Week 3 - The Empire Strikes Back ⚔️
Hello tonebuddies! 🎶
A long time ago, in a practice room far, far away... you picked up a piece. You were excited. You cracked it open, worked through the first page, maybe the second — and then something happened. Life struck back. A new piece caught your eye. The fingering felt impossible. The score quietly migrated to the bottom of a stack where it's been sitting ever since. 🎸
This May, we're bringing back the Unfinished Business Challenge — and we're kicking things off on May the 4th, because what better day to summon the Force and finally finish what you started? Every guitarist has an abandoned piece (or three). This is your chance to rescue one from the Sarlacc pit of your music folder and bring it home.
This challenge is open to all levels. Whether you left off at bar 8 or bar 80, whether it's a Bach fugue or a beginner study that got away — if there's a piece waiting for its return, it belongs here.
🌟 The Challenge
Revisit a composition you started but never finished — and this time, see it through. It might be:
- 🎯 A piece you abandoned because it felt too hard
- 🎯 Something you got halfway through before a new obsession took over
- 🎯 A passage or section you never quite nailed
- 🎯 A piece you learned years ago but never polished or performed
Share the story of why it got left behind and what it means to finally complete it. That's half the magic of this challenge.
📅 Challenge Dates
Start: May 4
End: June 12
Watch Party: June 12
🎥 How to Participate
- Pick your piece – Choose the piece (or section) that's been haunting you. The one you've been avoiding. That's the one.
- Share your goal – Post in the forum thread and tell us what you're finishing and why it got abandoned in the first place.
- Post your progress – Share updates along the way — rough takes, slow-tempo run-throughs, the gnarly passage you finally cracked.
- Engage with your fellow rebels – Cheer each other on, leave constructive feedback, and celebrate every piece that makes it across the finish line.
Bonus points: Share a recording of your favorite performance of the piece you're revisiting — the version that first made you fall in love with it.
🎬 Watch Party — June 12
The Watch Party on June 12 will feature recorded submissions from everyone who completed their Unfinished Business. Make sure to submit your final performance videos so we can celebrate your finished piece together! 🎉
💡 Need a Little Help from a Jedi Master?
If the reason you left the piece unfinished is still giving you trouble, tonebase is full of lessons, masterclasses, and courses from world-class guitarists ready to help you through the tricky parts. Search for the piece, the composer, or the technique — chances are, there's a Master ready to help.
May the 4th be with you, tonebuddies. Let's finish what we started. 🎸⚔️
125 replies
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Bogdanovic Monk-A-Ning initial rough draft
This is another revival that has been dormant for about a year.Istarted work on this about the same time I started on the Gubidulina, which had priority until this week. I am surprised that this has come back to this level so soon. It still needs a lot of work but I have it memorized and mostly under my fingers. The ascending chromatic phrase is very much a challenge as is most of the middle section.
This is from a collection called Unknown Standards v. 1 by Dusan Bogdanovic. It is a collection of quasi jazz pieces in the styles (or at least referencing) of various jazz composers. This piece is very loosely modeled (or at least named) after Thelonious Monk's Rhythm-A-Ning.
It is challenging but a lot of fun to play, (when I can).
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As part of this challenge I rolled two old pieces back into my practice schedule and will work on them till the close of this challenge. I put them on the shelf for lack of a better reason then I just go bored playing them. I'd like to get them to where I can make a somewhat decent recording of them. I'll use this challenge to push me.
Here is the second of the two pieces "Tiento Antiguo" by Joaquin Rodrigo, this one presents some challenges for sure, the Cadenza clearly needs some work in execution, to many hesitations or memory slips and some other note worthy clams. Also maybe to much reverb. lol
I'm always open to constructive critique, anything that I can improve to make it better is always welcome.