Practice Plan
PLAN YOUR WORK
Now STRUCTURE your practice time.
Plan about three weeks to finish your first four-part hymn. Dedicate some of your practice time every day to it. Only you can determine how much time, but you might begin with thirty minutes daily.
What sort of reward will help you through the practice process? Will the satisfaction of completion alone be enough? If not, choose another reward and begin working towards it.
The workbook offers several different types of prepared scores for various hymns. All of the prepared scores listed previously for Hymn Project 4 include fingering and pedaling:
- For “Redeemer of Israel” and "Nearer, My God, to Thee" there is an Individual Voice-Part Method (15 steps), and a Fully-Prepared Score.
- For “Silent Night” there is a Seven-Step Method.
- For “Blest Be the Tie” there is an Individual Voice-Part Method (15 steps) from Hymn Studies for Organists by Dr. Parley Belnap.
The Individual Voice-Part Method (15 steps) is broken down completely by voice part, offering the most thorough and gradual approach.
The Seven-Step Method treats soprano and alto as a single “part,” reducing the number of practice steps but requiring more careful listening whenever the right hand plays.
If you learn directly from the Fully-Prepared Score, you must discipline yourself to go through either the seven-step or the fifteen-step plan by reading the various combinations of parts from a three-staff score.
