Week 2: Sharing the Journey 🌟

🌟 WELCOME TO THE "A FRESH START" COMMUNITY CHALLENGE! 🌟
Embark on a musical journey with our latest challenge, "A Fresh Start". It’s time to dust off that sheet music you’ve been eyeing and dive into a brand-new piece!
🗓️ CHALLENGE TIMELINE
- Challenge Start: Kick-Off on April 15th!
- Duration: April 15th to May 13th
- Watch Party: Join us on May 13th at 11 AM PST to watch selected submissions!
🎼 WEEK 2 ACTIVITIES
- Progress Sharing: You should have your new piece selected by now. This week, let's start sharing our progress. Post a video or describe what you've been working on. It's fascinating to see how everyone approaches the learning process!
68 replies
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Hello all, I have always wanted to play something by Rodrigo but found most of his work beyond my reach. While I was alphabetizing my music I found this piece that I collected many years ago and thought I would use it for this challenge. "Tiento Antiguo" (ancient touch or feel). I found it quite beautiful and has Rodrigo's flair for evoking the Spanish landscape. My only hope is to do it justice. To study this piece I will break it up into several sections. The arpeggio sections, separated by two interludes. Two Cadenza's separating B and C section's and ending with a beautiful arpeggio Cadenza lento ending.
The cadenza is by far the most challenging part due to its speed. So I will work on that with speed studies and right hand alone exercises. The ending has some difficult timing along with some tricky slurring, so I will create separate exercises for these. The arpeggio seems straight forward. I'm about 2 weeks into this piece, hopefully I can get something complete recorded by May 13th.
To play this I divided the rhythm in half, 16ths become 8th's and 32'nds become 16th's to make it sane for me.
Here is the opening 16 bars of the arpeggio.
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Sor – Le Calme Op 50 C section
For the last few days, I have mainly been practicing the A and B sections, trying to make them more fluid. But tonight, I finally started working on the C section, which I find much more difficult. I’m hoping that it doesn’t keep me from being able to complete this piece.
After listening to my video below a few times, I think I would like to practice this section in three progressive ways:
- First, I want to practice the melody alone, shaping it the way I want it to sound.
- Then I will practice the melody with the bass notes only.
- Lastly, I will add the accompaniment in the middle.
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A first take of Allegretto from Stravinsky's Les Cinq Doigts. I think this is the most cheerful of the bunch, which makes sense since I read the main motive was based on a Russian folk dance.
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Working on the Ponce Sonata Classica. Going through my edition and finding error is less than encouraging. But watching videos and exploring fingerings in the first section. Practicing connections of odd left hand shapes this week.