Who here plays organ in church?

[Esaias]

Originally Posted by KeptByTheWord

LOL... well, I would love to help you, but it is rather hard to do on a forum. I would suggest you go online to Youtube and type in B3 organ tutorials, or runs, or whatever. I remember one guy being particularly helpful to me in the years I played the organ. He had some amazing runs and chords that could be played as fillers, and once you learned them, you could incorporate them into any key. I can't remember his name now, though.. sorry! But it was on youtube, so perhaps just spend some time on there seeing what you can find.

I play by ear mostly, and would just hear something, and then try to pick it out myself. Do you play by ear?

I play by ear, and both thumbs as well.

I have been looking at tutorials for keyboards, piano, organ (b3 especially), but I am not sure where to begin. I can play Chopsticks but I doubt that can be improvised into a gospel praise break. (ahem)

Actually, I was trying to find some advice on the basic approach to learning how to coordinate the left and right hands. I know if there are other instruments, an organ can be played right hand only (I keep coming across the 'less is more' axiom), but if the organ is doing most of the heavy lifting seems the left hand needs to play some bass (I don't have a genuine B3 with foot pedals and all that, so the left hand has to manage the bass).

I learned guitar this way: I took a few lessons and learned piece by piece actual songs. Once I could do them relatively okay I was able to make up my own chord progressions/changes, melodies, etc because I had already learned a basic repertoire of songs. Would that be a good way to learn keyboard/organ/piano? Learn several songs, note by note or chord by chord, etc, and then begin improvising within chosen keys?

It seems like it would be slow going trying to learn the 'grammar' of a keyboard, before ever putting words together to make 'sentences'. IE learning various scales, then various chords, keys, various progressions, then trying to somehow make all that presto change-o into actual music. After all, that is not how we learn to speak - we start by imitating words and sentences, then once we can talk and understand basic English we get thrown to the tormentors of grade school with their 'grammar courses'...