Truly Memorable Music Masterclass Sessions

Members of The Organ Academy in Uganda, the Kampala Cathedrals and the wider community participated in the first ever online music masterclasses in Uganda. These truly unforgettable masterclasses were tailored specifically to The Organ Academy students needs! The Maestro Online Masterclasses & Courses are tailored to meet the musical learning needs of all in a variety of areas.

The first masterclass was aimed at the Organ Academy and Organ Improvisation. The range of abilities in the music masterclass varied from recent beginners to advanced musicians beyond Grade 8 and certainly at diploma level.

(1) We begin with introductions. Meeting individual musicians and getting to know each person is so important.

(2) We start by improvising on just one note. We use sentences to help develop rhythms. This was how Petr Eben, a famous organ composer, started his first lesson with me on improvisation.

(3) Expand to using 2 notes. Don’t start with notes that make Major scales or similar, because you want to stimulate imagination rather than begin improvising with patterns that you will instantly default to.

(4) Move on to one chord organ improvisations.

(5) Expand to two chords. Here we use D minor and E minor. To create different textures we consider arpeggio type melodies and stepwsise. This is a brilliant way to learn and practice your arpeggios instead of just repeating them over and over again.

(6) Take the “We Will Rock You” lick. Play it twice, once starting on B and once on E. Join them together and you have a Major scale. Now improvise on these two parts of the scale, known as “tetra chords”.

(7) For more advanced learners who are seeking to learn their scales, use repeated descending Major scales to form bell patterns.

Here’s a review from one of the Ugandan organ masterclass participants: