Week 3: Gaining Momentum 
WELCOME TO THE "A FRESH START" COMMUNITY CHALLENGE!
Embark on a musical journey with our latest challenge, "A Fresh Start". It’s time to dust off that sheet music you’ve been eyeing and dive into a brand-new piece!
CHALLENGE TIMELINE
- Challenge Start: Kick-Off on April 15th!
- Duration: April 15th to May 13th
- Watch Party: Join us on May 13th at 11 AM PST to watch selected submissions!
WEEK 3 ACTIVITIES
- Practice Updates: Keep the momentum going! Share a video or write some comments about your practice sessions over the past week. Let's motivate each other by sharing our progress and challenges.
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Eternal Source of Light Divine - G.F.Handel
Hello everyone! I've been practicing pieces from last year's community challenge (Sor & Guiliani's version of Folia) and skipping the monthly challenges for the past few months.
However, after seeing that the theme of this month's challenge is "Fresh Start", I decided it was time for me to practice a new piece.
This time I chose a beautiful piece called "Eternal Source of Light Divine" by Handel. Since there is no guitar version, I have to arrange it myself. The vocal version of this piece is "out of this world" beautiful, but after arranging the first few bars, I realized that this song is not suitable for guitar at all! Anyway, I still wanted to play this song on guitar (because there is no way I can sing it myself, ha).The result was far from satisfying, but I still wanted to share this arrangement with you all.
Cheers! May the 4th Be With You~!
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Steve Price Thanks, Steve!
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Andre Bernier Thanks, Andre! I would love to share another version with you, it's beautiful!
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Jack Stewart Thanks, Jack! I think the campanella style might not be appropriate for this piece because the melodies are mostly stepwise. And my motto is "the simpler, the better," so let's not complicate things, ha!
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Wai Wow!! That is really beautiful, Wai. Ok, you really set the bar high for this transcription.
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Wai Very nice. Thanks for sharing
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Wai it’s beautiful, Wai. I love how you can make the guitar sing…
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joosje Thanks, jossje! I have found that transcribing vocal works is really the best way to learn trills on the guitar, and I hope that my playing really has that vocal quality.
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Hi everyone, first of, I'd like to appreciate the amazing recordings that you all have posted. I try to listen to every submission but don't always comment mainly because I don't have the expertise to say many insightful things, but all your recordings really are wonderful and I enjoy them all.
I recorded the Prelude in C minor by Barrios. I'm a complete dummy in recording, so apologies for the not so good quality and the messy room. Ever since I turned to classical guitar almost exactly a year back (my first anniversary with tonebase was on 30th April :), I've discovered so much great music, great teachers, great players in this community and my journey with all of you continues.
One composer has stood out for me, and that is Barrios. The poetry and often melancholic nature of his music has captivated me like no other. He is to me what Sor is to Eric, he he. Unfortunately, as sweet as his compositions are, many of them are insanely difficult to play, especially for someone like me who's still not well-versed in rhythm and musicality, apart from being technically not very skilled.
However, the temptation to play his music trumps over my technical deficiencies. One of the biggest obstacles in this piece for me are the barres. In isolation, the barres wouldn't be so difficult, but they're all one after another. there isn't much scope for relaxation or breathing space. I missed so many notes, there are string buzzes and squeaks.
Practising this piece has stretched my limits on my left hand. The stretches and extended barres create so much tension throughout the body that I run out of energy and strength towards the end. Anyways, hope you'll listen to this and give me some advice (especially on barres in certain measures). Has anyone of you played this piece? I'd love to watch or hear how you did it. Finally, I'll try to post another attempt at it, perhaps next week.
Thanks.
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Nijwm Bwiswmuthiary very nice, Nijwm. It’s a lovely and easy sounding prelude, but not so easy to play. Your version sounds very nice and smooth. Well done.
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Nijwm Bwiswmuthiary Well done, Nijwm. This is indeed a difficult piece technically and musically but well within your reach. Keep working on it and you will master it soon.
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Nijwm Bwiswmuthiary Great playing, Nijwm! Me too, I have been a member of Tonebase for quite some time, but have not left many comments lately, because I am not a naive speaker, and writing comments in English was like doing homework at school, which took more and more time. Anyway, it is great to see more and more people sharing music here, which is the best thing about Tonebase. Cheers!
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Wai Thank you Wai, very generous of you. Where are you from, if I may ask? I'm from a place called Bodoland in the northeast part of India and I'm not a native speaker of English either although I did my schooling with English as medium of instruction. BTW, your English looks perfect to me, and so does your guitar skills. So please keep playing, posting and commenting. Cheers.
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Nijwm Bwiswmuthiary Excellent, Nijwm! You say you're not advanced, but your hands are doing some very advanced things here. Barrios has some pieces that are easier than others, but nothing by him could ever be considered easy.
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Eric Phillips Thank you Eric. Well I use to strum a few chords every now and then in my 20s. But I picked up the classical guitar just last year. I'm still kind of not sure about my technical level and this piece really stretched my technical limits. I'm also not very well-versed in the finer and more sophisticated (at least for me) aspects like rhytm, music theory, musicality etc. But thanks to TB and its beautiful members, I should improve with time.
Regarding Barrios, yeah, such beautiful music but deceptively hard to play. Unfortunately for me,
I'm in love with his music and want to learn them all. -
Nijwm Bwiswmuthiary You are doing really great with this piece, Nijwm. It seems to me this is well within your grasp. I hope you are able to post another video, I would love to see your progress. You definitely should keep going on this, you have such a good grasp of it already.
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Jack Stewart Thank you Jack. Your words are really encouraging me to work on this piece. I'm still working on solving the technical and musical challenges of this piece. The fingerings are really nasty (no offence Barrios
) and I made at least one radical change of fingering. I've discovered that fingerings can sometimes be surprisingly flexible/adaptable/personalized depending on one's fingers, technique, technical level, and experimentation. I'll try to post a better version in a week or so before the deadline.
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joosje Andre Bernier Thank you. I almost felt like giving up trying to play it because of the LH challenges, wondering if it's beyond my technical level. Still lots of mistakes and not been able to play through the entire piece without mistakes. Hopefully, I'll overcome the challenges and do a half decent job.
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This piece was in my pile of music for many years. I would look at it and say one day. I heard Marco Tomayo play this on youtube and fell in love with the music. I applied a lot of new tools to learn this piece, many taught by Molly Gebrian on how the brain works. I did manage to memorize much of this piece, I felt it worthy of memorization. Here is my rendition of the entire piece with a few clams here and there, I hope to get one more recording before May 16th, but I have a lot going on the next two weeks.
Constructive criticism always welcome.
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Michael Shirk Great work, Michael! What an accomplishment to have it all in your hands.
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Michael Shirk
Beautifully played. I'm really curious about Molly Gebrien. I gather she's a neuroscientist. Would be curious to know her thoughts. -
Nijwm Bwiswmuthiary Thank you, yes she has a background in cognitive neuroscience and a professional violinist. I found her techniques on practice insightful.
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Michael Shirk Interesting. I'll definitely explore her views.
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Michael Shirk Really nice, Michael. You have a great grasp of all of this piece. I hope to hear more. This is a very haunting work and you bring that out very effectively.
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Michael Shirk you managed very well the progress on this work Michael! There are many ways to memorize a piece and it's so nice to be free from the music score when you play!
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Michael Shirk Bravo a great performance
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End of the Year Challenge: Finish Strong!
