Community challenge ideas.
The first community challenge having been such a success, I though it might be useful to have a thread where proposals for future challenges could be shared and discussed. I'll begin with my own. The general idea is as follows: choose a piece that meets certain predetermined parameters and try to learn (and optionally record) it within a defined period (possibly two weeks, but perhaps longer would be better). Listening party for all at the end. The parameters could either be narrow (i.e. 'a study from Sor's op.35;' 'a Caprice from Legnani's op.20'; 'a piece from Mertz's Bardenklange') or broad (i.e. 'a piece in waltz form'; a piece originally composed for the Vihuela; 'a piece that is an arrangement of a song or vocal work'). The possibilities are endless. The idea is to choose parameters that allow participants to learn something appropriate to their own level, whatever that might be. The parameters could be chosen collectively (i.e. by poll) or independently by the Tonebase artists/teachers/presenters (i.e. Martin and Mircea). The challenge could also be run so as to complement a particular workshop: for example, a presentation on R.H. alternation might be accompanied by a challenge to learn a study that develops that aspect of technique.
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I like those ideas. Another thought would be to take a longer piece like the chaconne by Bach or Asturias by Albeniz and break it down into small manageable sections. ie. the challenge today is to record mm. 40-48 of the chaconne etc.
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Mircea looking forward to the next challenge!!!!
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Great idea for a thread and for a proposal David Krupka , I think if we brainstorm the parameters we could use here we could get even get a good few challenges out of this. Some points in reference to what you said that I like:
- One thing I liked about the last challenge was discovering new repertoire, I wonder if someone, maybe Martin or Mircea, could recommend a relatively unknown composer or collection of works, Francesco Da Milano springs to mind as random example;
- I like the workshop complementation, it could also be done over a series of workshops to discuss what we've been doing each time;
- As parameters we could take any workshop or Tonebase video and select a few pieces around that, be it a composer, technique etc.
- I like David Chidsey 's idea too of breaking a piece up into manageable chunks - it's a focussed approach that I'd like to build better into my practice.
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- Roni Glaser I love Francesco da Milano! Brandon Acker features one of his pieces in his most recent lesson for tonebase. Indeed, I was thinking of recording something by Francesco as a sort of 'video response' to that lesson, although I'm not sure where to post it. (There doesn't seem to be any obvious way to comment on tone base lessons.) Maybe I'll just create a new thread. I too like David Chidsey 's idea, although I'm not sure I'm ready for the Chaconne. (Actually, I'm certain I'm not ready!) But something a little (no, a lot) easier that naturally falls into sections would be great. Perhaps a theme with variations or a piece like Weiss's D major Passacaglia. Asturias, as David suggests, could also be broken into discrete pieces, although gluing those particular bits together is a considerable challenge!
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David Krupka Yes, da Milano does indeed have some gems of pieces!
Good idea with the posting too!
Mircea I reckon it would be a great if tonebase Team could create a button for each video that we could click on that would go straight to a community page where the members discuss the video and/or post their own videos with performances of the pieces???
Integrationtastic!
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I have one idea, but it might take some thinking and organisation to work - namely to organise duets/ensemble playing.
Some points:
- Live or recorded?
- If live, we could learn our parts beforehand and then perform the piece during a workshop, so, the workshop could be organised on a video conferencing platform and each duo/trio could go off into "rooms", and the return and perform it.
- If recorded, one person would record themselves playing first, then the other(s) would add their part. This would probably affect the choice of piece to play in terms of synchronisation if we don't use a click track.
- Audio or video:
- easier if audio, something like the free sound editing program Audacity would be sufficient;
- if video, some video program would be necessary, but iMovie or Windows Movie Maker should be OK (not sure though);
- someone would need to do the editing, which might be a hassle.
- Audio or video:
As for pieces, I was thinking of the 24 Preludes and Fugues by Tedesco, but they're not in the public domain, so that might be a bit tricky. But there might be something similar we could do. Bach's Two-Part Inventions maybe?
Well, something to think about.
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Roni Glaser Interesting idea, Roni. Perhaps everyone could be organized into something like a 'Tonebase virtual guitar orchestra'. (In truth, I'm not a fan of guitar orchestras, but it might be fun to try nonetheless.) Or maybe we could aim for something along the lines of the 'Playing for Change' videos (https://www.youtube.com/c/playingchange/featured) with people participating from all over the world. We even have our own roster of 'stars' to recruit from!
- Live or recorded?
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Hi everyone! Thank you SO much for starting this thread, David Krupka , and to everyone who has been contributing to it! Sorry it took me so long to answer - I took a couple of days off for the whole marriage thing (
) and then there were all the holidays that we're still in the middle of. First of all, let me just say how much I enjoyed reading through your suggestions! I am going to reach out to some of you individually via email to ask you a couple of questions about your experience of the community challenge, and one of the things I was going to ask about is whether you have any suggestions for future challenges - having this thread here already answering that is so incredibly valuable! Thank you all!
Let's go through your comments one by one!
David Krupka : This is great! This is exactly what we have in mind for future "advanced" challenges. I am thinking about launching one of these in mid-January, possibly relating it to one of our upcoming live lessons. I already have many pieces in mind (great call with Sor and Legnani, those were also already on my mind!). Do you or does anyone else reading this have any other suggestions of pieces you might want to tackle?
Roni Glaser : Great ideas as always! Unfortunately, there is currently no viable way for people to reliably play chamber music together via video chat. There are some options, like JackRabbit and LoLa, but these are very difficult to set up (in the case of the former) or require infrastructure that is not available for consumers (in the case of LoLa). Playing music through live video chat is so difficult that even the distance starts to matter because of the speed of light.
Recordings are easier to set up, but as you know, playing to a click track is quite a different experience than playing real-life chamber music. For the first few challenges, we are probably going to stay away from chamber music because of the difficulties associated with it. I like the "Playing for Change" idea that David Krupka suggested though
If we were to do a challenge along these lines at some point, we would probably insource the editing to me or one of the tonebase team members, rather than leaving it up to the participants themselves. David Chidsey I love the idea of breaking a piece up into chunks, too! I would like to experiment with this for one of our upcoming challenges, in January or February. It would definitely have to be something less difficult than the Chaconne (preferably something written directly for the guitar, so that there is a widespread "standard" version available.) Again, do you or anyone else reading have any suggestions about pieces we might want to look at? I'll be thinking along those lines too.
Roni Glaser : That function you mention is currently only available on livestreams, being fulfilled not by a button but by the link to the dedicated forum thread for every live event. In the future though, I am already in touch with the product and design team who will be hard at work investigating possible progress on two fronts: a) whether we can embed the dedicated threads already on the live page itself, rather than having to redirect users to the forums here; and b) whether we can implement a similar strategy for the lessons, rather than only the livestreams. It would be amazing if those two things were possible! That being said, I can't make any promises yet.
Here are some "fresh" updates from inside (coming straight to you as some of our most dedicated participants
): - we are planning to run 4 community challenges over the first 2 months of 2021
- the idea is to run 2 advanced challenges, like Gulli's challenge, and 2 beginner challenges.
- the beginner challenges would be open to anyone, but particularly useful for people who would not have been interested in taking part in the Gulli challenge because of the high level required to learn altogether new music
- not all challenges will be as long or involved as the Gulli challenge; they will most likely not all be daily challenges, and some might overlap in time
- some of these will be technique challenges that only involve exercises rather than recordings of actual pieces or excerpts.
I'm extremely interested in finding out your thoughts about all these and looking forward to keep reading your ideas in this thread and otherwise!
End of the Year Challenge: Finish Strong!
