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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Hi everybody!
Exercise(s) you have been working on: 6A, 6B, 7A, 7B, 8C, 9B
Things you found easy: Short pieces, not boring. I play more comfortably when placing a on 1.
Things you found difficult: I never played these pieces before. Handling my pinky again in Asturias. My tempo is slow.Here is my video, enjoy:
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Gokce Turkmendag Beautiful!!! you look very relaxed and the sound is beautiful. Good job!!
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Emma thanks for your nice comments!
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Gokce Turkmendag well played Gokce
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Gokce Turkmendag These are great! Thank you so much for posting them. Here is some targeted advice:
- El Abejorro: great!
- Villa-Lobos Etude 7: This is sounding great too - as an exercise though, try to also play it as legato as possible! Certain teachers might disagree here, but I've found that staccato practice is not very helpful for rest stroke scales, since it teaches your hand to "split" the movement into first getting to the string and then playing the note. Generally, it's harder to keep things legato at high speeds, and therefore, I am of the opinion that we should practice as legato as possible.
- Clerch: Was that rest stroke or were you playing it as free stroke? It really sounding like free stroke to me.
- Brouwer etudes 1 & 7: Really nice work!
- Asturias: Great job! Are you alternating pi with pm? That works, I'm just curious if I'm seeing it correctly.
Great job overall and thanks for uploading it here!
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Mircea thanks for your comments.
Mircea said:
Clerch: Was that rest stroke or were you playing it as free stroke? It really sounding like free stroke to me.I thought that it should be played free stroke and I practiced and recorded it wrong. I understood my mistake after watching other's recordings. Normally I can't play rest stroke at that speed.
Mircea said:
Asturias: Great job! Are you alternating pi with pm? That works, I'm just curious if I'm seeing it correctly.Yes, I played it with pm pi. It felt more comfortable.
See you tonight!
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Hi all !
like Emma said, I look terrible serious and angry playing.....it is as it is...
Now exercises : El abejorro, where I thought I was planting but I am not sure...I still have a lot of problems with planting, my hand gains tension by planting (like for a chord) and this is not gut for arpegios: However I begin to feel it and to realize the benefits. I have to continue practicing it.
7A: I play it several times , memory issues ! sorry for that.
Asturias: I have already played it like Mircea suggests.
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Nora Torres-Nagel Brava!!
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Nora Torres-Nagel great job Nora, keep on!
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Giuseppe Gasparini Gracias Giuseppe!
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Gokce Turkmendag thanks Gokce!
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Nora Torres-Nagel brava! Muy bien.... You have a great sound. Good recording too.
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Nora Torres-Nagel Nora you look so much more jolly than me playing the guitar jaja. Great job, You did so so well, el abejorro and asturias spot on. Congratulations!!!!
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Nora Torres-Nagel well done Nora.
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Nora Torres-Nagel You did a great job, Nora!!! Thanks for uploading this and thanks for spending so much time practicing these! I can see you've been working on them and the results speak for themselves. Let's jump into some targeted advice!
- Abejorro: you were actually not doing preparation, nor were you planting the a finger on the 1st string. But that's okay - it's sounding great! Preparation is but one tool in our arsenal, and if playing it without works for you in this piece, no change is necessary.
- Villa-Lobos: the first E (first note in the scale) can be an open string! It's only the 2nd E that I was indicating you should play on the second string here. The accidentals can be indeed quite confusing - good job on getting them right in most of the last couple of runs.
- Asturias: interesting to see you doing double planting on the first string! Never encountered this before in this piece. It works, though it does tend to make your hand a bit more perpendicular to the string. That has as a result a very direct and fast attack, but not that super creamy sound coming from a more parallel position. Like I said though - here too, it works! No need to change things.
Thanks for these and hope you keep on practicing them!
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Not much time again this week, although I have worked a bit on El Abejorro. I changed the fingering a little, using 1 instead of 2 on the G in measure 4 as it helps with the legato line in the bass.
Having listened to some recordings I'm not sure I could ever play this anyway near vivace!
Slow speed is fine, but as I increase the tempo my left forearm becomes tense. I'm using Micrea's suggestion of "3 places forward then 1 or 2 places back" on the metronome, which definitely helps, but I know it's going to time and patience!
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Ron I am going to try that too...
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Emma Yes it's a good strategy. Not sure if you've been playing El Abejorro, but I realised this morning that I had been using p,i,m,i as shown in Ex 6A, but I tried p,i,a,i (shown as an option on the longer extract) which I found much easier and with less tension
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Ron Great to hear, Ron! Happy to know that the metronome tips have been helpful!
Yes, I personally used to play it El Abejorro as p,i,a,i for a very long time! You can't plant the a finger on the top string anymore, but it felt more agile at the time. Now that I've practiced p,i,m,i for a lot of other passages, it feels marginally easier - but they are both valid options.
One other school of thought, that for example my professor Scott Tennant adheres to, is that we can break this arpeggio into an ascending and a descending motion - basically instead of thinking of it as a 4-note pattern, to think of it as two different alternating 2-note patterns.
If we do that, then a fingering like p,i,a,m can become the most agile. Try it out and see what it feels like! I use this fingering in parts of the Paganini Capriccio 5, for example (not in the excerpt featured in the exercise book though.)
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Mircea Thank you Mircea. I think agility is definitely the key! I've tried the p-i-a-m option and I like it. I've tried it with planting p-i-a and then sequentially m. Is that what Scott is suggesting or is it just plant p-i then m-a?
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Not had chance to post a video of these pieces but I've been practicing them all every day (except for the Paganini excerpt which I actually downloaded today and had a go at). Been a busy week and I can't believe it is Sunday already. I'll try to do a video of some of these extracts in the morning but I usually do my practice first thing in the morning before breakfast so it's not a pretty sight!
Things I found easy - The Albeniz extract (I'm sure the piece gets harder after these opening few bars!) also probably the Brouwer pieces - after Juan Carlos' workshop I've been practising numbers 1 to 4 on a daily basis (just running through each one a couple of times). The number 7 extract I found hard to get to speed but after a lot of attempts it's not too bad. I had a look at the whole piece this morning. Also the Pujol exercise which I enjoy a lot although I've just downloaded the extra bit and I'm struggling a bit with that when played faster.
Things I found hard - The Clerch scale extract - not bad to play slowly but I struggle with the a finger onwards when trying to play fast.
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Derek happy to hear you've been working on these, Derek! Let me know if you need my help on anything else related to this, even after the challenge is officially "over".
(This goes for everyone else too, btw!)
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Hi everyone! I m back with my 2nd posting of this week! the apoyando part: 7A and 7B (Villa Lobos 7 and Clerch). very short video, just 1 take, several repetitions in different tempi, no editing.
easy: memorizing
difficult: keeping relaxed feeling up tempo. Pinky (R side of R hand) still tensing up a bit.
I kept watching my R hand while recording, driving me crazy...
Now started working on the Paganini: great fun with the chords but struggling with the slur section at the end...
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joosje well done Joosje! I also have a pinky problem and I cannot still control it yet. Mircea gave me some tips about that problem, at my Week 1 video comments. Good luck with Paganini BTW, I still don't have courage to start it.
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joosje sounding very good as always. I will start too with the paganini exercise...
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joosje very good Joosje. I think you have a very secure technique
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