Week 2 - Practicing Passages // May 10
Hello and welcome to the Main Thread for Week 2 of the virtuosity challenge! 
This is the place to discuss the Week 2 stream and post your Week 2 practice updates.
- Make sure you've read the guidelines before replying (<- click)
- Watch the Week 2 livestream here for help with this week's exercises!
Download the sheet music: in this second week, we will be working with different excerpts from my right-hand technique workshop, as well as some new materials.
Download them both here:
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Right-hand exercise book (<- click)
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Download additional sheet music here (now with fingerings!)
Video updates are encouraged due to the technical aspect of this challenge 
Feel free to upload videos into your replies OR simply link to YouTube. YouTube video submissions CAN be unlisted. Just make sure they're not set on "private", so we can all see them.
If you want to describe your process, feel free to use the following template.
- Exercise(s) you have been working on:
- Things you found easy:
- Things you found difficult:
↓ Reply below with your submissions and questions! ↓
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Thank you Giuseppe! These are more challenging to get up to speed with good tone. I need to practice these more and correctly. Mircea gives good advice that helps.
I'm confident ( and have faith ) that you will do very well with it, as usual, and will watch for your posting.
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Barney Thank you, yes yes Mircea and Martin try to help us, the surgery was done last month, but the voice is still very low
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do you have the link for today?
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Hi everyone, as soon as I speed up I stiffen up to stop, I have a lot of work to do
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Giuseppe Gasparini bravo! Good job. We all need to practice to increase the tempo. But gradually. We can’t do miracles in just two weeks. Mircea should tell us again how he came to that miracle moment that it all came together.... and then, we’re not Mircea....
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Giuseppe Gasparini Bravo Giuseppe well played - I like the Brouwer 1 especially!
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Giuseppe Gasparini bravo!!! those hands look very good to me! and it is fast...
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joosje lets only imagine that moment .... that would be so cool...
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joosje Thanks, speed has always been my problem, now I do a daily job, with the advice of Mircea and Martin
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Derek thank's my friend
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Emma Thanks, but when I speed up, my left hand is shaking
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Giuseppe Gasparini looks and sounds good!
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Giuseppe Gasparini Incredible work here, Giuseppe! I am so proud to see you sound so well, and to see it being supported by such great right-hand technique, too! Just all around amazing.
Here is my targeted advice for your update:
- El Abejorro: great job! Sounding so well, such a beautiful tone, and you're doing the full right-hand preparation and a finger planting! One thing, your left hand seems to be shaking a bit, is that from pressure or is it a result of an unrelated medical reason?
- Asturias and Brouwer Etude 1: These are so good, I have literally nothing to say here! Wonderful.
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joosje Emma haha yes, that was a truly remarkable moment!
To be fair, getting better at playing the guitar is a bit of an ongoing series of "Eureka" moments, each taking us a little further than we were before.
That being said, some of these stick in our memory better than others, and that was a huge one that I'll probably never forget!
I certainly did lose that feeling many times following that "awakening", but it's always easier to get there again once you've already experienced it.
For me, becoming more technically agile almost has more to do with the amount of times we've learned and forgotten and relearned something, rather than with how well we got it to sound at one specific point in time.
After a while, you can just "get there" much faster than the first or second or third time!
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Mircea Thanks, for the tremor of the right hand, it is not a medical problem, but of tension when the effort is greater, I am looking for solutions
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david robinson Thanks
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Giuseppe Gasparini I see - that's good to know! I'll have to think about that and check with my peers and see if they have any ideas, I've never encountered that issue before, so I'm not sure what might be causing it.
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Mircea Thanks, I'm working on it and it seems to me that by relaxing the shoulder, not forcing with the right, the situation improves, but all advice is welcome
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Bravo Giuseppe!! Looks and sounds excellent. Keep up the great work!
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Barney Thanks,I work hard, but there are not always the results
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Excerpts from piece I submitted for wk three, using Mircea's suggested solutions.
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david robinson David that sounds nice - I really like how you play it
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Derek thank you
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david robinson beautiful slides, that scale that ends on the slide is so good! Beautiful piece and sounding well...
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Emma Thanks much!
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david robinson wonderful job! I also quite like the p,i solution you found for the scale at the end. I personally find it easier to create a really resonant scale with i,m rest stroke, but p,i also works if that feels more natural to you (especially on the lower strings of the guitar!)
Super tiny detail, but when you play the first 3 notes as a single slur (B - C - B), make sure you give as much love to the last B as you did to both other notes before it. It sounded just a little "swallowed up" in this case. But that's really just nitpicking in a passage that sounded great!
Happy to hear my suggestions being applied! Thank you for posting this!
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End of the Year Challenge: Finish Strong!
