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. 2
- One thing you found easy: Sight reading the piece (again!)
- One thing you found difficult: Achieving legato connection between the chords in the first half.
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Jaime great job, Jaime!! You are already doing a great job with the legato - Gulli really did not make this one easy for us
I do have to say, I feel that you absolutely manage to create the illusion of legato despite the chords sometimes not ringing until the very end due to the nature of the music. And for that, you have my congratulations 
that can be the hardest thing to do of all!
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Landslag I worked on: Landslad II
Something I found easy: the left hand fingerings were relatively simple.
Something I found hard: just about everything, but the two biggest things were trying to synchronize my right and left hands (I found I would either get the right strings with my left hand or my right, getting both together was hard); and achieving a smooth feel with minimal dead spaces between the chord changes.
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Michael great job, Michael! Was it just my impression or did you actually play the whole thing from memory?
if so, congratulations!! You are a much faster learner than I am 
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Mircea I did play it from memory, but not because I am a fast learner. I had to because I had to really focus on getting my right and left hands to do the right things. Plus I am really slow at reading music, so memorizing was the only way for me to get the piece smooth. PS love the landslög and this challenge.
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Michael thank you so much! So glad to hear you're enjoying it. And no matter for what reason you did it, the fact of the matter is, you had it all memorized - and in only one day of practice! That is wonderful in and of itself.
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Landslag no 1: Dark sand dunes with some moss
Easy: I found the pace very relaxed and easy on the right hand
Difficult: Initially some of my chord changes were not as smooth with the left hand as I would like
Having visited Iceland for the first time in January this year I can really associate with the scenery described by the music
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Ron wonderful - welcome to the challenge, Ron! I had the same feeling as you while I was playing through the music! "Wow, this really DOES sound like Iceland" - it's amazing, right? Hope you'll have fun with these pieces over the course of the next two weeks! (and who knows, perhaps beyond)
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Landslag I worked on: No 2 littoral mud in the bottom of a Ford
What I found easy: as per no 1. Easy to sight read and fingering for both hands
Hard! Keeping the chords ringing as long as possible and then getting a smooth change to the next one. Also there are a couple of places where in consecutive bars we have a long short note sequence followed by a short long (e.g. bars 33 and 34) which I had to concentrate to get the timing right.
These are great pieces and I'm going to keep going and learn them all - I won't do it in 10 days though!
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Derek great, Derek! No worries, I really don't expect anyone to learn them all in these two weeks
the idea is not to do a new one every day (after all, you'd run out of pieces before the 2 weeks are up!), but just to practice at least one of them every day, taking as many days per piece as you need. -
Mircea I'd be happy to do the first few in 10 days and make a half decent job of it!
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Derek awesome!
Let's do it!!
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- Landslag you worked on: Landslag no. 2: littoral mud in the bottom of a fjord
- One thing you found easy: playing it in general, LH and RH, choosing the tone and other musical aspects of playing it.
- One thing you found difficult: playing the semibreves (whole notes) perfectly legato; playing a diminuendo in bars 29-31 - after many attempts at making sense of it reached the conclusion that a crescendo made more overall musical sense instead, as well as a non-arpeggiato chord for the last chord. And recording it - after several takes I did manage to do a semi-not-terrible video, until I listened back to it and found my H4n microphone made the pitch lower and the sound out of sync...
I'll try some other time. Oh, sorry, that should have been one thing. Never mind.
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Roni Glaser I'm so sorry to hear about the recording! It's just the worst when that happens. I've had a similar issue today where I realized I hadn't turned off my noise cancellation from an earlier meeting... so all my notes were cut short before they ended
had to go through the whole process of setting up and recording again! On a separate note, yeah, I had exactly the same issue as you when it came to the legato. Given how the music is written, there are a few things that you can do to make the chords connect better, but there aren't many - and those that work are quite advanced techniques!
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Mircea it’s a bit of an arse, but it’s making good recording practice too to learn a piece to serious standard and then record it - 14 days of this and I think we can all beat those recording nerves we were talking about with Steve Goss!
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Roni Glaser exactly!!! I think this is great practice. And peeking ahead (I have insider knowledge, lol) it will make nice prep work for Martin's 5-week recording workshop starting in early January!
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For those having trouble with the 2:3 rhythm, there’s something very easy you can do that my piano teacher from way back in the day taught me that I have never forgotten:
”nice cup of tea, nice cup of tea, nice cup of tea...”
The words in bold are the 2s, and the words underlined are the 3s. Try tapping your left hand with “nice” and “tea”, and your right hand with “nice”, “cup” and tea”. There you go, you’re tapping a 2:3 polyrhythm!
For our piece, swap the right hand for fingers i and m, and the left hand for your right hand thumb. Tada! Problem solved!
Note: if you’re not a native English speaker and you speak a “syllable-timed” language like Spanish, French or Japanese, this might not work for you. If you speak a “stress-timed” language like German or Dutch, it should work.
PS: If you don’t like tea, you can say “fried egg and chips”, but that might be confusing if you’re not from the UK.
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Roni Glaser Thanks! That's helpful. Much more intuitive than "ONE and TWO and THREE and FOUR and FIVE AND SIX and" etc, which I was doing to try to get the rhythm down. Since we are on the subject of difficult rythms, would anyone be able to explain 9/8 time to me (as was used in Landslag 1)? I get that you are shoving an extra 8th note into each bar, but is it counted any different than running triplets in 3/4 time? May classical musical training was limited to high school band class, so I've really encountered 2/4 3/4 and 4/4 time before. I'm not sure what the difference is for times like 6/8 and 9/8 etc. Are these just a way for the composer to avoid writing triplets out?
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Michael Glad it helped!
With regard to the time signature of Landslag 1, yes, the composer has done this to avoid writing out triplets.
IMHO, it should be 6/8 and indicated with triplets, or perhaps 9/16 with the bars cut in half. 18/16 is not unheard of, but probably a bit much. He wants 6 pulses in a bar rather than 9, which you can see from the dotted quaver (eighth note) metronome indication. 9/8 is used for 3 groups of 3 pulses per bar, which this piece is not. I enjoyed playing it though
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Roni Glaser Great explanation on both accounts, Roni! It's really great to have you on board for this challenge!
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- Landslag you worked on: Landslag no. 2
- One thing you found easy: The overall chord progression
- One thing you found difficult: Coordination between right and left hand. Avoiding buzz noises as there are a lot of delicate parts.
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Vincent so true, Vincent! I've had the same experience about the delicate parts! Good job on sticking with it and with the challenge, though
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- Landslag you worked on: Landslag no. 2, Littoral Mud in the Bottom of a Fjord
- One thing you found easy: Once the piece gets going in the second half, the natural resonance of the bass strings of the guitar enables very straightforward and beautiful shifts!
- One thing you found difficult: The first half was clearly engineered to disallow the maintaining of common left-hand fingers between chords. This is extremely difficult to achieve without noise, especially in a slow and quiet piece. Some LH preparation was possible, and yet I found myself resorting to all sorts of tricks to make the passage work as a whole. Most importantly, I had to independently release pressure in certain fingers in advance of others, in order to dampen a string that would have otherwise caused a shifting noise. The legato illusion was created therefore by maintaining certain notes while others were cut just a hair shorter than the rest of the chord. All in all, I had to use very advanced and difficult technique to make this seemingly easy piece work.
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Mircea Hi,good, I too am better off with your fingering
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Giuseppe Gasparini Glad to hear, Giuseppe!
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Mircea said:
Most importantly, I had to independently release pressure in certain fingers in advance of others, in order to dampen a string that would have otherwise caused a shifting noise. The legato illusion was created therefore by maintaining certain notes while others were cut just a hair shorter than the rest of the chord. All in all, I had to use very advanced and difficult technique to make this seemingly easy piece work.For me exactly the same! But my guitar has relatively short sustain, so it is easier for me to cheat lightly when chords changes
End of the Year Challenge: Finish Strong!
