Very Easy Preludes on Hymns for Solo Stops or Chimes: Manuals Only

The "touch" of the piano keyboard is missed when moving to play the organ, and this frustrates some pianists who give up too soon.

Why? There are other things that make up for this. The organ has many different tone colors, the piano but one.

It is rare for organ and chime music to be written without pedals. This can be frustrating as you are dealing with three issues - playing the melody, playing the accompaniment, and playing the pedals.

With three things going on at once, it is hard to build up confidence.

In this book, calling for left hand and right hand only, you will quickly gain in confidence and begin enjoy choosing and mastering and two contrasting tone colors against each other.

Chimes are almost always on the Great - the lower or middle keyboard if there are three. The logic is that the other keyboards are more apt to have stops of sound that will be less powerful and accompany the chimes with a variety of different tone colors.

Typically organists play flutes or strings on the Swell, the top keyboard with the left hand and the melody on the Great with the right hand.

But there is another stop setting that is useful. Chimes do not ring out very long so you might try when playing adding the Swell to Great coupler so that the melody is heard on the chimes AND the Swell stops you have chosen, filling out the melody.

Try other stops as alternates - the Oboe on the Swell and a balanced softer stop on the Great.

These pieces are composed to create confidence in playing melodies and to open up the world of different sounds for the pianist to enjoy playing.

And, pianists, note that with the expression pedals you can crescendo and decrescendo louder and softer than on a piano!

- Noel Jones. AAGO