Week 3: Turning Points: Overcoming Hurdles 
End of the Year Challenge: "Finish Strong!" 
As the year comes to a close, it's the perfect time to look back on your guitar journey, celebrate your progress, and set the stage for a powerful finish! Whether you've been steadily refining a piece all year, revisiting past favorites, or holding onto that "one day" project, now’s the time to bring it to life. Let’s wrap up this year with a final push, together!
Challenge Theme: Complete, Conquer, and Celebrate!
Goal:
Choose one guitar piece or project that has been on your list this year. This might be a piece you’ve been working on in lessons, something you’ve always wanted to learn but never started, or a performance you’d like to polish. Dedicate the final weeks of the year to bringing it to completion—whatever "finished" means for you!
Challenge Options:
Complete a Piece: If you’ve been working on a piece throughout the year, let’s aim to bring it to the finish line. Focus on refining tricky sections, memorizing it, or even recording it as a performance!
Start & Finish a New Piece: Is there a piece that’s been sitting on your "someday" list? Dive in! Start fresh, put in dedicated practice time, and see how far you can get by the end of the year.
Polish for Performance: Got a piece you can already play but want to perfect? Use this time to iron out the details and maybe even perform it for friends, family, or the tonebase community!
Challenge Guidelines:
Set Your Goals: Decide on the piece or project and set a few concrete goals (e.g., "play smoothly at tempo," "record a full video," or "memorize all sections").
Share Your Journey: Post your progress, questions, and reflections with the community! Let us know what you're working on, why you chose it, and any hurdles you’re overcoming.
Celebrate the Wins: At the end of the challenge, share your "finished" version! Whether it’s a recording, a progress update, or simply sharing your reflections, let’s celebrate together.
Dates:
This challenge runs from now until December 30th. Finish the year with a sense of accomplishment and the motivation to take on new pieces in the coming year!
Why Join?
This isn’t just about completing a piece; it’s about proving to yourself what you can achieve with focus and support. Join us for a fun, collaborative way to end the year on a high note. 
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Schumann Winterzeit II op. 68.39 very rough first draft
This is my transcription of Winterzeit II, the companion piece to Winterzeit I from Schumann's 'Album fur die Jugend', with an assist from the Collection, Das Schumann Buch fur Gitarre.
This is proving to be much more difficult than I thought. After 2 weeks this is where I am at with this piece. I am having a lot of trouble with some of the chord shifts and transitions, of which there are several. I also seem to gradually (or maybe not gradually) disintegrate the further I go.
Hopefully I can can get a decent recording of this and Winterzeit I in the next couple of weeks. I'm leaving town in the middle of December for 3 weeks so I will have to be done by then.
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Jack Stewart This is truly remarkable, Jack! I am no arranger, but it strikes as a very effective arrangement. The emotional arc of the music comes through very clearly. Embarrassingly, I know nothing about the piece. Can you tell us something about it, and what has led you to arrange it for guitar?
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Eric Phillips Thanks Eric. I have a collection of transcriptions of Schumann for guitar (Das Schumann Buch fur Gitarre) that contains these 2 pieces. Winterzeit I was a pretty effective transcription. I made my own of the piece but only made a couple of very minor changes. However, the Winterzeit II had some odd omissions and alterations that seem to really dilute the impact of Schumann's music. That 's what prompted me to make my own arrangement. I feel trying to make arrangements gives me some insights into the music that I might not notice. I am still pretty cautious about just leaping into transcribing a piece on my own.
Schumann is a recent focus for me. As with Chopin, I am somewhat selective about what I like but I am discovering more all the time. As with most of the Romantics, I tend to be drawn to their shorter character pieces rather than the larger works such as sonatas (Beethoven excepted).
These pieces are at the end of his Album fur die Jugend op. 68. It is a graded collection of short pieces that start very simple and get more challenging as they progress. I think these are my favorite, though there are others that are also very nice.
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This year, I've learned a lot of Giuliani's music, and I'd like to end the year with another piece by Giuliani.
No.5 - Le Romarin, from Giuliani's "Flower Suite" (Thanks to Eric for sharing this beautiful suite with the community), is quite weird. The last four bars were particularly strange; they just didn't add up. Nevertheless, I played them as I felt appropriate and powered through, hoping it sounded coherent.
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Wai very beautiful, Wai. Your warm sound, the steady, strong pulse, and clear voicing make this miniature composition sound interesting. Thank you for sharing.
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Wai bravo Wai I never heard this piece before, well done
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Wai Love it! This piece has so much intensity and drama packed into a minute and a half. It's one of the highlights of my favorite opus by Giuliani. Great playing, with some clever fingering choices that I will have to check out in detail at some point.
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joosje Vilio Celli Thank you all. It's been a pleasure sharing music with you all in Tonebase!
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Eric Phillips Thank you, Eric! May I ask how you solved the mystery of the 2 bars I circled in red in the picture? I really don't know how to count the beat of the upper voice...
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Wai This is a really interesting piece for Giuliani. which you perform wonderfully, Wai.
I remember Eric's postings of pieces from this suite and really enjoyed them. They seem to have much more depth than what I am use to from Giuliani. You really bring out the depth of emotion in. this music. Great job!
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Wai I just listened to what you played, and that sounds right to me. In the first measure you circled, I think the G# and F are to be played together (simultaneously with the low E in the bass). The second measure you circled just seems like a printing error. The upper and lower voices are not aligned correctly, but I think you played it correctly in the video.
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Jack Stewart Thank you, Jack! Yes, I listened to Eric's performance before I started practicing this piece, without his sharing I would not have known this piece at all.
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Eric Phillips Thank you, Eric. I hope my version still makes sense, it's time to start practicing #6 and hopefully I'll be able to post it before the end of this challenge.
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Hello All I wanted to join this end of year challenge with a favourite of mine, John Dowland's The earl of Essex, his Galliard. I've been busy with my classical guitar ensemble in Vancouver BC
Canada. Hope everyone has a happy Holiday Cheers
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Vilio Celli Great job, Vilio. You have most of it under your fingers. Now the tricky part is stitching all of the different segments into a smoothly flowing piece. I am looking forward to seeing your progress.
I also really love this piece. I think it was on the first classical guitar album I ever bought - John Williams 'Virtuoso Variations'. I had just signed up for classical guitar lessons and stopped by a record store on the way home to get an album of classical guitar music so I would know what I just signed up for.
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Vilio Celli Lovely, Vilio! That seems to be quite a test of endurance.
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Vilio Celli very nice Vilio. Bravo. It's such lovely music. thank you for sharing it with us.
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Regondi Etude 1 (Dec 3)
Another update. I do pretty much have it memorized, but I kept the score in front of me as a bit of a security blanket. I did play the coda without the score, and naturally, I had a memory lapse (and in one of the most obvious spots). Sorry about my third string being a touch out of tune.
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Eric Phillips Your persistence and improvements are impressive. You are very close to mastering this really challenging piece. Bravo.
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Eric Phillips beautiful!
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Eric Phillips the thing is, its a bit difficult to keep the tension at the end, because of the many repetitive scales and V-I shifts. You could consider adding some more accelerando/stringendo/crescendo etc in these passages. Btw bravo for memorizing the whole piece. Its sounding great.
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