Week 1: A New Hope

Dominic_Cheli
2 wk ago
334replies

Starting on May 4th...

Welcome to the Unfinished Business Challenge — and the beginning of our four-week musical adventure!

Every great journey starts with a first step (and some hope!) This week is about choosing your piece: something you’ve always wanted to learn, something you started and left behind, or something unfinished that keeps calling you back.

This Week’s Mission

Choose one piece (or excerpt) to stay with throughout the challenge.

A few ideas:

A piece you’ve always meant to finish
Something abandoned years ago that deserves a second life
A new piece you’ve been waiting for the right moment to begin
A small excerpt from a larger dream piece

Big or small, all choices are welcome. What matters is that it feels like your unfinished business.

This Week, Share:

What piece did you choose?
Why this piece?
Is there a musical challenge or goal you hope to work through this month?

If you’d like, post a recording of where you’re starting from — even a rough first read. We’d love to hear it.

Over the next four weeks we’ll build momentum together!

- hot4euterpe
- 4 days ago
- Reported - view
I'm assuming that week 2 has yet to open for everyone else as well? Just checking as I no longer get any email notifications for anything, even the threads I am following. I do not see anything on the community forums yet though.
- Mom, fitness instructor, lover of music
  
  Michelle_Russell
  
  4 days ago
  
  Reported - view
  I haven't seen anything yet either.
- cdales
  
  4 days ago
  
  Reported - view
  As I didn’t get around to posting in Week 1, I was wondering too, but haven’t seen anything yet.
- Pediatrician
  
  a_weymann
  
  4 days ago
  
  Reported - view
  yup, same here. I checked very frequently today - nothing. Of course, Dominic is on the West Coast where it’s still in the early evening hours.
- cdales
- 3 days ago
- Reported - view
Link to Week 2!

https://piano-community.tonebase.co/t/35ygj6t/week-2-first-steps
- Peter_William
- 2 days ago
- Reported - view
Wow just saw this.. I have lots of unfinished music business. Pieces I had no business to attempt at all (lol!) . Now after nearly 2 years of the project - I tried to play it for a music knowledgeable person from TB and got a rather tepid response ' you need to improve a lot !!' comment. lol!.. which is most likely absolutely and objectively correct. So I will just do 1 take of the first 3 pages and post it here to be dissected.. Will try to get the iphone going this evening. The surprising part is my piano Tuner ( who has a BA in music ) saw me struggle with the first few lines a year ago and then when he came back a year later I asked him and he said 'oh my look at you .. now you are getting to page 4 without much trouble' . I told him he was going to be my tuner no matter what he said about my playing- which I have no delusions about ! - we both laughed our guts out and he left.
- Peter_William
- Yesterday
- Reported - view
well here is a beginner's struggle.. just posted .. work in progress for maybe 5 years from now alas !..

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zlfUVUoVHCw
- hot4euterpe
  
  Yesterday
  
  Reported - view
  Hi Peter - thank you for sharing your progress on this great work. I know this concerto quite well; it was the first concerto I ever learned and performed =) I can hear a sparkle and gliding quality emerge at times which really suits the piece well. You also have a certain energy that conveys how much you enjoy this piece. I am curious what drew you to this concerto in particular?
  
  Since you used the word struggle, I just want to say that if you ever have any questions about this work, I am happy to help if I can. I am sure others will too!
  
  Thank you again for sharing - I know it is not easy to put ourselves out there!
- Peter_William
  
  23 hrs ago
  
  Reported - view
  Thank you Maestro!! for the words of encouragement!. This is what I absolutely love about ToneBase - that there is a space for all levels - rank beginners ( like myself ) to fairly advanced players. I have seen your video above and cannot even dream of playing like that ! :-).
  
  To your question about what drew me to this concerto? At the time I was watching a lot of YT videos of the great masters and came across Vladimir Ashkenazy conducting and playing this concerto in a small setting. Heard the second movement and really liked it a lot. My musical level is rather low ( no real training ) so went to IMSLP and got the score. Then I heard Eschenbach's version ( liked that a lot as well ) and found Murray Perahia's version. This wonderful version somehow resonated a lot with me and so used the YT version ( slowed the tempo to about 80 .. and started to follow Perahia's playing with the score - little by little - until I could hear it exactly on the beat ) The journey started about 2.5 years ago so as you can easily tell the playing sounds like a struggle even to me :-).. But I have set this as a learning piece and am deriving lots of little nuggets from playing sectionseveryday (except when on vacation )
  
  To your question, why do I say it is a struggle? Yes because when I listen to the playback like above - I feel it doesn't sound very musical and smooth. I wanted to hear some feedback hence decided to post and hear what the accomplished players would spot immediately. Here are my thoughts on my playing on what to do.
  
  1. Split into sections of just 2 pages
  
  2. I have done a very poor job of memorizing - as I was always focussing on improving my sight reading, but did an experiment on learning the 1st 30 bars and got it mostly memorized in a 2 sessions. So need to now just focus on memorizing 2 pages at a time.
  
  3. I should lower the tempo down to about 108bpm to the quarter note for the memorization and only after move it higher. The experiment above was around 120bpm.
  
  4. There are aspects of phrasing, arm movement, articulation that I know nothing about !.. which will most likely be addressed after the points 1 & 2 are worked on.
  
  Any advice that you have on this concerto will be invaluable for me ( I may have already put several hundred hours on this - and can easily continue just this concerto for another year .. :-) ) Specifically what TB courses I should work in parallel. I have done about 12 so far - which are helping a lot! Thank you! again for your words of encouragement.