DAILY UPDATES (Click Me!) Main Thread - Where the magic happens!
Welcome, one and all, to the Main Thread for this challenge!
This is where the magic happens - the thread where we'll all be posting our daily updates.
Make sure you've read the rules before replying (<- click)
Every day between December 6th and 19th, we are hoping to read your daily updates in this very thread right here!
Please use the following format when commenting (feel free to copy & paste!):
- Landslag you worked on:
- One thing you found easy:
- One thing you found difficult:
- (Optional): a video of you performing it!
Sample daily update:
- Landslag you worked on: Landslag no. 1: dark sand dunes with some moss
- One thing you found easy: The first bar was the hardest one for me to learn, although it looked easy enough on my first try.
- One thing you found difficult: I liked that it was a single line; it allowed me to focus on every note and it was much easier to read than most pieces I play.
Feel free to make these updates as short or long as you wish!
Download the full score (click ↓):
Gulli's Lessons for each individual Landslag:
- Landslag no. 1, Landslag no. 2, Landslag no. 3, Landslag no. 4, Landslag no. 5, Landslag no. 6, Landslag no. 7, Landslag no. 8, Landslag no. 9, Landslag no. 10, Landslag no. 11.
Dedicated discussion threads for each Landslag:
- Landslag 1: dark sand dunes with some moss (<- click)
(More dedicated threads will be created as we progress throughout the challenge)
↓ Let's do this! Post your daily updates below ↓
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- Landslag you worked on: Landslag no. 11
- One thing you found easy: So many preparation options! Ascending arpeggios make this piece a lot easier than it could have been. Also appreciated the idiomatic harmonies! Very beautiful.
- One thing you found difficult: The dynamics made it quite a bit more difficult to realize at tempo, especially due to the natural tendency of the hand to tense up in forte passages. Perhaps I will find time the next 3 days of the challenge to record this again, but I can't guarantee. In the meantime, I feel like this is a pretty good effort for one day~.
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Mircea Wonderful!
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Mircea Bravo! I haven't attempted this one - I think it may be beyond my technique at the moment!
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Ron André Nardi thank you so much! So happy to hear you liked it!
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Mircea Lovely well done
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Mircea I was really looking forward to your performance of Landslag 11 and it met... Nay, exceeded my expectations!!! Bravo!
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Mircea Yeeeeeah, just watched this one, fantastic stuff Mircea, I won't ask how long it took you...
Bravo! It's really exciting to watch someone do what I've been trying and struggling to do, like "wow! he's doing it!"
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Mircea you got to the bottom with ease, great
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Giuseppe Gasparini Thank you so much, Giuseppe, Roni Glaser , David Chidsey , Dennis Greensmith , Ron and everyone!!! Sorry for the late answer, I was a bit busy celebrating
(not the end of the challenge, the other thing, haha)
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Hello Landslaggers, time for an update - haven't got round to it over the past couple of days...
Landslög: 7, 8 and 9
Landslag 7:
Easy: The repeated figures were each easy to play and flowed in the left hand.
Hard: Just mentally processing the changes from one repeated figure to another, the different number of repetitions in each bar and series of bars, the dynamics, the tasto/pont. changes...
Landslag 8:
Easy: It's basically not too tricky on both hands and the polyrhythm just happily bubbles along in way that I can hardly avoid giggling while playing it.
Hard: Reading which note changes, because the nature of the music means they're laid out in an irregular way, as opposed to block chords, which you can see more easily what notes you have to play.
Landslag 9:
Easy: Generally not a difficult piece technically.
Hard: Making sense of "rhythmically steady but dynamically shaped". The notes seem to want me to use rubato, although the "steady" seems to imply that the composer doesn't want rubato.
I've been trying hard to be able to play a satisfactory recording of 7 and 8, but I just can't do it yet, dagnammit! Overall I've been really finding it really interesting to work with the intent to get it to a recordable standard that I'm satisfied enough with, and I feel like I'm learning a lot from having one piece after another to go through like this as real real pros sometimes have to. I did 9, but I need another go at it before I'll be satisfied enough to post.
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Roni Glaser wow, thank you for that really detailed update!
happy to hear you've been enjoying the latter movements! I had the exact same issue as you in number 9 - the music just naturally invited me to do rubato, so much that I couldn't resist it. Perhaps if I went back to it and practiced it some more, I would be able to get into a more steady flow. Wonderful to hear about the prospect of recording and posting on here motivating you to learn more music over the course of the past week and a half! This is exactly what we had in mind with this challenge! You could not have made me happier than by saying that
hope this will continue to be something you benefit from throughout the rest of the challenge and beyond! -
Mircea Yes, and your recordings are inspiring, AKA a healthy dose of envy, as in "That darned Mircea did that in 15 minutes! I want what he's got..." and trying to figure out what kind of good practice is best to achieve it.
Have you been making/do you make lots of annotations to the scores, or do you just glance over each piece and bang it out? I often have trouble remembering what I decided to do with fingerings and stuff without practising it lots first, even if I write it in red.
Maybe I just need to practise learning more and more pieces... -
Roni Glaser I actually didn't make any annotations at all for these! In longer pieces, where I run the risk of forgetting things I find along the way, annotations are vital - but these were all manageable enough that I could reasonably keep most things in my memory from the get-go.
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Mircea Very interesting (not to mention impressive!
), I found the annotations I made didn't actually help me all that much, perhaps I was making the wrong kind of annotations, or the way I wrote them wasn't clear enough, but I wonder if it's more the way I practise. Maybe I should open a new thread...
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- Landslag you worked on: Landslag no. 11
- One thing you found easy: It is nice with RH patterns being consistent (great for developing a 'touch and play feel' on the strings- but with occasional change etc which makes a huge challenge!!
- One thing you found difficult: This is a challenge that really makes you understand whether you know the fretboard as well as you think Campanella pieces are superb for thinking 'out of the box' in finding how to play notes in scales /arpeggios that sometimes we think we can't play on the guitar. The mix of Staccatto and Tenuto is excellent musically and a good LH challenge.
- I love this piece and have now included this in my practise routine for next week - superb composition Gulli !!!
- A fabulous challenge developing sight reading and technical developments with a lovely range of music. I haven't been able to developer time to recording but I have really enjoyed having a fresh challenge of the past week learning new material.
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Hello! Today is the last day of the challenge and I got to number VI. What a beautiful and sad piece. I that the musicality came to me easy in this piece. The key at first made the first sight reading more difficult. I have been rehearsing the first 5. I will continue with the rest. They are beautiful, and this is me saying who normally runs away from contemporary music ... Thank you so so much
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I worked on Landslag 11
very fun piece that reminds me a little of Fuoco by Dyens (another piece I love to play)
the easy, campanella scales make it easier to let notes ring over each other thus helping with legato playing
the harder, the tempo being so quick forces you to mave your hands between shifts very precisely and clean, otherwise it doesn't sound right
I hope to be able to record more of these tomorrow and upload them
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I've been working on no 4 again today - trying to get the right hand working smoothly.
Also got round to attempting a recording of no 3 (which took some doing - a different mistake on each attempt!) and no 5. Just recorded on my phone so the sound quality isn't the best
No 5: https://youtu.be/sCz6xWUT55g
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Derek Bravo
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Had a look at 10 and 11 today to be in time for tomorrow, but haven't had a whole lot of time for them, and I don't think I'll have time to record them either.
We'll see. 10:
Easy: I didn't find finding the positions of the harmonics difficult, and generally playing it, there was a lot of information to help - the positions, the strings, the tab...
Hard: Squinting to read the score (and especially counting the ledger lines). The score is a bit on the small side.
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I should add that it was easy to find the positions because the harmonics were mostly near each other and there was no jumping from different harmonics on different strings, and some patterns repeated, so once I got used to it, it became fairly straightforward.
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Landslag 11:
Easy: Left hand and right hand - nothing really too complicated in terms of chord shapes or RH patterns and what the hand actually needs to do.
Hard: Just getting my hands to do exactly what the score says consistently at the right time and speed... I just end up losing it.
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Roni Glaser Hi Roni,your evaluations of the Landslag that I have not yet addressed, will be useful to me thanks
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Last day
Landslag I worked on: No 10
Thing I found easy: It was good in one way that the tab was there although in another I don't particular like scores with tabs as I find I tend to look at that rather than the actual score.
Thing I found hard: On the whole it was fairly easy enough (probably thanks to the tab!) but just a couple of position changes which need more practice to keep the timing precise and one stretch with 7th fret and 12th fret harmonics.
The other hard thing was trying to find sufficient time to get it to a reasonable standard and record it! Looking forward to the watch party.
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Week two update: as in week one, I had limited practice time. In the end, I didn't manage (or even try) to make any recordings. But I did, over the course of the two weeks, spend some time working on each of the eleven pieces. A few (1-3) I can now play reasonably well, others (4-6) are 'nearly' there but still need a little polishing. Three (7-8) I think are within reach, but still need a lot of work. One (10) I looked at but didn't spend much time with - it doesn't seem too difficult, but I would need to have it memorized to execute the harmonics properly. The final piece (11) I worked on in bits and pieces. At slow tempos, it seems manageable, but at 'concert' tempo it is certainly out of my reach.
So what did I get out of the challenge? Foremost, it's been interesting (and enjoyable) to be part of this small community. I feel as though I'm making some new friends! And it's been great having feedback form Mircea and Martin, not to mention their amazing video performances of the pieces! (And congratulations to Mircea for actually completing the challenge - somebody, draw that man a cake!) It's also prompted me to learn a little bit of contemporary music, something I rarely do. I've gained an appreciation of minimalism - I used to more or less dismiss the whole genre, thinking 'it's just doing the same simple thing over and over'. But as I discovered in numbers 7, 8 and 11 - not so simple at all!
I would say the community challenge has turned out to be a great success - I for one look forward to the next one, although I rather hope future challenges will be just a little less challenging! See you all at the party!
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David well said David. I agree it's been a great success, although I do like a lot of minimalistic music! It's good to have something like this for solo guitar.
I too am looking forward to the next one.
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End of the Year Challenge: Finish Strong!
