𝑺𝒘𝒆𝒆𝒕 𝑺𝒂𝒓𝒂𝒉𝒏𝒂𝒅𝒆 ~ Toccata in D minor by Gaston Beliér 

I will comment to register that I was the 501th subscriber

"beautifully"

Please tell us all a bit more about yourself and the organ you are playing on. What country are you from etc? It looks to be quite an organ. Is it pipe or digital? Whatever, it sound splendid in the church setting.

Hi! The organ is a Marshall and Ogleteee; more information is in the description!

@@SweetSarahnadeMusic Thank you we don’t have M&O organs in our own country but I am told they are top of the line . I am very encouraged to see people like yourself taking up the organ. If you are interested, watch young Taiwanese Organist “Hsiao-Yi Yu “ who is making quite a name for herself. Sadly I will just miss out on her concert in the Concert Hall of the National Arts and Culture Center, Weiwuying, in Kaohsiung City when I return to Taiwan. This is the best large pipe organ I have heard due in large to the superb acoustics of the hall .

Wow! That sounds like an awesome organ to play! 😯

@@SweetSarahnadeMusic If you search “Weiwuying Pipe Organ” you can see and hear it online. It is a new Klais organ built especially for the concert hall both completed in 2018. The pipe organ has quite a following in Taiwan which is amazing being not a predominantly Christian country. Even the Catholic Cathedral in the city of Kaohsiung (next largest after Taipei) only has what we call a toy spinet organ. So I think the pipe organ is quite a novelty. Taiwan is not an expensive country with the very high $US. I hope you one day will get the chance to play and perform on their magnificent pipe organs and gain a following there. The 2 organ concerts I attended were packed and one wasn’t that good. For an international artist he was supposed to play Bach,s Em Prelude and Fugue (Wedge) BWV 548. The prelude was rather hit and miss and then he left out the fugue. Poor when we are paying to attend. If I find anything of interest in Taiwan I would be happy to let you know. I am a New Zealander. With the precarious position of Taiwan under constant threat by China they need our goodwill and so I have found them to be very welcoming and generous. I received a generous scholarship to carry out study in Taiwan for one year in 2019. Certainly someone like yourself going there for a short course of intensive master study under Hsiao-Yi Yu or the other fabulous local organists would be very novel way to build your musical career. Don’t underestimate them the Taiwanese musicians are world class. If you are interested you could approach any of the Taiwan Cultural and Representative offices in your country and see what is available.

Haha, I actually started about 3 years ago, but took piano lessons long before that! ☺️

@@SweetSarahnadeMusic only 3 years? I guess I could master playing with foot pedals if I really worked on it. The cool thing is that because the pedals are laid out like a regular piano keyboard, it’s very straightforward. I just have to get the hang of doing hand and foot parts at the same time.

@@jeopardy60611 For me, learning the pedals was like learning to play piano with both hands together for the first time. It takes a while and some patience, but suddenly it "clicks" and you're able to do it. I'd say if you have the chance, play around on an organ, have some fun, and see what happens :)

@@jamesprins9735 I have seen videos of someone playing a D-deck Electrotone (or whatever it’s called) which looks like a compact keyboard with two levels and foot pedals. That would be a good way to practice playing an organ without having to go to a church.

Using the feet as well does take some sheer determination especially at the start and perseverance is 90 % of the skill. I don’t underestimate how difficult the piano is with its hand span stretches and how you play the notes to get the timbre of sound. Besides the feet work the organ isn’t as hard on my hands. they ached so much I had to give up large piano works. If you look on line you can see a pedal piano being played by Roberto Prosseda. This a a piano with a pedal board like an organ.

Haha I normally would smile except I'm concentrating. 😂

@@SweetSarahnadeMusic only teasing!!

I *have* considered it, but I'm afraid I'd annoy all the people recording me because I have to redo it so many times! 😅 I'm definitely considering doing an album with me singing, though... 👀

We shall see.......

Perhaps! That's an interesting thought! 🤔

Hi! Thanks for subscribing! It's true; this is an all-electric organ without any kind of pipes. However, it has received high scores for its sound quality and performance! 😄

@@SweetSarahnadeMusic The interior of the chapel is also impressive. Perhaps in a future video could you have your camera person get some views from what those in the nave see?

@@SweetSarahnadeMusic Something I didn’t mention before, what are those LED displays on the console, and is it possible to turn them off, dim them or coder them when video recording as the flicking caused when seen on video is quite distracting. This is a problem with many types of LED displays, but only on video, you would not see it yourself when sitting at the console.

​@@srfurley unfortunately, there is no way to turn off/dim the screens, and I don't have enough camera knowledge to know how to fix it there. 😅

@@SweetSarahnadeMusic There is nothing you can do in camera, it’s just caused by the way that LED displays and video cameras work. There are special LED displays which are made to not have this problem, but they are very expensive and there would be no reason for them to be used in something like this organ console where being video recorded is not their main function. Do the displays show anything which it is important for you to see when you are playing? If not, could you just cover them with something like a strip of card while you are recording a video?

They are standard organ shoes that most female organists wear. The soles are made of a soft felt-like material which not only helps to minimize wear and tear to the pedal board but allows you to better feel the pedals under your feet. The heel of the shoes makes the pedals easier to reach when you need to play them with the heels of your feet. 😊

@@marianmandy9514 At one of the Fairfield Halls lunchtime concerts which I attended Carlo Curley had forgotten to pack his organ shoes, and had to play in socks. He apologised for some mistakes which he made when his feet slipped on the pedals, so wearing the correct shoes does seem to be important. You mention ‘female organists’. I hadn’t thought about this before, but a majority of the younger organists on RU-vid seem to be female. It is sometimes said that women can multi-task better than men; I am male and absolutely hopeless at it so maybe there isa degree of truth in this. Could it be that on average women find it easier to play the organ than men?

@@srfurley That's an interesting question. It does seem that here in the organ studies department at Ave Maria University they regularly have about 3-4 female organists go through the program for every male. I hadn't considered it being related to the ability to multi-task. Having been a 6-12th grade music teacher, my observation was that, at least here in the United States, there is a much heavier societal value and parental push for boys to go into sports, and so they miss getting those fundamental keyboard skills that are essential for playing the organ, and that are much tougher to develop with age. Otherwise, on the whole, the male students I've seen go through the program have been quite good. Perhaps the distinction in multi tasking between the guys and girls is that the girls are better able to hold a conversation while they are playing with hands and feet, and nodding their head for page turns. 😄

@@srfurley Socks are definitely more slippery than shoes yet some organists learn to play exclusively in socks so if they were to suddenly put on a pair of organ shoes, they would make a lot more mistakes. Whichever you choose, consistency is key. 😄

No, I just wore my everyday ankle socks! ☺️

On what occasions do you wear tights?

...never 😂

@@SweetSarahnadeMusic i see 🙈

Thank you! More info in the description.

If you are interested in a complete walkthrough of the Marshall Ogletree Opus 4 organ, demonstrated by Cameron Carpenter (who had a hand in its design) I recommend a series of videos starting with this one: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-o_27WoAcqe8.html

@@MartinShorthose I though it was an electronic organ, but more from the look of the console than the sound of it. I’m not an expert and I don’t think I could hear the difference. There is a video of Cameron Carpenter where he talks about the organ with a group of children. From memory I think he was playing a pipe organ then, but I remember him saying that he prefers electronic instruments. I saw the late Carlo Curley several times at the Fairfield halls in Croydon where he used to play lunchtime concerts from time to time. I also went to one full length evening concert where he brought in his own electronic organ and ge and another organist, I don’t remember his name, played together, one on Carlo’s electronic organ and one on the hall’s pipe one. An electronic organ is certainly easier than a pipe organ to transport to a venue which doesn’t have one of its own. However, long ago there was an organist who had a large ‘portable’ pipe organ that he used to tour with; it took several large trucks to transport it, and I think several days to transport it. The BBC used to do radio broadcasts of it, this was in the days before television, and I think it was later installed in a BBC hall somewhere. I don’t think it still exists but I don’t know what happened to it. It may have been damaged or destroyed during the war, when London was heavily bombed.