Contemporary Praise & Worship music on the organ

[Dewey643]

I'm sure by now many of you have seen my post about my organ being home now! I'm just learning how to play,and I feel I'm off to a fairly good start on organ,...though a LONG,LONG way from being a professional organist. I have been listening very closely to certain contemporary praise & worship music artists' music,... Chris Tomlin,for one,...and I feel in my heart there's a lot of his songs that can be played on organ,and I intend to learn some of those. At some point I want to take lessons,but right now just learning to play just a melody line with chords starting out,...and throw in the pedals by playing the lowest note of each chord. I learned how to do that when I had my old A-100,and was using the Hammond Organ Course to get me started. So,...I'm basically starting back up where I left off before the old A-100 died on me. I do have musical background,...learned how to read music when I played trombone in high school band. But anyway,...I'm not into Bach,Mozart,etc. My music of preference are the old hymns,and a select few contemporary praise & worship numbers I want to try. I feel they can be made to sound fine on the organ,...though not every one of them will. Only drawback to my Rodgers Essex 640 organ is that it's analog,...not digital,....so I don't have the luxury of adding MIDI to it.

[Admin]

The fact that your Rodgers is analog does not mean MIDI cannot be added to it. Regardless, I'm sure you'll have many hours satisfaction and fun honing your playing skills on what you currently have. Good luck!

[jbird604]

Even though the classical organ by its very nature is most suited for hymns as opposed to more popular-styled music, it is certainly possible to use authentic organ sound to back up any kind of music. I've known some good church organists who were willing and able to play along on the contemporary songs in the service when they were used, even though the organ takes on a different function with that type of music. The organ is probably no longer the leading instrument. Piano or "band" may be leading out, but the rich tones of the organ can definitely make contemporary songs more singable, more enjoyable for everyone. Just as singing hymns is far easier with organ because the sustained tones provide clear pitch support and fill in the "gaps" to give the singers confidence, the organ can likewise aid singing on non-hymns. So I for one don't dismiss the idea out of hand, though I'm still a strong "traditionalist" and lead my church to use primarily "real" hymns when congregational singing is called for in the services.

[Dewey643]

MIDI can be added to my Rodgers even though it's analog? That I didn't know!

[Leisesturm]

MIDI can be added to my Rodgers even though it's analog? That I didn't know!

All MIDI is is a way to communicate actions that a player performs when playing an instrument. Mainly keypresses. But the actions that change stops and by extension the actions of the combination pistons that change stops, the actual button pushes can be encoded as a 'note on/note off' MIDI message and communicated to another instrument or computer. Pipe organs and accordions which aren't even electronic instruments can have their keyboards and stop switches or other controls set up to communicate what the player does to them via the MIDI protocol.