Can piano sheet music be played on the organ? I have a wedding coming up and I need to purcase sheet music...?

Answer 1

Yes and no. [And for the purpose of answering this question, I'm going to assume that you're speaking of a pipe organ and not a Hammond (or electronic).] Are the notes the same? Yes. So in theory you can. But, in reality playing piano music on organ can be either extremely difficult or impossible. There are several reasons for this:

1) The piano has a sustain pedal (and not to mention 88 keys) making it possible to play very smoothly without having to stay in contact with the keys. Make sense? I'll explain it this way: If I play a key on a piano and do not remove my finger from it, it will continue to sound but will immediately begin to decay (or decrease in volume until there is nothing). If I play a single key on a piano and remove my finger immediately, the note will continue to sound if my foot is on the "sustain" pedal (but will actually still decay).

However, there is no sustain pedal on the organ (though, there is a form of sustain that is built into it). The note will sound (or sustain) and not decay as long as my finger (or foot) holds the key. But, when I remove my finger from the key the note immediately stops as there is no sustain pedal.

Because of this it is possible to make huge leaps on piano without a break in the melody since your hand does not have to stay in contact with the keyboard to sustain sound...the sustain pedal takes care of that. On the organ your fingers are in constant contact with the keyboard, there are not a lot of leaps but a lot of what we organist have come to call "finger substitutions". I'll spare you an explanation of that. If there are "leaps" in a piece of organ music, it is frowned upon and considered too pianistic because it's impossible to play on organ.

[a side note: As a result there are classical organ pieces that are wonderful because the composer was an organist and understood the instruments limits, and others that are horrible because the composer had no idea what was playable on the instrument.]

Which reminds me of another point.

2) The piano is built for making huge leaps and "banging". The keyboard is weighted, wide (88 keys), and touch sensative (if you hit it hard it'll sound loudly, if you touch it softly...etc). If you bang on an organ, you will likely break the keys. It was made for chords and finger work...it's short with only 61 keys. It usually has 3 keyboards or manuals (sometimes more, but never less than 2) identified as the Swell, Great, and Positiv...depending on the nationality of the maker and a pedal board which has 32 notes.

If you wanted to do it the other way around and play organ music on piano you'd need an additional person in order to play the pedal part which would've normally been played with your feet on the organ. But, it still wouldn't sound right as sound decays on the piano.

There are some pieces of literature that are playable on both the piano and organ. But, these are hymns or chorals which were designed specifically to be playable on both. But, even then you have to play them differently.

So for this reason most piano music is impossible to play on organ.

BOTTOM LINE:

If there were a piece of music made for piano that you wanted played on organ you would have to do one of two things:

1) Go back to the music store to see if the same piece of music is available for organ.
2) Have the organist arrange the music for organ. This can be extttrrrreeemmmmely difficult and can take anywhere from a few minutes, weeks, or never depending on the music. Most organist don't want the hassle of having to sit down and rewrite or arrange a piece of music for organ. It may just be impossible to do. And it's really not fair to the organist...we just want to play.

Therefore, if you can't find a piece of music that's been written or arranged for organ, I would strongly advise you to find another piece of music that is.

Answer 2

Most of them, but the organ must be set like a piano. Then I prepose you can add all the insturments available on paricular type of organ, that you wanna 'hear' to the sheet music. You also get sheet music for organ

Answer 3

Try http://www.sheetmusicfox.com
They have a great variety of free sheet music, and a very powerful sheet music search engine.

Answer 4

yeah same its the same thing, consider the numbers of keys found on the organ your goin to play coz pianos/ oragans differ from each other by the number of keys. but as a whole the tuning should be the same :)

Answer 5

absolutely