WEEK 1: Vamos, Compañeros 
Welcome to the Main Thread for the first week of our musical Journey to Spain!! This is the place to share submissions of the first week! 
- Make sure you've read the guidelines before replying (<- click)
- Watch the kickoff livestream for help with the first section!
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 it!
- (Optional:) questions
↓ HAPPY PRACTICING, HAPPY SHARING ↓
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Luys de Narvaez - Cancion del Emperador
This might be the most well-known piece of the 16th century vihuela music. Again, I played it on guitar and lute. The lute version is not particularly good, but you do get to see my dog in it (which is always a bonus).
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David Krupka 11 courses! I get dizzy just thinking about that!
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Eric Phillips It can get worse than that. The baroque lute in its final form had thirteen courses. The archlute, used mostly in Italy, had fourteen, as did the standard theorbo. And the 'Angelique' - a French invention tuned mostly in seconds - had sixteen! Jose Miguel Moreno has recorded a very fine suite for this strange instrument, from which this 'Chaconette' is taken:
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Gaspar Sanz - Pavana
I'm moving on now to some Spanish baroque music. This short Pavana comes from his book Instrucción de música sobre la guitarra española, published in the beautiful city of Zaragoza in 1674. I played through it twice, and tried to give it some ornamentation the second time through. This is not something that comes naturally to me, but I like a few of the things I did. My biggest problem when improvising ornamentation is that I often lose the beat.
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Eric Phillips Nice Eric. I am familiar with Sanz but I don't think I ever played any of his music.
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Jack Stewart Me either. His most famous piece today seems to be Canarios (again in the Noad book), but this one was much easier! I just went to IMSLP.
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Eric Phillips Nice... I thought you were about to play his famous pavana in A minor... that makes me think I could start this week with it then
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Blaise Laflamme Go for it, Blaise!
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Very good, renaissance music is so so beautiful... thank you Eric
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OK, here is Torija by Federico Moreno-Torroba. Some of the stretches were difficult, but I used Manny's excellent advice and it helped in several places. Still working on this which has a ways to go
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Paul Kennedy Great start on this one, Paul! Beautiful tone, and those stretches don't seem to be causing you much trouble at all. My impression is that you just need to become a little more familiar with the music, which comes naturally with repetition, I generally find. Looking forward to the 'update'!
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Paul Kennedy Hey Paul, you have chosen a wonderful piece
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Paul Kennedy Pieces by Federico Moreno-Torroba I have never played in my life - but you opened my eyes to that wonderful music, so this composer is on my to do list ! I wish you as much fun as possible on that piece ! Best Regards
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Paul Kennedy So beautiful, Paul. I agree it just needs practice from here, but you have the hand movement down. The B section is in a tough key for the guitar!
You probably already know this, but I think Emmanuel has a tutorial on this piece. His fingering suggestions are so good.
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Paul Kennedy thanks for playing this, it is a lovely piece. Sooner or later I will get to it!
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Paul Kennedy Very nice Paul. It's very different from what I know now Torroba's work. Thanks for sharing.
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Eric Phillips Yes, I actually began this piece because of Manny’s tutorial
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Paul Kennedy that was nice Paul, Torroba is so beautiful music.
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Paul Kennedy So beautiful and calming! Now you should definitely go for the full cycle
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Blaise Laflamme hey Blaise, I just made a recoding of Montemayor using my Spire. Very basic as I am still learning how to use it, but it really has a beautiful sound quality like a professional studio. I have no idea how to post it here, but if interested, happy to e-mail it to you.
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Paul Kennedy do you also have a video of it so you can just post it on YT as usual? If not I'll send out out my email via PM.
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Blaise Laflamme unfortunately, I do not know how to mix the audio to a video so I do not.
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Paul Kennedy Oh... I think you got a new topic for Martin next streaming on Audio/Video!
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Blaise Laflamme
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Paul Kennedy , Bravo! Sounds great!! Nice choice!
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Here my first video. I played through without repeats.
Main challenges are: fingering 3rd bar of the second section, i played as per score and I didn’t find a better way, but the 4 jumping from high A to High D to Middle G is not nice. I saw some people playing High F iso of high A, i find it already an improvement. Second challenge is moving the barre from seventh to fifth position at bar 6 of second part. Any suggestions welcome. For the rest long barre’ is tough. Thanks Martin and Eric for suggesting Martin barre’ video, i found particularly helpful thinking about 7th string as well as thumb positioning and lever rather than pushing. I will in parallel train on Brower estudio 4. Attached the score I am using.
End of the Year Challenge: Finish Strong!
