WEEK ONE Updates: Main Thread - Awakening Tárrega's Spirit
Hello and welcome to the WEEK ONE Main Thread for this challenge! 
Alright my friends - this is the thread where we'll all be posting our daily updates.
Make sure you've read the rules before replying (<- click)
Twice a week between Mai 31st and June 21st, I hope to be reading your daily updates in this very thread right here!
Download the music here! (← click)
Please use the following format when commenting (feel free to copy & paste!):
- One thing you found easy:
- One thing you found difficult:
- (Optional): a video of you performing it!
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Hi Martin.
This will be a super interesting challenge
Looking very much forward to it. I've chosen Marieta (Mazurka in A Minor). Just love it!
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Philip A good choice, very moody and dramatic!
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Hi Martin,
this challenge came at the right time. I was watching the lesson on Prelude no 1 and immediately love it. I was thinking to learn this some point in the future (like so many other pieces but ended up not doing anything about it). This is a timely push to learn it now.
Gonna start on this today.
Working on: Prelude 1
Easy: Music not complicated to read, the rhythm seems not overly complicated
Hard: I'm sure there will be tons of difficult parts once I get into it.
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don
Day 1: On Prelude 1
Kinda memorized most of the music. Decided on fingerings but might change it later.
Easy: There is nothing easy about this. :-)
Hard: A lot of finger displacement to achieve legato.
Gonna practice really really really slowly like 10% of what Andrea played on the lesson to drill in muscle memory .
Will post a video when I have the time.
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don Awesome, I am looking forward to your submission! It's a beautiful piece and in my opinion somewhat clearer and cleaner than his other works, the Préludes tend to have in general a more Schubert-like quality! Maybe I'll try this piece as well!
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Martin
Thanks for organizing this! Otherwise this will fall into something that I wanted to learn but never gotten round to learning it pile.
Here's my first day take. After decided on the fingering, Im trying to play as slow as possible to:
1. Burn in muscle memory
2. Keep as many fingers on the note as long as possible - almost like spider exercise - to achieve legato.
I'll speed up once my fingers are used to it.
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don thanks for sharing that video. Keep at it and you will be playing the piece in tempo.
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Philip thanks for the encouragement. I'm starting to get the flow of it now, hopefully able to play this soon :-)
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After 2 days of playing. I finally memorized all the positions required.
Fingers constantly shifting makes the piece really challenging for me. Sounding too choppy at the moment. Hopefully with more practice it can sound more legato.
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don Nicely done, Don! That is a real exercise in shifting, isn't it? I think you're managing the shifts well, though.
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Eric Phillips thanks! It feels like one of those exercises from pumping nylon but with a much much beautiful melody.
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don wonderful development! Great to hear progress with this wonderful piece!!
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don Well done Don! Great progress.
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Ron Martin thanks! I think just need a couple more days to get to a reasonable level - babies wont cry and dogs wont' bark at my music..:-)
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day 6 update
Progress has been really slow. Hopefully get this down in tempo before end of event.
Tend to speed up during parts that I'm familiar and slow down on those that I'm not. Will try practising at much slower speed.
Any advice on how to practice better are welcome.
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Hello Martin and everybody, I have started also by the first prelude. It is a beautiful piece, I have just watched the tonebase lesson by Andrea de Vitis and I am following his suggestion of avoiding slurs in order to preserve the right balance in volume of the appoggiaturas and the legato in the piece. Also because sometimes my slurs sound a bit too much (unpredictable) mainly when I slur into an open string. Martin I remember you played parts of it so beautifully in the slow pieces seminar. Do you do the slurs? So far I have prepared in very slow practice bars 1 to 18, I will not go any further and will practice them for a couple of days.
Difficult maintaining the legato mainly at the chords successionEasy : So far positions are not too demanding
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Emma I hear you, consistent legato is hard on the guitar but makes it sound so beautiful and fluid.
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Emma I remember watching that video and I tried a little bit of the prelude without slurs. I thought it worked very nicely. It definitely made it easier to control the phrasing.
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Emma Hi Emma! I actually haven't played this probably, I was playing his 5th Prelude! But I will do a 1min/10min/1hour Video for this piece, I am curious how far I can get with such a limited time!
It really helps that the first Prelude is soooo beautiful! 
Blaise Laflamme Oh yes, legato is one of the hardest things to achieve on the guitar, basically my whole Summer Academy in Salzburg with Marco Tamayo was 2-Week-Legato-Madness
Eric Phillips Emma Good question about the Slur. I had one masterclass with Thomas Kirchhoff referring to David Russel and he said "Never trust a Slur". While a Slur is a technical device on the classical guitar, we should never forget that it serves a musical purpose which is to connect the line. If the Slur is actually an obstacle for that, we should reconsider!
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Started revising prelude no. 1 and the prelude(s?) Endecha-Oremus
endecha is a Canción triste y de lamento, for funerals, I understand. And oremus, means praying, so they go together, but were they written as one piece? Is there a story behind? Anyway, they represent the sadness in my heart as I must leave Prague and many dear friends .....
easy: technically not complicated and I studied the pieces before. Long time ago, with Srdan Tosic, eminence grise of the Belgrade CG world.
difficult: a clean phrasing and legato, consistent fingering for Oremus, clean harmonics at the end of prelude 1
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joosje I'm waiting to listen to you on this as I also plan to work on Endecha-Oremus :)
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joosje I have heard that Oremus is actually a transcription of a piece by Schumann. I'm not sure if Tarrega meant for Endecha and Oremus to be played together, but they do certainly sound great that way!
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Eric Phillips I heard that, too, but does anyone know that original Schumann piece? I couldn’t find it.
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joosje yes I am dreading the harmonics of prelude 1...
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joosje Oremus is based on this piece by Schumann, the Phantasietanz, Op. 124, no. 5, though the title of Tárrega's piece might indicate that we are allowed to use a slower tempo instead
So far I haven't found too much information, only that Oremus is supposedly the last piece Tárrega was working on before he died!
Oremus is noted for being the last piece Tárrega wrote before his death in 1909 and was first published shortly afterwards in Madrid by Idelfonso Alier along with several other works from Tárrega's estate.
Schumann's original piano work consists of two sections (A and B) which are both repeated giving it the form ABAB while Tárrega's transcription only includes the B section. Since Tárrega was working on the piece shortly before he died, it is possible he intended to transcribe all of it but that assumption can not be confirmed.
The part Tárrega did transcribe shows several differences in the original, all fairly typical of what can be expected in a guitar transcription of a piano work.
The main difference between Schumann's piano work and Tárrega's transcription is tempo indication. Schumann gave the tempo as "sehr schnell" ("very fast") while Tárrega's transcription was published with the tempo indication "lento" ("very slow"). This difference is reflected in the titles of the two versions of the composition. Without access to the original manuscript it is impossible to tell whether this re-interpretation was made by Tárrega or by the publisher.
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End of the Year Challenge: Finish Strong!
