Week 1: Setting Sails!
Welcome to the Main Thread for the first week of the "Music YOU Love" practice challenge!
↓ Happy Sharing! ↓
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After rummaging around in a few places, I have decided that the main piece I want to work on for this challenge is Elegy for a King by Frederic Hand. He is an American guitar composer, and he wrote this piece in 1971 as a tribute to the great American civil rights leader, Martin Luther King Jr., who was assassinated in 1968. It's a pretty challenging piece, so I hope my hands are up to the task.
Because of my nature, I will also periodically try to post some smaller pieces from around the world during the challenge. To start it off, here is a video I made of the only other piece I have played by Frederic Hand. It is called Desert Sketch, and it is one of a series of pieces he wrote that was inspired by a trip to the desert of southern Utah (one of the western U.S. states). When I made it, I opted to use some desert images in the video rather than show myself playing. As such, I am certain you will find it more visually pleasing than my other videos. It does, however, have my "dry" sense of humor.
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Hand - Elegy for a King measures 1-20 (Mar 6)
Here is my first attempt at this piece. I am playing the A section in D minor. (After this, there is a B section in D major, and then it returns to an altered A section in D minor, with a short coda).
The part I struggle with the most by far is the last bit, from measures 13-20 (see the picture below). It has these rather large stretches together with full barres that I find nearly impossible (especially measure 16, which is the first measure of the second system in the picture). I also don't feel comfortable with the giant "arpeggio grace notes" in measures 17-18.