WEEK ONE Updates: Main Thread - Awakening Tárrega's Spirit

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!

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. 

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 succession 

Easy : So far positions are not too demanding 

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

Etude I'll be working on: Maria Gavotte. I've always enjoyed it. It's so rockin'!

One thing I find easy: It's not complicated musically and it is very guitaristic.

One thing I find difficult: I've always been intimidated by any piece that goes much above the 12th fret, and so I've never fully taken this one on. I'm particularly nervous about the portamento in measure 41. I'm going to give it my best try, though. 

Just downloaded the pdf. Will be taking a look at it tomorrow to choose a piece

• Etude you worked on: Capricho Arabe, first page
• One thing you found easy: No much difficulty with sight reading since I worked on it last year for a short time, still remember the scores 
• One thing you found difficult: Sometimes molto accelerando 

I am planning to work on the first page entire week, and the second next week. It is not an easy piece, but I want to finish it this time. That's why I like these challenges 

Hi Martin and everyone! I’m also really excited about this challenge. The two Tarrega pieces I already have in my repertoire are Lagrima and Adelita. I have always wanted to learn the Gran Vals and Capricho Arabe so this is a great opportunity to pick one and see it through. I’ve never tried either. And since we just finished the Virtuosity Challenge, why not?
Hmm eeny, meeny, miny, moe...

Capricho Arabe! I will start on it tomorrow!

Hi Martin. This should be a great challenge. I have an ongoing challenge of my own but I can work on the Tarrega pieces alongside this. I've just actually been working on Prelude 5 and was hoping to record it before Wednesday for something else so I shall post the video here. I've tried to play Maria a long time ago so will also work on that this week. Hopefully I'll have time to learn the Tango after that (but not this week!)

Hi Martin and everone! I have already had LaGrima and Recuerdos de la Alhambra under my hands. I will choose to work on two new pieces: Adelita and Gran Vals for this Tarrega challenge :) I am excited! :)

Is there an actual video being broadcast today 31st May - I cannot seem to find how to access it?

This looks fun! 
  I would like to participate(:

Hi Martin, I’m refining Recuerdos de la Alhambra, and Estudio brilliante and starting Danza Mora ( I was holding off on starting this one until after the school semester was over. Perfect timing!).

Hi Martin,  I am excited about this topic.  I regularly practice Lágrima,  and Etude in E Minor.  For this challenge I will  focus on 2 pieces  Prelude No 5 in E major and Adelita.   I have worked on Adelita before however always  a few stumbling blocks  , so I  will start to work on Adelita this week and into next week ...

Hello Martin,

I'm quite excited, as this is my first tone base challenge. I just started classical guitar a couple of months ago (I used to practice rock guitar when I was younger). Thus, I think the only piece I might try to play - at least in part - is Lagrima. I just started yesterday, using the lessons by Thomas Viloteau. I'm very much looking forward to it!

• Etude you worked on: Lagrima
• One thing you found easy: Simple melody and rythm without surprises
• One thing you found difficult: Keeping the melody very legato and more present than the rest

Hey all. 

Here's my utterly RAW recording of me practising Marieta. It sounds a bit boxy.

EASY

Just doing RAW recording take was simple enough. Also, the piece in its entirety - it's not too difficult.

HARD

• The slides of minor and major section: getting it just right
• Not attacking the string with RH too hard (I comment on that in the recording).
• The 16th notes slurs and the one 32nd note slur. Challenging to articulate them properly.
• And more...

I started with Isabel, Valse.

Not very difficult to sight-read and structurally very straight forward.  Simple Binary form piece and common harmonic progression.

As I often find with these types of pieces the difficulty lies in the details.  Getting the feel of the Viennese waltz is more difficult than it seems.

video coming soon!

Hello, I'm going to do Capricho Arabe and Rescuerdos del Alhambra.   I really want to improve my paying level for these songs and will be using techniques I've learnt recently on tone base.

Regards

Dennis

Hi everyone,

I'm working on Capricho Arabe. I played this a number of years ago, and want to get it back into my repertoire. I always so enjoyed playing it. There are a lot of other pieces too, some I have played and some I have enjoyed hearing others play very much. 

Hard: Since I've played this, but it's been quite a while, I really need to go through and make sure that I'm following the music and not making it up from a faulty memory. I also want to play a better version.

Easy: Motivation. I really love this piece.

So far: It's going well. Glad we have 3 weeks to develop!

Hello everyone!  Really looking forward to this.  I read through several of the pieces recommended; Lagrima, Adelita, Preludes 1 and 5.  I decided to work on Prelude number 5.  I know it will be difficult for me to make this sound good as having a nice legato is always difficult for me.  Always looking for a few tips as I have never had a formal lesson on the guitar.  

What did I find easy?  I think the opening chord...

What did I find difficult?  Everything after the opening chord.

Seriously however, the part that is currently giving me trouble are the chords in measures 3 - 5; especially the crescendo/decrescendo.  And again, the A tempo in the last line.  I have decided to just have fun with it.

Here is a quick snapshot of my progress with Maria. I have been practicing since Saturday, so I guess that is four days. It's still a bit slower than I'd like, and has a few problem areas. I'm happy to have it pretty well memorized, though. It is just so fun to play!

I am also posting what I find to be the most difficult measure, specifically measure 41 which has a portamento from E to A on the first string. I play it several times slowly in the video. I'd be very interested to hear what Martin or any of you think could improve my playing of it. Right now, I'm only accurately hitting the correct notes about 50% of the time.

Martin - I did watch the video you suggested on shifting and have already begun doing the exercise you gave. Man, that is a killer! I am hopeful that practicing the exercise will help this piece and many others.

Hi Martin, I enter as a mere novice compared to the other cognicenti . I throughly enjoy other peoples music, but I am still a beginner. So this is for the ones who keep trying (50+years). I am trying to improve my Lagrima, love Tarrega. I tend to play in isolated rooms so it can be very nerve wracking to expose my attrocious playing. Today starting with the first sentence.

Easy: Being over 6' and longish fingers, the stretching for the left hand was not too difficult.

Hard: Going from measure 4 to 5 and avoiding the barre to ghet speed and pain in left thumb.

I chose Estudio en forma de Minuetto because I like the way it moves along and uses scales. Not sure there is an 'easy" comment I can make, but it looks like a challenging piece to play up to tempo. I hope to eventually play it up to the tempo that I've heard from guitarists online. It looks like a good challenge, and it looks like a piece that will help me improve my technique. Neil

Hi everyone, here is my warm up piece- LaGrima. As I mentioned a bit above, I have learnt Lagrima and Recuerdos de la Alhambra. I am posting this La Grima as a warm up, thanks to the nice suggestion from Blaise Laflamme . I am choosing to work on Adelita and Gran Vals in this challenge. In the next few days, I will post my progress about Adelita :) Look forward to seeing your progress also; hope we can all motivate each other :)