Week 1 - A New Hope 🌟
Hello tonebuddies! 🎶
A long time ago, in a practice room far, far away... you picked up a piece. You were excited. You cracked it open, worked through the first page, maybe the second — and then something happened. Life struck back. A new piece caught your eye. The fingering felt impossible. The score quietly migrated to the bottom of a stack where it's been sitting ever since. 🎸
This May, we're bringing back the Unfinished Business Challenge — and we're kicking things off on May the 4th, because what better day to summon the Force and finally finish what you started? Every guitarist has an abandoned piece (or three). This is your chance to rescue one from the Sarlacc pit of your music folder and bring it home.
This challenge is open to all levels. Whether you left off at bar 8 or bar 80, whether it's a Bach fugue or a beginner study that got away — if there's a piece waiting for its return, it belongs here.
🌟 The Challenge
Revisit a composition you started but never finished — and this time, see it through. It might be:
- 🎯 A piece you abandoned because it felt too hard
- 🎯 Something you got halfway through before a new obsession took over
- 🎯 A passage or section you never quite nailed
- 🎯 A piece you learned years ago but never polished or performed
Share the story of why it got left behind and what it means to finally complete it. That's half the magic of this challenge.
📅 Challenge Dates
Start: May 4
End: June 12
Watch Party: June 12
🎥 How to Participate
- Pick your piece – Choose the piece (or section) that's been haunting you. The one you've been avoiding. That's the one.
- Share your goal – Post in the forum thread and tell us what you're finishing and why it got abandoned in the first place.
- Post your progress – Share updates along the way — rough takes, slow-tempo run-throughs, the gnarly passage you finally cracked.
- Engage with your fellow rebels – Cheer each other on, leave constructive feedback, and celebrate every piece that makes it across the finish line.
Bonus points: Share a recording of your favorite performance of the piece you're revisiting — the version that first made you fall in love with it.
🎬 Watch Party — June 12
The Watch Party on June 12 will feature recorded submissions from everyone who completed their Unfinished Business. Make sure to submit your final performance videos so we can celebrate your finished piece together! 🎉
💡 Need a Little Help from a Jedi Master?
If the reason you left the piece unfinished is still giving you trouble, tonebase is full of lessons, masterclasses, and courses from world-class guitarists ready to help you through the tricky parts. Search for the piece, the composer, or the technique — chances are, there's a Master ready to help.
May the 4th be with you, tonebuddies. Let's finish what we started. 🎸⚔️
294 replies
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First week of practice, decided to resurrect Se Ela Perguntar from the ashes. After listening to audio, it needs a little work to resolve missed notes, bad barre's and just the sound in general is bad. This was recorded on my phone, so the sound will be a little compressed. I'll keep working on it and then record it with better mics.
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Since I have no finished pieces it was easy to find one, but hard to choose one for this challenge. I startet to learn "letter from home" 14 months ago when i did not yet play on a classical guitar. It is originally from Pat Metheny and Lyle Mays but classical guitarist Jason Vieaux recorded it too. This had a lot of impact to start my interest in classical guitar. I abandoned the piece soon since i started to discover the classical repertoire. My goal now is
to play it with a steady pace, better flow, more legato and better tone.
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Wow - you guys have made a fantastic start, some great videos already.. I'm revising some old pieces and hopefully will find time to post some videos towards the end of week 2. I've been working on the Bach Prelude BWV998 for a couple of months now. I have started and stopped this quite a few times. I like to learn a piece so that I can play from memory but I can never really memorize anything by Bach for some reason. I've also decided to revisit a couple of other pieces Lob der Thranen - Schubert/Mertz and Les Soirees d'Autueil by Coste - by coincidence I will be in Paris this coming week hope to post when I get back.