WEEK ONE: Uncharted Territory!
Welcome to the Main Thread for the first week of the Sergio Assad Community Challenge, starting to discover this wonderfully intriguing set of etudes!
- 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 10 Sketches 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 Sketch!
- (Optional:) questions
↓ Reply below with your assignments and questions! ↓
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Hello, just finished the first sketch. I found the notes and tempo easy to play but it wasn’t so easy to memorize. I needed about half hour of practice for 5 days to complete the sketch. Hope to be able to learn faster the next sketch.
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Raul Guzman Thank you for your update! It‘s great and inspiring to read that you really take the time you need! As Eric said, these Sketches are here to stay
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And back with an update on the 4th Part of the First Sketch! I am a little bit behind but I promise to catch up over the course of the next days
Sketch No.1 - Part 4- Things you found easy: Harmony and Phrasing is quite obvious, and once I got it into my fingers it flew pretty simple!
- Things you found difficult: Finding places to establish stability! There is no repetitive right hand pattern whatsoever, so every bar needed special treatment
Moreover, every line had its unique problems to solve!
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Martin That has amazingly good feel and flow to it, Martin!
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Eric Thank you!
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And here I am with Sketch No.2 - Day One!
- Things you found easy: There is nothing really easy about that one, everything is little bit weird and odd!
- Things you found difficult: I want to play the agitato fast, like really fast, but I'm not there yet, which is why I make too many mistakes! I'll update you on that one tomorrow, hopefully, it'll flow better!
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Martin That was great to listen to on so many levels, Martin! Setting the mistakes aside, your musical ideas are spectacular and come through very clearly. The contrast you create between the two sections is so good. I also love that you made mistakes, even doing a second take, but did not just scrap it and start over again, like I usually do. You're not afraid to show a lack of perfection, which teaches all of us so much. Thank you for that gift!
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Eric Haha, always happy to share my struggles with all of you guys! I think that‘s the idea of this community activity, to challenge ourselves and to commit ourselves to practicing some great pieces of music. Not much of a challenge if everything works after the first try
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Martin wonderful! I agree a lot with Eric, love how you play the two sections, and like Eric says the contrast you give between them! I will annotate those tricks you have for the second section. Yes, to play the second part fast is hard, knowing you, you'll have it done pretty quick
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I've mainly been working on sketches 1 & 2 this week - I think I've finally got all the fingerings to work on sketch 1 although I did struggle with bar 93 for a while. Rest stroke with a in Sketch 2 is coming along but the whole thing is not fluent yet!
I've never ever made a video of my playing before so I thought I'd try this afternoon with part 2 of sketch 1, however I failed miserabley when trying to up load it to YouTube and the .mov file is too big to drag and drop here unfortunately!
I'll keep trying!
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Ron I really hope we get to hear you play! That’s great that you can do Sketch 2 with rest stroke.
I am really bad at doing videos on YouTube but with some practice I have figured out my own way to make it work. It’s probably not the best way, but if you want some help maybe we could figure out a way.
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Eric Phillips Thanks Eric - any help would be very welcome
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Ron Here's how I do it:
- Go to your YouTube Channel
- In the upper right hand corner are four icons, one of which looks like a camera with a plus sign in it. When you hover over it, it says "create". Click on it. A drop down menu will appear with two choices. Click on "Upload video".
- Click on "Select Files" and get your video from wherever you stored it on your computer.
- You then have to make lots of choices about your video, but I'll give the minimum choices, which is what I do.
- Give it a title - it will default to whatever you called it already, but change it if you like.
- Scroll down until you see the word "Audience" and click on "No, it's not made for kids".
- In the upper right of the box, click on "visibility".
- You have three choices - private, unlisted, or public. To post on the Tonebase thread, you must either choose public or unlisted. I always choose unlisted as I'm not interested in having the whole world see my videos, just those with whom I share the link (i.e. Tonebase users).
- Before saving, in the lower right hand is a video link which you can copy to your clipboard by clicking on the little rectangle next to it. This will allow you post the link at Tonebase.
- Then hit Save in the lower right.
- After you do this, it will take a few minutes to upload your video and check it over for copyright infringement (it won't have any of course).
- You can then go and post it in the Tonebase thread (i.e. here) by hitting Reply, typing whatever message you want, and then click on the middle icon at the bottom that is a rectangle with a triangle in it. When you hover over this box, it says "add video". Click on it and then paste in the link to your YouTube video that we copied above.
Sorry that is so wordy. I'm not exactly an I.T. guy. I hope it helps, and most of all, I hope to see your videos!
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Eric Phillips Ron Exactly like that, awesome Step-by-Step-Description! The Forum Software we are using has an upload limit of 50mb ! While it's fine for uploading scores and pictures. video files tend to get bigger than!
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Eric Phillips Fantastic! Many thanks Eric I will give it a go this evening.
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Ron Looking forward to it!
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Eric Phillips Eric Phillips thanks Ron and Eric this information is also really helpful to me as well, cheers Deb from Australia
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Deb Covell Happy to help! Will we be seeing some videos from you?
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Eric Eric Phillips Phillips hope so if I can get it to work!
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Unfortunately in this period I cannot follow and record, but I am studying them because they are good studies and very useful
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Giuseppe Gasparini I hope all is well, Giuseppe. I'm glad you are able to study the sketches. All the best!
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Giuseppe Gasparini Thanks for letting us, we sure are happy to have back soon!
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Hopefully this should work - thanks to Eric for the excellent instructions
It's a bit rough around the edges but I wanted to at least post something!
(Apologies for the facial contortions - I didn't realise I did so many!)
Sketch 1 part 3
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Ron This is outstanding, Ron! Your right hand is so stable, and the phrasing sounds so musical. Like you, I have noticed the strange looks on my face as I play. Yours are pretty subdued compared to mine.
The video looks good too. What do you use?
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Eric Phillips Thanks Eric - I been working on trying to reduce the tension in my hands as I know I play better if I relax. On the strange looks, I don't think weI'll ever match the way that Julian Bream's face used to look when he played (he was the first person I ever heard play the classical guitar and my inspiration for starting to learn)
I just used my iphone for the video - I have got a Rode NT-USB mini mic but I haven't used it with the phone yet
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Ron Great job! I really enjoyed that the tempo and your stability took us with you on the harmonic development!
I think that maybe there might be a misprint in the score, because in bar 45-46 we have the upper voice changing from d to c,
While in the parallel passage in the next part of the Sketch in bar 70 Sergio starts and stays on the c. It‘s a little bit more annoying to play with the development from d to c, but what do you think?
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