Week 3: Fasten your Seatbelts! 
Welcome to the Main Thread for the third week of the "Guitar Music of the World" practice challenge!
↓ Happy Sharing! ↓
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Okay, now for the real reason I brought you all here!
Seriously, though, this was my original intention for this challenge - to play some original pieces by my college professor/teacher/maestro James (Jim) McGuire - an Irishman living in Minnesota (USA). He published a set of 25 Miniatures - aptly named Twenty Five Miniatures - in 2007.
This is the first one - simply named 1. It is marked Lento. The fastest my metronome lets me go at "lento" is 45 bpm, which is fine by me for this piece, as there are some very intricate harmonies and chord changes I've never experienced before!
There is one little obvious clam at the end, but I had played it correctly the first two times, so it's all good for a first take. This one needs some polishing - especially in mm 10-12. Holy cow!
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Dale Needles Thanks Dale!
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Eric Phillips Thanks Eric, yeah, I have the whole book of 25. Learning this piece reminded me of the Landslög challenge we did. If you're interested, One of Jim's more recent students actually recorded several of the pieces for an album. You can listen to it here on YouTube
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Steve Pederson I just listened to the first several, and I love them! Number 13 is just so beautiful! I know it would be too difficult to get everyone the scores (legally), but these miniatures seem like they would make for a spectacular community challenge.
I hope you don't mind, but I worked on number 1 a bit myself, and here is a recording.
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Eric Phillips Amazing! Really fantastic job on that Eric, and of course I don't mind you taking a stab at it. I really like your idea of doing a community challenge on these as well. I don't think Jim would mind at all. He evidently never officially published this work, so I will reach out to him and get his permission and see what that would look like. martin - what do you think?
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Steve Pederson I’m all for it if the composer gives permission to distribute scores. I don’t know the legal ins-and-outs of that, though.. My favorite challenges have been the ones we’ve done with the sets of pieces by Bjornsson, Assad, and Koshkin, so I know I would love it.
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Steve Pederson Eric's concern here reminds me of something I read about a concert given some years ago in New York by Segovia. It seems that some young guitarist had played the same venue a week earlier, and had performed a piece that happened also to be on Segovia's program. Segovia had a tantrum when he discovered this! Apparently the young man (if memory serves me, it was Elliott Fisk) was supposed to have anticipated what Segovia would be performing the following week and acted accordingly! (Segovia opined that this would never have happened in Europe, where, apparently, people understood the norms of good behaviour ...)
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David Krupka Wow! What a fascinating story! I would think Segovia could have made a joke about it, saying, "That was cute, but this is how it's supposed to be played!"
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Eric Phillips martin - I just heard back from Jim and he said that he doesn't want any of the pieces being distributed until they are officially published, which is understandable. I suggested he check out Tonebase and thought - maybe, once he has the pieces published - Tonebase would like to have him on to introduce them. We shall see.
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Steve Pederson Great piece and well played, Steve. It's nice to hear something from him that's a little lower level since the suites I'm familiar with are pretty tough. And I get why he wouldn't want those floating around since once they're out there, they're everywhere. If you happen to hear when and who he's publishing these through, let us know.
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Steve Price will do Steve, and thanks!
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Steve Pederson Why did you register in an instrument shop?!?!?!?!
Bravo, you played in a wonderful way! By the way: What a charming clam!Thanks, man!
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For this week's challenge, I am posting another piece by Abel Carlevaro, taking me back to Montevideo in the early 1980s when this piece was written. The following post is the "Introduccion" from a larger piece entitled, "Introduccion y Capricho." My hope is to have the entire piece polished up by the end of April and will post it to the Carlevaro Discussion Group Forum.
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Dale Needles Wow Dale, what an interesting piece! So much going on. Nice job with it!
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Dale Needles Sounds great Dale! Carlevaro did some nice things on the composing side; something for me to look forward to perhaps after I acquire the proper skills.
I look forward the watching the complete piece when you are ready. Keep it coming!! Thanks!!!
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Steve Pederson Thanks. It gets even more interesting in the "Capricho."
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Barney Thanks. As you can tell, I am a huge fan of Carlevaro's music. I have dedicated this year to focusing entirely on his music. He composed a wide and varied range of music from those that are in the folkloric tradition of the Rio de la Plata to contemporary pieces, influenced by such composers as Villa Lobos, Maurice Ohana and others. He also wrote three guitar concertos, a work for guitar and string quartet, and a piece for guitar and guitar quartet. Check out the Carlevaro online library which has all his compositions as well as most of the pieces he arranged and/or edited (Abel Carlevero Library: Abel Carlevaro Library (bibliotecaabelcarlevaro.blogspot.com).
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Dale Needles Bravissimo, Dale! We're a lucky audience by you choose to focus entirely on Carlevaro's music! I'm Looking forward to listening more on the Carlevaro Discussion Group Forum. Thanks!
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Moyses Lopes Thanks. Looking forward to your next post of Scherzino. For me, next up is Tamboriles.
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Dale Needles I appreciate you sharing this info with us, Dale! Thanks!
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Dale Needles I'm planning to record tomorrow. I had a small accident whit my thumb nail, but I had to fix it. I'll post something about broken nails too...
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Dale Needles Bravo Dale, I can't wait to hear the following Capricho! This is new to me, I knew he wrote it (I was aware of the title) but never had the chance to hear before. I'm with Moyses, we're lucky to have you doing this.
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Dale Needles I've also added the Carlevaro Library link to the resources.
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Blaise Laflamme Thanks. It is a wonderful and rarely performed piece. I love how he uses harmonic dissonance.
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Dale Needles That was beautiful, Dale! Your playing was so clean and effortless!
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Wai Thanks!
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End of the Year Challenge: Finish Strong!
