SOPP275: My hobby of organ playing suffered a lot
This question was sent by Carsten.\n\u200b\nDear Vidas and Ausra,\n\nI'm glad to hear from you and I'm happy as well that my donation is so highly appreciated.\n\nPlease take it as my personal way to say "Thank you!" to both of you for all of your great inspiring and continuous advice, newsletters and videos, which always helped me out when I got stuck on my way to further dive into playing the organ.\n\nApropos getting stuck: My current job of being a software developer was very demanding over the past months -- and still is, with still no time to relax within visible reach. This had a big impact on my schedule, so my hobby of organ playing suffered a lot since I did not feel like sitting down on the bench every day. Of course, I had a bad conscience about this because I remembered all of your articles about time management, being consistent in practice, taking the daily 15 minutes and so on...\n\nBut in the end, to my very surprise, I was even able to improvise on some symphonic pieces for about 2.5 hours on a big IV+P cathedral organ during public opening hours -- without having played a single note for about four or five weeks before. Sometimes it seems like energy cells have to recharge for a while and it also seems that a bit of distance isn't a always a bad idea. Of course, I do not feel to have reached "concert level" yet -- but to be honest, this is nothing that I personally NEED to achieve (yeah, I take the relaxed way and do that for my personal fun and the joy of others). Also, "concert level" could mean a wide variety of things and may not mean anything to the listeners who do or even do not enjoy the music at a certain moment.\n\nWhat mattered in my opinion was that (a) I was present there on that wonderful organ, (b) had no fear or performance anxiety, as you called it, even with numerous visitors walking through the huge building, (c) seized the moment despite of people talking, making their phone calls (what the ?!?!?) and children screaming, (d) let a number of friends, relatives and random visitors have a good time with my music and finally (d) was able to conduct the first surround recording of my impros.\n\nIf I made you curious about the result, I'd happily invite you to watch my "Dom Momente Live" playlist, which you can find on my YouTube channel at https://www.youtube.com/user/WoodyofmC .\nIn case you'd like to keep an eye on my progress: During the past years, I recorded a number of pieces and performances for my family and friends (CDs are a great gift for any occasion...) and I'm currently in the process of creating a discography page in case one of them would like to order additional copies as a gift for his or her own friends. At http://en.wpoa.de , you may keep track of how my hobby is evolving -- last but not least, thanks to your highly appreciated mentoring! :-)