Week 2 - Into the Dojo 🥋
Hello tonebuddies! 🎶
A long time ago, in a practice room far, far away... you picked up a piece. You were excited. You cracked it open, worked through the first page, maybe the second — and then something happened. Life struck back. A new piece caught your eye. The fingering felt impossible. The score quietly migrated to the bottom of a stack where it's been sitting ever since. 🎸
This May, we're bringing back the Unfinished Business Challenge — and we're kicking things off on May the 4th, because what better day to summon the Force and finally finish what you started? Every guitarist has an abandoned piece (or three). This is your chance to rescue one from the Sarlacc pit of your music folder and bring it home.
This challenge is open to all levels. Whether you left off at bar 8 or bar 80, whether it's a Bach fugue or a beginner study that got away — if there's a piece waiting for its return, it belongs here.
🌟 The Challenge
Revisit a composition you started but never finished — and this time, see it through. It might be:
- 🎯 A piece you abandoned because it felt too hard
- 🎯 Something you got halfway through before a new obsession took over
- 🎯 A passage or section you never quite nailed
- 🎯 A piece you learned years ago but never polished or performed
Share the story of why it got left behind and what it means to finally complete it. That's half the magic of this challenge.
📅 Challenge Dates
Start: May 4
End: June 12
Watch Party: June 12
🎥 How to Participate
- Pick your piece – Choose the piece (or section) that's been haunting you. The one you've been avoiding. That's the one.
- Share your goal – Post in the forum thread and tell us what you're finishing and why it got abandoned in the first place.
- Post your progress – Share updates along the way — rough takes, slow-tempo run-throughs, the gnarly passage you finally cracked.
- Engage with your fellow rebels – Cheer each other on, leave constructive feedback, and celebrate every piece that makes it across the finish line.
Bonus points: Share a recording of your favorite performance of the piece you're revisiting — the version that first made you fall in love with it.
🎬 Watch Party — June 12
The Watch Party on June 12 will feature recorded submissions from everyone who completed their Unfinished Business. Make sure to submit your final performance videos so we can celebrate your finished piece together! 🎉
💡 Need a Little Help from a Jedi Master?
If the reason you left the piece unfinished is still giving you trouble, tonebase is full of lessons, masterclasses, and courses from world-class guitarists ready to help you through the tricky parts. Search for the piece, the composer, or the technique — chances are, there's a Master ready to help.
May the 4th be with you, tonebuddies. Let's finish what we started. 🎸⚔️
190 replies
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La Catedral (Preludio Saudade)- Agustin Barrios
Hi everyone, my second take on this piece. I'm fairly satisfied with this, although there's still lots of room for improvement. I'd like a bit more rubato in the phrasing, especially towards the middle sections and be more comfortable with some awkward shifts.
Apologies for the poor video quality. My external camera failed to record for some reason. Fortunately, the laptop webcam did and hence, the grainy video.
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Thank you Nijwm - yes I posted in the etude challenge (Sicilian Etude by Tatiana Stachak). I was hoping to finish the prelude from Pasaje Abierto for this challenge but I'm going to be away for the next week with no guitar 😬 and then I have an op scheduled - - nothing major, but long recovery time unfortunately! I did record the first few bars of the prelude for my coach a few weeks back just to give you a taster!
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Great progress and smooth performnce. Bravo
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This is very good Nijwm! 💪 If you permit me a suggestion, there is one thing that feel a bit strange to me in the articulation, I don't know if it's intentional but I really feel that the melody changes on the upbeat and that the bass is played on the beat 🤔
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Great start on this Prelude Ron, this is not an easy piece!
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Well done Nijwm. I enjoyed that very much.
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Thank you, Blaise. I'm not sure if I fully understood your suggestion. I learn mostly by listening to other players and watching TB lessons and I don't have much knowledge of harmony and chord progression.
It wasn't intentional, but generally what I tried to do was bring out the melody and play the bass notes softly, especially the the open B. I might have accented the bass notes too much, especially towards the middle section?
If you could clarify a bit more, perhaps through a video suggestion, that would be great. Thanks for your suggestion.🙏🙂
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Beautiful prelude, Ron and it sounded beautiful! Best wishes for your op and and speedy recovery.
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Thank you, Andre!
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Thank you!
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Thank you!
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Thank you Blaise. Most of it is fitting under my fingers but I still have a few bars which I’m finding tricky
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Thank you Nijwm and for your encouragement to post! 😂
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Listening to others can be part of the answer, mainly if you forged your musical reference based on a version that does this (even before you start learning it). In fact you're doing very well in all aspects, you're playing it beautifully, what I outlined is about the pulse, at some point it feels like the first beat is the bass as if it's the beginning of the mesure and the melody starts at the upbeat before it. I would suggest you to practice with a metronome with a click at the eighth note (that would give you four clicks with the melody on the first and fourth click) to ensure you feel it right (at least to remove any ambiguity), I suspect the ritenuto on the first note (with too much emphasis) can lead to such pulse shift without realizing it.
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Thank you for taking the time and the suggestions, Blaise🙏 I'll work on your suggestions. Rhythm isn't my forte, especially since I'm a relative newbie to classical music with all these nuances about how to fit the accompaniment with the melody apart from so many other myriad things one needs to take care of, something that I need to work on more.
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haha. So is my 13 year old son. He refuses to get a haircut despite a diktat from his school 🙂. Hopefully, he can be an accomplished person in whatever he chooses to do and keep his hair.
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But in this case I suspect that unconsciously you follow, or imitate, this version you have in mind. A long time ago, when I worked on a certain piece, I was surprised to realize that a certain passage that had become well impregnated in me by listening, did not have the accents in the right place, and my reference was John Williams! 😅
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I like your son already! (My own hair tends to get a bit overgrown from time to time as well ...) But remind him that in life, one has to choose one's battles. Not every hill is worth dying upon! Better to conform now and appease the educators, no matter how unreasonable their demands might appear. In a few years, when he gets to university, no one will tell him how present himself. And he will discover more important principles to fight for!
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That's a great story, Blaise. At the end of the day, I'm an amateur musician trying to play music and make it sound as half/quarter as good as the pros. Perhaps I'm just good at copying right now, I need to be good at stealing as the saying goes, "good artists copy; great artists steal"🙂
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You know what, David! I'll screenshot this comment, show it to him and perhaps frame it on his wall (if he agrees!). As for me, those are some wise parenting advice, so thanks for that.
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I don't think you're trying to play music, you actually do play music, beautifully, but the thing is even a pro is sometimes caught in technical patterns! 😅 I would say good artists find their voice and express themselves through their art!
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Yeah, that's a nice way to put it. I'm always envious of 'artists', like 'how the hell did they come up with this piece of music or sculpture or painting'? As a child and as a teenager, I often dreamed of becoming a Bollywood star, or a singer or a rockstar😃 Things didn't pan out that way because of various reasons, but I'm here doing what I love.
Anyways, enough about me, what are you submitting for this challenge, Blaise? I'm looking forward to something spectacular as always!
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I'm very happy you're here with us Nijwm!! I'm working on a few pieces I want to elevate enough to produce as video, but I'm not sure which one will fit in this timeframe. There's at least one I very hope will be ready by the end of the challenge, we'll see how things are going!
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Thank you Blaise, I love this community. I can't wait to hear your piece!!
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i repeat the others: beautiful! It sounds very good and relaxed. So the rubato will work, although in this piece you shouldn’t overdo it IMHO
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Gubaidulina May Day #5 of Musical Toys
I made this transcription of May Day, #5 from Sofia Gubaidulina's Musical toys. for the Women Composers Challenge last year. I am reviving, and hopefully, improving my previous posting of this short piano piece. Aside from the stumbles and rather clunky opening section, I think this take shows promise. Hopefully by next week or so I can have a cleaner version.