WEEK TWO: The Musical Voyage!
Welcome to the Main Thread for the second week of the Sergio Assad Community Challenge!
- Make sure you've read the guidelines before replying (← click)
- Watch the Kick-Off-Livestream on July 16th to get an overview!
- Download the scores for Assad's Etudes here (← click)
If you want to describe your process (optional), feel free to use the following template.
- Things you found easy:
- Things you found difficult:
- (Optional): a video of you performing the etude!
- (Optional:) questions
↓ Reply below with your assignments and questions! ↓
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Diving a little bit into Sketch XI - Chord Shapes & Arpeggios!
- Things you found easy: Puh, hitting the record button over and over again maybe?
- Things you found difficult: There are a lot of weird things happening, the most annoying thing is that you cannot fully trust your eyes to recognize a chord shape because they are so unique. However, some of the phrases just sound soooo beautiful! There are some technical intricacies which I will discuss in tomorrow's livestream!
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Martin absolutely, you always provide us so much valuable information!
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Hey hey! I'm glad I could provide some comic relief in my first video!
Perhaps this one will be a bit better. The main challenge I am having with this piece is to not be a perfectionist. I feel like I have definitely made progress on this one, but it is certainly not "error-less" just yet. I'm playing it at a speed I can handle it and have it still sound like music!
Easy: Comprehending the melody and harmonic structure and finding the beauty in the piece.
Difficult: emphasizing the accent on the "and of 4".-
Steve Pederson Great work, Steve. It sounds really good. I like the guitar collection in the background!
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Eric Phillips Thanks! I'm fortunate to have a lot of guitars, but with the pandemic I've pretty much only played my classical.
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Steve Pederson great sound and playing Steve, you're doing the right thing to play at a speed you can manage to some point what you're doing. I understand you, as a perfectionist, I had to change my mind about accepting to play without errors or until it's up to my taste or I wouldn't have recorded anything yet
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Blaise Laflamme Thanks, and yes, done is better than perfect. The other thing I've found is that perfection is very subjective. I listened back to this recording that, while I was playing, seemed like I made a lot of mistakes. After listening back I thought, hmm, that wasn't as bad as I thought it was!
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Steve Pederson you're totally right about subjectivity... and your performance is far from being bad! We tend to focus on small details while losing the overview, then we feel unsatisfied of the whole because of a few things. Normally after a few hours, or days, when you listen back it's more enjoyable.
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Steve Pederson Hey Steve, that's a wonderful rendition of Sergio's Sketch II! I think it might help you to think more about your right hand fingerings! Sometimes you repeat the thumb, sometimes you play the two eight notes with a-m and sometimes with i-m or m-i! For me, the fingering for left and right hand provides the racing line through a piece, I am sure it will help you focus even more on the music once you dig into the fingerings
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I'm not very certain what I should do with the days left in this challenge. Pushing ahead to the later sketches does not seem wise as they are so far beyond my technique that I don't think it would serve me or the music that well. So, today I decided to go back to Sketch II. There are some fingerings in there that I knew I was not executing well, so I wanted to work on them some more.
Here are the specific spots I worked on (see score below):
- Measure 8. I paid close attention to the right hand, using the correct fingers and damping the low E string. With the left hand, I needed to make sure to use the pinky in anticipation of the next measure.
- Measure 15. I made sure to damp the low E string again, and to use the third finger (LH) for the E.
- Measure 40. Same as measure 8 above, but this time the ring finger (LH) needs to play the high G to keep the pinky free for the first note of the next measure. It's so simple, but trying to be attentive to that while also damping the bass I find to be very difficult. It feels like trying to pat my head and rub my tummy at the same time.
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Eric Phillips great Eric it flows pretty well! I also have to figure out what to learn for the remaining days, I already have started #5 and #7 and thinking about #9... I assimilate better when I learn 2 or 3 pieces at the same time, but that would be enough for the time I have till the end I think.
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Blaise Laflamme Thanks, Blaise. You've got the technique for those later pieces, I'm sure.
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Eric Phillips indeed, saying the opposite would be a lie... but they also need more time to learn and play
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Eric Phillips Great job and great eye for the details! As Blaise Laflamme says, I think it flows really well (though I was looking forward to the glissando maybe a little bit too much
)! Awesome to see that you apply some damping techniques, how are the exercises going? -
Martin Thanks, Martin. I have been keeping up the damping exercises, and they are getting a very little bit better each day. It will take a while, but I know it’s something my fingers need to be able to do automatically so I’ll keep at it.
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Eric Phillips Bravissimo!!!
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Sketch 3. Okay, this is a first-time read-through. I only spent a minute looking over the music visually before attempting it. No where to go but up!
If you watch my face, it looks like one of those YouTube videos where people are reacting to a song they've heard for the first time. Hilarious!
Did anyone else notice that this sounded a bit like The Simpsons theme song? My wife even asked if I was learning The Simpsons song.
What was easy: The steady bass notes and the fairly consistent rhythm of the melody.
What was difficult: I wasn't expecting that high A in m. 4. Because I didn't reposition my left hand I wasn't ready for it. I will also need to work on the rests between the bass notes in the "metallic" section.
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Steve Pederson Good work, Steve! Maybe on the mistakes you should have said, “Doh!” (That’s a Simpsons reference.
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Eric Phillips
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Steve Pederson Damn, you are right! Nice Read-Through, those are very valuable in order to spot the points of interest! Our hands tend to do their own thing, if there's no problem: keep going! But where we get stuck, that's where we want to look at! Though, at some point I always prefer to write down my fingering to have it as a visual reference
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Steve Pederson
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Hi Everybody..
Beautiful work on these amazing etudes thanks everyone, couldn't resist but to get involved.
I have been enjoying playing most of them and realised quickly 3 weeks is not long enough for me to get deep into all of these, I'd probably need 3 years. I've decided to start at no 1 all the same.
I found that most of it went in my fingers quite easily and I enjoyed experimenting with different vibes and textures in the 4 parts.
I found some fingerings hard: LH 1st and 2nd finger on fret 1 and 3rd on fret 3. RH on the last section the chromatic bass run caused issues. I found it difficult getting it all to sit together in a performance.
Enjoying this so much! Any feedback appreciated.
One love
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Jaime Zaldua That was wonderful to listen to, Jaime! You have such nice control over your dynamics and tempo, and made it so musical. Thanks for joining in!
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Jaime Zaldua I'm happy you entered the challenge, I missed you... great take on this 1st sketch, sensitive as you always play... I hope you'll find time to submit others even if they're not perfect
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Jaime Zaldua Beautiful and welcome, we are super happy to have you here again! I really enjoyed the tempo and how you play through those sections with ease! I might look at some right hand fingerings in the last part, there are passages where you repeat a finger multiple times which is a common source of mistakes.
I've attached my annotated score, maybe you'll find some inspiration in some of the fingerings. I also made a video in the Week One Updates Thread (I think).
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Eric Phillips Thankyou Eric - thanks too for all of your updates I so admire your commitment and really enjoying hearing you progress so quickly.
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End of the Year Challenge: Finish Strong!
