise for practice: right foot on the high notes, left foot on the low notes (see Example 5). 

With this pedaling the separate feet will play as shown in Examples 6 and 7. When the feet have been practiced separately for long enough that the passage feels comfortable, they can be put together. Notice that in this case, the intervals required of the right foot are quite normal: seconds, thirds, repeated notes. The left foot is challenged to play a very unusual and wide interval, a major seventh.

Later still in this piece is a passage that does not have an obvious common-sense pedaling (see Example 8). Assuming that for now we want to use this passage as an exercise in all-toe pedaling, a solution like that shown in Example 9 would work. In this pedaling, all the sharps and flats are played by the left foot. This will enable the left foot to remain forward and the right foot back when you put the two feet together and they have to cross one another. However, the feet should first be practiced separately, until each foot’s part is thoroughly learned.

The opening pedal solo from the Pachelbel D-minor Praeludium is a passage in which the pedaling is not completely regular, but is fairly straightforward. The passage with a pedaling sketched in is shown in Example 10. (The unmarked middle section can be played with alternating toes.) In beginning to practice the separate feet for this passage, notice that each foot goes fairly far in the “opposite” direction. Take this into account when planning for the tilt of the feet and other aspects of positioning and posture. 

The Bach Toccata and Fugue in F Major, BWV 540, has two very long pedal solos near the beginning. Both suggest extremely regular pedaling—alternating toes, starting with the right foot. (The last notes of the first solo probably constitute an exception to this.) The separate foot parts are easy to extract and to practice. Since the solos are long, it is best to use only a few measures at a time as exercises. One passage in the second solo requires the left foot to go extremely high indeed, and therefore requires a lot of attention to foot position. This passage looks like Example 11; the left foot part (assuming alternate toes) looks like Example 12. In practicing this left-foot part you must be extra attentive to foot and leg position. Many players will turn in such a way that the comfortable part of the left toe for playing these very high notes is the very outside edge, with the foot almost perpendicular to the floor. 

Ground rules

Let us recap the things to bear in mind when using pedal parts extracted from pieces as material for the early stages of learning to play pedals:

1) For working on toe-only pedaling, music written before about 1750 is an abundant source of material. 

2) For use as exercises, pedal passages should be broken up into fairly short segments: typically, increments involving about 25 or 30 notes per foot are suitable.

3) The first step is to decide on a pedaling. For the purpose under discussion here, any pedaling that feels comfortable is fine. (Of course it could well happen that later on, revisiting the same passage for the purpose of learning and performing the piece, you will want to approach the pedaling differently.)

4) Once you have worked out a pedaling, you will know what each foot’s separate part is. Practice each foot separately, noticing what intervals each foot travels through as it goes from one note to the next. 

5) This practicing should be kept extremely slow. If one foot’s part is not—in the context of the piece itself—rhythmically regular, then it is OK to practice it without a steady beat. Just practice the shape of the notes.

6) When each foot’s part is well-learned and comfortable, then it is time to put the two feet back together. At this stage you should observe correct rhythm, and keep the tempo slow enough that the notes come accurately and easily. You may have to change something about foot position in spots where the two feet come close together. If so, it is a good idea to practice the separate feet again briefly in those spots, taking account of the new choices about foot position, before putting them together again.

Mastering the exercises with which this chapter began, and then practicing—and also mastering—several pedal passages in this way will give you a strong and reliable sense of the geography and kinesthetics of the pedal keyboard: how to find notes. 

Playing with heels

The first step in becoming adept at playing pedal notes with the heels is to practice a type of simple exercise that allows the heels to play without asking them yet to find any notes from scratch or to do anything too complex. This involves finding a raised key—sharp or flat—with the toe, and playing adjacent notes with the heel. See Examples 13 and 14. These can be adapted easily to other similar groups of notes. In playing short patterns like this, observe the following:

1) When you play the first note (the raised key), if you relax your leg and foot, where does your heel naturally fall? What part of the heel? Is it over the next note that you want to play? If not, can you bring the heel to the desired key by turning the ankle, or is it necessary to change the position of the leg a little bit? 

2) What choice have you made about which part of the toe to use to play the first note? Could you change this? What difference would that make in going on to play the second note? 

3) Does the gesture of moving from the third note to the fourth feel different from the gesture of moving from the first note to the second (apart from its simply being in the opposite direction)?

4) Try playing the notes of the exercise lightly detached, as you have been doing with the toe-only exercises, but then also try making the notes fully legato. Even experiment with audible overlapping from one note to the next—though this may sound odd. Does this feel comfortable? Does it suggest anything different about foot or leg position? 

(To be continued)

About heel playing (with many exercises), and dealing briefly with double pedal and with pedal substitution

Gavin Black is Director of the Princeton Early Keyboard Center in Princeton, New Jersey. He can be reached by e-mail at [email protected].

Organ Method VIII

This month’s excerpt continues the discussion of heel playing, with many exercises. It then deals briefly with double pedal and with pedal substitution. This wraps up the chapter on pedal playing as such. The next part of the method is about manual playing—aspects of keyboard technique specific to organ, and ways of getting comfortable at the organ keyboard for players who come from a piano or harpsichord background. Later on I will deal with putting hands and feet together, and with overall organ practice techniques and habits.

Here are several other exercises along similar lines. Each one gives you the chance to try out the heels with a different note pattern. For the moment, the principle that the toes take the raised keys and the heels take the natural keys remains (Examples 1 and 2).

In the six short exercises above, I have provided pedalings that allow each foot to play notes that are in the region of the pedal keyboard where that foot automatically falls as you sit on the bench. However, these very same note patterns can also be played by the opposite feet, as follows (Examples 3 and 4).

Each of the gestures in these exercises—playing a natural note with the heel after having played a sharp or a flat with the toe, then again playing a sharp or flat (the same one or a different one) with the toe, turning the foot—feels different and of course requires different planning, depending on which foot is involved. It is not necessarily true that a gesture is easier or more natural if it is carried out by the foot that is “proper” to the side of the keyboard where the notes are found. As you play these exercises notice whether you find the note patterns easier with one foot or with the other. Also notice which exercises, with which pedaling, can most easily be played legato. In some cases it may seem nearly impossible to keep a full legato through the turns of the foot. However, after you have practiced the exercise enough with detached articulation, and your feet have become adept at following the shape of the notes, the execution of the same exercise with full legato may begin to seem possible. This will vary from one player to another. (Note: do not try to connect notes with a strong legato in these exercises if doing so is awkward or creates tension in the feet, legs, or ankles.)

Posture

Everything about your posture will affect how you carry out these exercises: that is, which parts of the toe and heel region of each foot you actually bring in contact with the keys. You must pay attention to this and work it out consciously for yourself. It is different for each player. In general, as with the “toes only” exercises, the more that you prefer to hold your knees close to each other, the more you will find it comfortable to play from the inside of the foot; the more that you prefer to let your knees move away from the center and follow the feet towards the notes, the more you will find it comfortable to play with the outside of the foot. However, this varies greatly with individual posture and physique. Only you, the player, can figure out what works best for you.

The following exercises ask the foot to span slightly longer distances between the toe and the heel—still with the toes playing the sharps and flats, and the heels playing the naturals (Examples 5 and 6). Again you can try these note patterns with the feet reversed, as in the following (Examples 7 and 8), and so on.

This might seem like a bit of a stretch. It will certainly be necessary to turn the body a lot to reach the opposite sides of the keyboard with the heels. Each of these exercises should be done slowly, paying maximum attention to foot position, especially during any turns.

The next step is to use the heel on natural notes following the use of the toe on other nearby natural notes. This feels different from playing a natural with the heel when the toe has just been on a sharp or flat. The angles at which the feet need to be held are different. The following exercises begin to address this sort of playing (Examples 9 and 10).

These should be played slowly and, at first, non-legato. As you become comfortable with the shapes of the gestures you can try connecting the notes. You may find some of the pedalings in these exercises uncomfortable. Again, this is something that varies with the posture and physique of the player. If you do, then move away from that exercise for now. It may (or may not) feel more comfortable later. You should make up short exercises of your own in which you play simple chains of notes with alternating toe and heel, or with irregular patterns of toe and heel.

Toe and heel together 

Here is an example of a short phrase in which toes and heels can used in an irregular pattern geared to the shape of the particular melody (Examples 11, 12, 13, and 14). I give it, however, with four different pedalings. Which one do you like best? Can you devise another that you like better?

After you have become comfortable with the basic gesture of playing successive notes with the toe and heel, you can begin to look at pedal passages from the repertoire in which a combination of toe and heel pedaling can be used. (Note that it is rare for a passage to be played with heels only. Any passage that is best played without the application of alternating toe and heel is normally played with toes alone, not heels alone. Also, the heels rarely play raised keys, so any passage that is not all-naturals will be played either by toes alone or by a combination of toe and heel.) 

Here are two examples of such passages, with possible pedalings. The first is from Franck’s Choral No. 3 in E, beginning at m. 138 (Example 15). The second is from the chorale setting Alles ist an Gottes Segen, op. 67, no. 2, by Max Reger, beginning at m. 2 (Example 16). The pedalings that I have provided for each of the complete passages are just suggestions: each is one way that an organist might configure the pedaling, but not the only plausible way, and also not necessarily the best way for any given player. Try each of these passages slowly and carefully with the pedalings that I have given. Then try to find other pedalings for at least part of each passage that would also work—perhaps that feel better to you. For the purpose of this exercise, assume that you want to use pedalings that would in theory allow you to play legato: that is, do not use the same part of the same foot for two successive notes in such a way as to require a break between those notes. 

Can you find other pedalings that you like as well as or better than those that I have given? In the Franck, I have had each foot remain on its “proper” side of the pedal keyboard—the left foot plays tenor C and lower notes, the right foot plays tenor C and lower notes. In the Reger, I have written in more crossing of the middle of the keyboard, especially involving the right foot’s reaching for some of the lower notes. Could you pedal either passage differently by crossing the middle line of the keyboard either more or less than I have done? Are there pairs of successive natural notes that I have assigned to the heel and the toe of the same foot for which you would find it more comfortable to reverse that heel and toe (for example, the A and the C in the seventh measure of the Franck)?

Here are a few more pedal passages that can or should be played by a mix of heel and toe. They are from Mendelssohn Sonata #3, first movement (Example 17); Vierne Symphony #3, first movement (Example 18); and Elgar Organ Sonata, op. 28, first movement (Example 19). In each case, work out a few different possible pedalings, and practice them slowly and carefully. 

In general, organ music written after about 1800 is likely to make more use of the heel than that written before then. (Some of the reasons for this are discussed in the last section of this book.) The music of the composers excerpted here and their contemporaries will provide you with a treasure trove of passages with which to practice the use of the heels.

Double pedal and substitution

There are two special pedal playing techniques that should be mentioned here: double pedal and pedal substitution.

A small number of pieces in the organ repertoire have pedal parts in which for some of the time or all of the time two notes are to be played at once by the feet—or two ongoing independent contrapuntal lines in the pedals. Here is an example from a Bach chorale setting—Aus tiefer Not schrei ich zu dir, BWV 686 (Example 20).

Once the second—higher—pedal line comes in here in the fourth measure of this excerpt, each of the two pedal lines has to be played in its entirety by one foot. This is the norm for a double-pedal part. For anyone who has learned to look at pedal parts on a one-foot-at-a-time basis, as we have done here, this actually presents no conceptual challenge, and no more physical challenge than a similarly intricate single pedal part would.

In order to practice a double-pedal part, first work out a pedaling for each separate pedal line: the upper line in the right foot, of course, and the lower line in the left foot. The pedaling will of necessity be a mix of same-toe pedaling—which is intrinsically non-legato—and heel/toe pedaling. Once the pedaling has been worked out separately for each foot, each foot should be practiced separately. This is exactly the same process as practicing each foot separately when the two feet will end up being combined into one pedal line. 

Next, you should practice putting the two feet together, but with the notes staggered, so that you are not yet trying to play two notes at the same time, but are tracing the outline of the two-voice pedal part as it will be. This step in the process is unmeasured: you are following the physical shape of the pedal parts, but not their rhythm or the way that they will actually fit together. For the sixth measure of this Bach example, the practice line would look like Example 21.

This should be practiced slowly and reasonably steadily, without worrying about any particular rhythm. I have not indicated a specific pedaling here because that will be up to the particular player, and makes no difference in principle for the working out of this approach. After the patterns of the two feet have become comfortable interspersed with each other in this way, they can be brought into the proper rhythmic alignment and the passage can be practiced as written. 

Substitution in pedal playing is either 1) changing feet on one key silently: that is, bringing the right foot onto a note that is being held by the left foot and then removing the left foot from that note, without releasing the note, or the same with the roles of the feet reversed; or 2) moving the heel of one foot onto a note being held by the toe of that foot, or vice versa, again while holding the note—not releasing and repeating it. 

Substitution is a natural outgrowth, technically, of the act of repeating a note using the other foot, as practiced in Exercise V of the March 2013 column. The change is, in a sense, just one of articulation: instead of putting a space between the “two” notes, you make them, in effect, legato—playing the second one before the first one has been released. Planning is required whenever you play two notes that are close together: which foot should be closer to the instrument and which closer to the bench? Should the new foot take over the key behind the old foot, or in front of it? Above or below? Try Exercise V this way, not repeating any of the notes that are the same as one another, slipping the foot that would have played the second note onto the key and then—but only then—silently removing the first foot and sending it on its way to its next note. This should feel like a natural outgrowth of the work that you have already done.

Gavin Black is director of the Princeton Early Keyboard Center in Princeton, New Jersey. He can be reached by e-mail at [email protected]. He writes a blog at www.amorningfordreams.com.

Organ Method IX

This excerpt begins the section on manual playing, in which I offer guidance to the student who has already played piano or harpsichord, on how to adapt that playing to the organ. This is, as I wrote in the Preface to the method—which appeared as the October 2012 column—mostly about how to practice. One model for an approach to learning organ (manual) playing for a student who is already a keyboard player is this: sit down at the organ, play around, and see what you notice. Of course, this is potentially inefficient. There is no reason that a student should lack the advantage of some guidance from someone more experienced, in person or through writing. However, this hands-off, unguided approach is in fact the essence of what a musician/student should do. The way to learn what sounds and touch on the organ are like is to play the organ, notice everything that you hear and feel, and respond to what you notice. Although I think that at least on grounds of efficiency it is a good idea for a student to accept guidance from teachers (or for that matter from method-writers), I also think that such guidance should remove as little autonomy and initiative from the student as possible. The opening of the section on manual playing—the part included this month—is a general guide to starting the process. 

I should mention that, whereas in the column from last October I wrote that the work on playing manuals and pedals together would form part of the section on pedal-playing (the section that was printed in several columns ending last month), I have since decided to shift it to after the section on manual playing. This seems to me to make more sense, although of course in the end students can uses chapters of this book in any order that they want.

Position

Take a seat on the organ bench. If you have already begun to work on pedal playing, then remember to position yourself on the bench—and to position the bench itself—in the way that you have found best for pedal work. It is not a good idea to get accustomed to a different bench position for manuals-only music, pedals-only music, and the large segment of the organ repertoire that uses hands and feet together. (Though once in a while, later on, it might be a good idea to change position for a particular piece that presents some sort of unusual challenge.) If you are coming to this section of the book without yet having begun to work on pedal playing, then position the bench at a height that allows you to relax your legs completely either without depressing any pedal keys, or only depressing them lightly with your toes. Of course, while practicing manuals without pedal, you should rest your feet in whatever way that the organ you are playing provides. Usually there is a bar low down on the bench that is meant to accommodate the feet when they are not being used to play. 

Since the vast majority of organs have at least two—often three—manuals, there is no way to sit that gives you one position in relation to the manual keys. The higher manuals are both higher and farther away. In trying to work out the right distance from the manuals at which to sit, it is important to make sure that you do not feel cramped. If you are too close to a keyboard, it is extremely difficult to play without tension. You should never feel that your shoulders need to be drawn upwards or back in order to give your hands and arms room to address the keyboards. Your shoulders should also, however, not be hunched forward. Your posture on the bench should be as relaxed and comfortable as possible. As you get accustomed to playing, you may make changes in the exact distance from the keyboards that you choose to sit. There is no “correct” posture for your arms while playing the organ. That is, your elbows, for example, do not have to be in one particular place or one particular alignment with your torso; your wrists need not be consistently above, below, or even with your forearms or hands. These things will vary with your own physique and habits.   

Once you are seated on the bench, notice where on each keyboard each of your hands most naturally falls—the place on the keyboard at which your forearms, the middle three fingers of each hand, and the keys themselves line up straight, while your shoulders and elbows are in a comfortable place. This will probably be roughly an octave below middle C for the left hand and an octave above middle C for the right hand: a bit farther out from the center for players who are particularly broad-shouldered or who prefer to keep their elbows out from their sides. This is the place on the keyboard where it is easiest to play without tension. Therefore, it is the best place to use as a sort of laboratory for learning or trying out various aspects of organ touch and various fingering skills. 

Begin to play

Now draw a stop or two (you can revisit the Introduction for a reminder about drawing and combining stops) and play some individual notes in the region of the keyboard described above. What do you notice? What is the touch like? How does it compare to the instruments with which you are most familiar—piano, harpsichord, or others? Is it heavy or light or in-between? Try playing a few notes with your fingers as far out on the keys as possible—almost slipping off to the front—and then with your fingers in the middle of the keys. Do these different positions feel different? Try playing notes in this same region of each of the different keyboards of the organ at which you are seated. Do the keyboards feel different from one another? Try engaging a coupler. Does this change the feel of either of the keyboards involved? If you depress a key very slowly, with as little force as possible, does that seem to sound or feel different from what you experience if you strike a key with more force? The answers to these questions will vary—sometimes a lot—from one organ to another. Whatever you notice or learn at the first organ keyboard at which you sit and play is, of course, only a beginning. 

Next play some simple note patterns, one hand at a time, along the lines of these, the first for the right hand, the second for the left (Examples 1 and 2). I have located these short exercises in the region of the keyboard that I have identified as the most natural for your arms and hands to reach. However, if for you that region is a little bit higher or lower, then start out playing the same four-note pattern using whatever specific notes seem most comfortable. (Stick to natural notes for the moment.) Try the following different fingerings—right hand: 2-3-4-5-4-3-2 or 1-2-3-4-3-2-1; left hand: 5-4-3-2-3-4-5 or 4-3-2-1-2-3-4.

What do you notice about the different fingerings? Do they seem to result in differences in hand position or in where on the key you play each note? Does one feel more comfortable or more natural than the other? 

Next, try the same exercise about a fifth closer to the center of the keyboard. If you started on the notes that I pictured, move to this (Examples 3 and 4). Try the same different fingerings, and look out for the same things. Then play the same pattern near the middle of the keyboard, perhaps with each hand crossing or including the note middle C. Try this on all of the keyboards of the organ that you are playing. 

In playing this short exercise bear the following in mind:

1) Keep everything relaxed: hands, arms, shoulders, and your entire body.

2) As long as you are physically relaxed, do not worry for now about the shape or position of the hand: the relationship between the fingers and the rest of the hand; the height of the wrist; the height of the wrist or hand in relation to the arm. All of these things are individual and flexible. There might turn out to be right and wrong ways for you to approach these things, but they will be right or wrong for you specifically: they will emerge in the course of your learning—they can’t be dictated in advance. There are aspects of sideways hand position—that is, how the hand is turned or cocked side-to-side—that are important, and that tend to work out the same way for most players. You will begin to work on this a bit later on.

3) The fingers need not always be parallel to the keys. It is fine for the finger playing a note to be at any angle to that key, as long as the part of the finger actually playing the note touches the key solidly. 

4) Keep the tempo slow, and listen to the sound of each note: savor each note. There is nothing to be gained by speed.

5) Try different articulations. Some of the time, make the exercise legato: release each note as you play the next note. Other times, try an exaggerated legato: let notes overlap to such an extent that you hear adjacent notes sounding together, perhaps for nearly the full length of the latter note, even though this will sound odd. Then try it detached: release each note long enough before playing the next note that you hear a gap. Then also try it very detached: release each note as soon as possible after you play it, only making sure that you do really hear the sound of each note. (Even these very short notes should be played without extra force or tension.) 

6) In trying out all of these articulations, do not worry about precision or making everything come out the same. Just keep relaxed and listen. This will lead to the most control—and precision when it is desired—later on.

Next, add some raised keys—sharps and flats—to the exercise. Start with one of the following, and take it through all of the steps described above (Examples 5 and 6). 

Two hands together

These simple exercises are meant to be played one hand at a time. The next step is to put the two hands together, keeping the note picture simple. As always, you the student can construct such exercises yourself. Here are a few possibilities derived from the exercises above (Examples 7, 8, 9, and 10).

Concerning the fingering for these exercises, bear the following in mind:

1) Use the same sorts of fingerings for each hand of these exercises that you used for the separate-hand exercises above; that is, sometimes 1-2-3-4, etc., sometimes 2-3-4-5, etc. 

2) Mix and match these fingerings between the two hands. Sometimes use the thumb-based fingering in both hands, sometimes use the second-finger-based fingering in both hands, and sometimes use one of those in each hand. 

3) Note that when the notes are parallel, the fingerings are mirrored, or nearly mirrored; when the notes are mirrored, the fingerings are parallel or nearly parallel.

4) Before you play through an exercise, be absolutely sure that you know what fingering you are about to use. If it would help, write the fingering in—but lightly, in pencil. When you want to try a different fingering, erase what you have written and write in the new fingering. 

Keep these exercises slow: it is not useful to practice this sort of material if, in doing so, you feel that you have to scramble to find the next note, or if you actually make wrong notes, or if you have to hesitate in order to get it right. There is no disadvantage to keeping the notes very slow indeed. Listen to the sounds, and to the intervals. Savor the sounds of the registrations that you use. 

Continue to try different articulations, as described above. If you feel comfortable doing so, you may try different articulations in each hand. In doing this, again don’t expect for the results to be measured or precise: just keep the feel of the hands relaxed and natural, and listen carefully.

Velocity I

This month and next I am writing about the quest to play fast: fast enough, faster than before, faster than the next person, fast and secure, fast and yet clear. This important thread runs through all aspects of learning to play music. It can also touch upon all sorts of insecurities and sensitive spots. Can I play fast enough? Will my soloist or the conductor insist on a tempo that is too fast for me—either one that feels wrong musically or one that I just plain can’t do? If I don’t play at least something—anything—fast, will listeners assume that I am not really in command of what I am doing?

No one’s self-esteem as a musician is ever undermined by the inability to play slowly enough. (Well, it rarely is. Perhaps this should happen more. Playing slowly effectively isn’t necessarily particularly easy.) But many of us worry whether we can play fast enough, either for what we want to do musically or for what we think listeners will expect of us. We also worry that if we choose a slower tempo for genuine musical/expressive reasons, people will assume we just can’t play it faster. We rarely worry that our listeners will assume that we can’t play more slowly.

Long ago I heard it recounted that Rachmaninoff had said that Alfred Cortot always decided that the really hard bits had to be played “expressively,” that is, slowed down. This was of course meant to be a withering criticism of Cortot: not only claiming that his keyboard facility was faulty when it came to velocity, but also claiming that his much-admired expressive playing was actually musically arbitrary, and just a way of covering up lack of skill. I have reacted to this by saying that often the hard bits are hard because they are musically involved and complicated, and maybe should be slowed down, for the listener’s sake as much as for the players. But not-fast-enough seems to open us to criticisms of this sort, and we often worry about it.

Fortunately this (like most things) can also be a source of humor. I recall a moment a long time ago when I was in the company of a fine young musician who was about to play in a youth orchestra concert. An older friend who was there clapped him on the back with a hearty “Play louder and faster than everyone else!”

As far as I can tell, conductors are not likely to be subjected to this sort of criticism if they are inclined to slow tempos. The physical gestures of conducting relate to the music and its speed in a different way. Also, keyboard continuo playing usually becomes actually easier as tempo goes up—assuming that the continuo part is being improvised by the player, or at least has been written by the player with the ultimate tempo in mind. This is because in general, the faster the tempo, the fewer notes or chords are needed in the continuo realization. (If the bass line itself is too difficult at a fast tempo, that can reverse this effect.)

Tempo and fingering

My decision to write about this subject comes specifically from a reader’s suggestion, in a recent e-mail, that a “discussion of fingerings that will work at faster tempos would probably be interesting.” This indeed seems to me to be a good point of entry into the topic. Is the quest to feel comfortable up-to-tempo—especially at fast tempos—best addressed at the point of choosing fingerings (and pedalings—though I am focusing mostly on manual playing here) or best addressed by process—that is, practicing, and specifically the pacing of work on tempo within practicing? The answer is “both.” But how exactly, and in what sort of proportions? Next month I will look at some specific passages and different fingerings, to try to address this aspect of the question directly.

There are different levels and types of playing “fast.” This is obvious, but worth noting. The act of getting notes right—and its important adjunct, which is having it feel comfortable or even easy—is almost always more likely the more slowly a passage is being played. That’s the fundamental fact of learning pieces: it’s why we start practicing passages slowly and then speed them up. For many pieces, speeding up will not take things past a comfortable level of velocity. For these pieces, that process will always work and is not really within the sphere of this discussion. If, however, the goal is to play a piece at a tempo that seems to tax what the player can do with velocity, then there can be different, perhaps more complicated issues. 

The question is how much continuity there is across these two areas. Is the process that we use to make a “normal” piece comfortable and reliable what we should also use to get something very fast—fast enough that the velocity alone makes it a challenge? How are these two processes related? The point of any normal systematic practice is to create predictability: that is, to make us feel certain, as we play the piece, that we know what is coming up. In “normal” situations, this predictability comes from a blend of things—so-called “muscle memory,” conscious familiarity with what is coming up in the piece (whether we are using notated music or not), and the ability to read ahead and combine memory with newly reviewed information. Fingerings and pedalings that have some logic to them or are simple or that use patterns of some sort can aid in this process.

Tempo and fingering

The key to playing fast is predictability. It is natural to believe that if we have trouble playing fast, it is because we just can’t quite move that fast. However, this is rarely the case. Most organ (and harpsichord) music doesn’t tax the physical ability of any player to move quickly. However, above a certain speed—which of course varies from person to person—the conscious elements of “knowing what’s coming next” simply can’t come into play: there isn’t time. The sources of rock-solid predictability that are below the level of conscious thought become more important.

Let’s take this one step at a time. How fast can you move your fingers? The most direct way to explore this is to drum your fingers on the table, the arm of your chair, or wherever is comfortable. That is, “play” five “notes”—away from any instrument—with the fingering 5-4-3-2-1. No beat, no timing: just drum those fingers as quickly and lightly as you can. Make sure that your arm is comfortable and that your wrist and fingers are not turned too much to either side. It is OK—even a good idea—to have your arm resting on whatever surface you are using. 

How fast do your fingers go in this exercise? You don’t need to come up with a number—just a sense of whether the velocity is greater than you are likely to need in playing music. It almost certainly is. See whether there is an appreciable difference between the two hands, either in how this feels overall or how fast you are able to move. There might be, but if one of them is slower, it is also probably still above the threshold of how fast you will ever need to move when playing.

Now try it the other way around: 1-2-3-4-5. This is no longer intuitive drumming on a table. It can feel a bit awkward, and the ceiling on velocity might be just a touch lower, but still comfortably above any real-life musical speed needs. It feels awkward in part because the thumb is more comfortable as a point of arrival than as a starting point: releasing the thumb almost infinitely quickly to go on to 2 is tricky. How does it feel if you just do four notes: 2-3-4-5? With just non-thumb notes, is the difference in feel between one direction or the other less noticeable? How about the difference between the two hands?

(5-4-3-2-1 drumming is basically the same gesture as closing your fist. However, 1-2-3-4-5 does not correspond to any naturally shaped hand gesture.)

Now try the same thing at a keyboard, (ideally an organ or harpsichord), so that you won’t be distracted by thoughts of dynamics. (If you are at a piano, play near the very top of the keyboard where the touch is lighter.) 

(Or whatever notes you want.)

See if you can let the fact that you are actually playing, not just drumming on a surface, not change the feel of what you are doing. Go through the same sequence of directions and hands. Predictability is at 100% through all of these slightly different ways of performing this exercise, but physical naturalness varies a bit. 

One next step in this exploration is to try up and down, or vice versa. That is, play (on the table at first) 5-4-3-2-1-2-3-4-5. Then do the same, but keep it going for a while, several times back and forth. Then try starting on the thumb: 1-2-3-4-5-4-3-2-1-2-3, etc. Is it easier to do this ongoing repeated table-drumming starting on 5 or starting on 1? After the first pass through all of the fingers, they resolve into the same thing, except for perhaps an underlying sense of where the strong beats are—even though in the absence of a musical context there aren’t exactly beats. (For me personally doing this, taking only one pass at the notes, 5-4-3-2-1 is easier, quicker, and more natural than 1-2-3-4-5; the repeated drumming seems easier and faster when I start on 1 rather than on 5. This difference is more pronounced in my right hand than the left. But, again, the fundamental point is that as long as it is utterly predictable, the possible velocity of any of these patterns is greater than the demands of repertoire.)

Another thing to try in exploring predictability and comfort is using the same five fingers, each playing once, but changing the order. You should decide clearly on an order before trying to play and then do so as quickly and lightly as possible. This is meant to be the opposite of improvisation: do not take yourself by surprise. So try, say 1-5-4-2-3, or 2-4-5-1-3—or anything. But again, know before you trigger the five notes exactly what you want them to be. Try this both drumming on a table and poised over five adjacent notes on a keyboard. Try to let those two feel as similar to each other as possible.

As you play around with this, you will probably notice that one time or another through a non-adjacent finger pattern of this sort you will feel a tiny hesitation or notice that the overall speed is less than you thought it would be. If this happens, try to recognize the feeling of whatever it is that is introducing that hesitation. It is probably a split-second of uncertainty about what is supposed to come next. Go back to straight (5-4-3-2-1) drumming for a time or two, then make double-sure of what you want your non-adjacent pattern to be. (Perhaps you will notice a hierarchy of non-adjacent finger patterns as to how easy it is to make them as predictable as scalewise patterns. For me, 5-1-4-2-3 is not appreciably different in feel from 5-4-3-2-1, but I need to think and prepare a bit more to make 2-1-5-3-4, for example, feel that predictable.)  

Another useful variation is to plan and then play non-adjacent note patterns with adjacent fingers, for example:

(or any note pattern that you like).

You can take all of this through the stages described above: each hand, both directions, back and forth once, back and forth repeatedly. Just never do anything that you haven’t mapped out in advance; use predictability to make very high-velocity playing function easily.

So far, predictability has been achieved—and physical ease of movement preserved at the same time—by using patterns in which the hand maintains the same five-finger position throughout. A further step is simple gestures that involve moving the hand. Think of your favorite (for this purpose, easiest) such gesture. For a lot of us that is a scale with the traditional modern fingering: 1-2-3-1-2-3-4-5 in one direction and 5-4-3-2-1-3-2-1 in the other. Try playing this—just in one direction for now—with exactly the same feeling that you used for the five-note exercises. Know for certain in advance what you are planning to do and execute it as one very fast unmeasured gesture. 

There are intermediate practice techniques that you can use to prepare for this—for example, drumming on the table with 5-4-3-2-1-3 without changing the position of 3, or drumming 1-2-3-1-2-3-4-5, again without changing the position of the fingers on the table. Then 5-4-3-2-1-3, moving 3 over 1 for the last “note.” You can play around with this and invent new permutations, as long as the predictability, quickness, and lightness remain. ν

To be continued . . .

Gavin Black is director of the Princeton Early Keyboard Center in Princeton, New Jersey. He can be reached by e-mail at [email protected].

Disjunct Motion III

For reasons that were random and fleeting, I did not write columns for November 2016 or January 2017. Thus these three columns on disjunct motion have themselves been presented in a disjunct manner . . . .

As I have mentioned a couple of times in passing, disjunct motion can be created by an interval’s being too wide for the player to get to the new note(s) before releasing the old. This is common. It is usually (always?) about an interval in one hand (or in one foot, but see below for a few thoughts about how all of this applies to the pedals), and it is easy to encapsulate in Example 1 for almost everyone and in Example 2 and Example 3 for everyone.

One interesting thing often occurs in these situations. Having purposely not decided, for any interpretive reason, to make the interval detached and therefore not “owning” the feeling that it should be non-legato, a student will do something physical that represents a doomed effort to make it legato. For example, in Example 1 (assuming right hand), someone might play the middle C with finger 1, and then stretch the hand out as much as possible, maybe getting the fifth finger as far as the air space over the E before having to release the C in order to play the G.

In the third example, someone might finger the first chord with 1-2-4 or 1-2-3, and try to stretch upward, with the fifth finger or with the fourth and fifth, while holding the chord, in an (again utterly doomed) effort to find a way to start the second chord sounding before the first chord is gone. These sorts of efforts twist the hand into uncomfortable positions for no actual gain or purpose.

Effect of articulation

For me, the first principle of comfortable execution of wide intervals is a fish-or-cut-bait attitude about articulation. If an interval is, though a real skip, one that you can physically play legato, and if you in fact want it to sound legato, then by all means it is important to choreograph that legato gesture in a way that works, even if it is difficult or (fleetingly) awkward. If legato is impossible, as in the case of the intervals discussed here, then a half-way attempt to connect the notes will create considerable awkwardness and tension. This is likely to lead to a more disjunct-sounding, more abrupt result. Embrace the non-legato happily!

So, in the examples above, the first question is what fingerings make the most sense. If we abandon the effort to stretch fingers 1 to 5 to make the leap (I’ll come back to that word below) from C to G, then very likely any fingering that creates a comfortable hand position for each note is acceptable. It could be 1-5, of course. But maybe 2-5 or 2-4 would be more comfortable—might, in particular, allow for a more natural and relaxed hand position. This will differ from one player to another. The student should try all of these, especially any that initially seem counterintuitive specifically because they are farther from the unsuccessful legato attempt. The overriding point is this: where distance makes joining two successive events impossible, the fingering that is on paper closest to one that would have joined them is no more likely to give a musically successful result than a fingering that is maximally disjunct.

If this interval is in some context like Example 4 or Example 5 then that context might suggest something about fingering. And it is important that that fingering choice not be distorted by the false pull of legato. In the first instance, 2-1-2-5 or perhaps 3-2-3-5 might make sense. In the second case, perhaps 2-1-2-3-4-5 or 1-2-1-3-4-5 or even 3-2-3-3-4-5. The fixed points in the process of choosing fingerings are the notes before and after the “leap,” not that interval itself. 

In the chord example, the “obvious” fingering of 1/3/5—1/3/5 would probably work well. There are not as many other possibilities here as there can be with a one-note-at-a-time passage. For some players, 2/3/5­—1/2/4 would work; it happens to feel especially comfortable to me. There are a couple of other possibilities, all of them entirely disjunct, as they must be for this note pattern.

Once a student has accepted the notion of not trying for doomed legato fingerings when legato is physically impossible, the next step is to work on executing these fingerings in ways that takes full advantage of their potential to be comfortable. A starting point in thinking about this is the following empirical observation: if you start out practicing a disjunct interval with the break between the two events as big as is needed to feel comfortable, then it will (always) be possible to close that break up substantially as you practice it and get used to it. And, related to that, if, even with a comfortable fingering, you try as hard as you can to make a physically necessary break as small as possible too early in the practicing process, it will sound abrupt and disruptive from the beginning, and it may be hard to move it towards sounding smooth and natural. 

So in the chord example above, the starting point is to allow it to come out, at first, something like Example 6, even if you want it in the end to sound like Example 7.

These notations are approximate. In particular the point of the first one is not for the chord to be a measured sixteenth-note, but for the player/student to allow it to be as short as necessary for the gesture to be comfortable. Again, practicing like this at first is the way to end up with the most convincing and non-disruptive breaks between distant notes or chords. 

Leap or jump or . . . ?

The words “leap” or “jump” for certain intervals have always bothered me. They refer to intervals above a certain size (not well defined) that is probably pretty similar to the size at which an interval becomes necessarily non-legato. The problem is that these words suggest extra energy and an approach in which the crucial or active moment is the leaving of the first note or chord of the interval. After all, a leap or jump happens when you push off from the ground or trampoline or diving board or whatever. The rest—the landing—happens of its own accord. For playing a large and disjunct interval on a keyboard instrument this imagery is wrong. The more the gesture that constitutes negotiating the interval can feel normal—no extra energy, no pushing off, no landing (in other words, no leaping, no jumping)—the more chance there is that the execution of the interval will be accurate and that the shaping of the articulation and timing will be under the player’s control.

The key to this is the realization that, exactly opposed to the imagery of a leap or a jump, in playing a necessarily disjunct interval you actually don’t have to do anything to release the first note or chord. It will be released whether it wants to or not: that is what it means for it to be a disjunct interval. The less you do to make that release happen, the better a chance it has of sounding natural, of avoiding sounding cut off or choked off, or of creating a feeling of brokenness in the line. 

Practicing releases

There are two good and complementary ways to practice the feeling of releasing a note without a leaping or jumping gesture when that note will be followed, after the silence that defines disjunct motion, by a note that is far away. The first practice technique is to omit that first note, but start with the hand hovering over where that note would have been. So, based on the first exercise above, we would let the (right) hand hover over the middle C area of the keyboard, and count 1-2-3-4-1, and then on the next “2” just play the high G. This should be one smooth simple gesture. This can (should) start out slowly and then speed up. A variant of this is to play the first note or a cluster of notes in that region of the keyboard, early and unmeasured. Then do the same counting and playing of (in this case) that high G, starting with the hand not hovering above the keyboard, but, in effect, hovering on the keyboard, as in Example 8.

Try not to be aware that your fingers are playing any notes. It helps for the sound to be a quiet one, or perhaps for there to be no stops on at all.

The second approach is to play the first note or chord without any planning when you will release it. Hold the note(s) until you have felt yourself relax, perhaps after a comfortable breath or two. When you are completely relaxed, release the note(s) by letting your arm float upwards off the keyboard, drawing (inevitably) your fingers with it. Again, there is no need for a separate felt release of a note if you are moving to a region on the keyboard that is far away. Let your arm float in the direction of the note that is to be played next, but don’t actually play it.

Example 9 presents a special case of disjunct motion created by a wide interval. At least there is a particular way of thinking about it that is fruitful. The wide interval that we seem to see is the low D to the middle B: an interval of an octave and a sixth. It is entirely likely, absent any other context, that the low note would be played with finger 5 and the high note with 1, though 2 could also make sense for the B. If these notes are to be played at anything other than a very slow tempo, it will be a challenge to get from the lowest to the highest note in a natural and smooth way. In part this is because the hand has just been moving downward, away from the direction of the “leap” that it must take. This observation, however, is the key to making the gesture work. If we don’t let the hand really move or turn down, and in particular if we play the low note lightly, essentially just brush it, then the whole thing becomes easier. It should feel as if the wide interval being negotiated is actually from the G to the B, and the low D is sort of an afterthought, just hooked on lightly as the hand goes by. 

We can practice this by leaving the low D out a few times, as demonstrated in Example 10. The fingering is determined by our awareness that we are going to add the low D back, but in every other respect we should forget about that for now. Keep the hand position comfortable, and remember everything that we have been saying about executing disjunct motion without tension. After you have played this a few times, add the low D back—lightly, and almost without noticing that it is there.

Pedal disjunct motion

In principle, the goal in executing disjunct motion in the pedals is the same as the goal when executing it in the hands. The awareness that we are releasing a note into silence should not be allowed to create tension or to manifest itself in a release that doesn’t sound the way that we want it to sound. But the physical situation is different, for all of the usual reasons that pedal playing is different: we are using a whole foot at a time, not the toes (which would be the analogy to fingers, but which could never work!) and therefore are using bigger muscles; the keys are bigger, and we are traveling longer distances; the sounds are (usually) deeper, and their relationship to the acoustics of the room accordingly different. Also, pedal lines are shared between the two feet a much greater proportion of the time than lines are shared between the two hands in manual playing. So quite often if we want to release a note early in a pedal line (that is, introduce an interpretive articulation) the foot releasing the note will remain, in effect, in silence for longer than that articulation, while the other foot plays the next note. The timing and feel of what that foot does often cannot be shaped as directly by the placement of the next note in the musical line.  

The meaning of large, disjunct intervals in pedal playing is also different. In a passage that looks like Example 11, nothing about the articulation of the wide intervals is determined by the physical side of pedal playing and, conversely, nothing about the physical side of pedal playing either helps or hinders us in making articulation choices. Only for the last motion, middle D to middle C, are there interesting choices to be made about pedaling, and possible implications of those choices for articulation. If this were a passage to be played in one hand, this situation would be exactly reversed.

An exercise such as Example 12 can be used in the manner of some of the manual exercises from the last couple of columns. First play it a few times as is—all the notes, alternating toes. Then leave out first the right-foot notes, then the left-foot notes. The purpose here is to try to let the releases of the notes feel the same whether the other notes are there or not. Try the same exercise, through the same stages, but playing all the notes with the heel, then alternating toe and heel in each foot’s line. Is the comfortable control of releases easier with one part of the foot than with another? Do the two feel similar or different? Is it easier to keep the feeling of the releases the same when playing in only one foot with heel or with toe? Or is it the same?

It is important to be sitting at the right height to enable pedal note releases to be tension-free. In general, if a player is sitting too low, the act of releasing a note involves too much work on the part of the upper leg, and can become tense, even to the point of being painful. This is true for releases that are not disjunct. But with releases into silence it is more exposed and easier to notice. If you are sitting too low, you may notice yourself releasing by pushing off rather than by floating up. 

Sitting too high tends to be less common. It creates problems playing notes in the first place, which are easy to notice. But it also creates problems for releasing notes. If you are sitting too high, then a release may seem to lead inevitably to toppling over towards the keyboards. The effort to avoid this can cause tension in pretty much every muscle of the body. This is a problem whether the release is to silence or to a next note. It is circular but still true that the correct height can be recognized by the absence of the problems created by sitting either too high or too low. Releasing notes into silence is the most focused way to observe these issues.