Week Three: Vive la musique française!
Hello and welcome to the WEEK THREE Main Thread for this challenge! 
Alright everyone - this is the thread where we'll all be posting our daily updates.
Make sure you've read the rules before replying (<- click)
Twice a week between May 23 - 30 I hope to be reading your daily updates in this very thread right here!
Please use the following format when commenting (feel free to copy & paste!):
- Piece you worked on:
- One thing you found easy:
- One thing you found difficult:
- (Optional): a video of you performing it!
Sample daily update:
- Piece you worked on: Ravel's Prelude
- One thing you found easy: Learning the notes, and rhythms were rather straight-forward, and not challenging!
- One thing you found difficult: Shifting the Hands was a bit tricky to get smooth!
Feel free to make these updates as short or long as you wish!
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Piece You Worked On: Romance Sans Paroles Op 17 No 3 by Gabriel Faure
One Thing You Found Easy: I love pieces with a good melody/where the melody stands out. The melody in this piece kept my interest throughout and helped me have some focus while learning. I could also easily imagine the words behind the melody- a narration of a love story.
One Thing You Found Difficult: The last section at the very end. I feel this is where “they live happily ever after.” Need to work on the grace notes/melody here and basically make it prettier.
I really enjoyed this month’s challenge as my piece and many played by others are by composers who are new to me. French music is beautiful!
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Vidhya Bashyam Thank you, Vidhya! Yes, it was so nice meeting up at the sound-check!
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Vidhya Bashyam Great playing, Vidhya! You sound really beautiful!
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Juan Carlos Olite Thank you!
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- Piece you worked on: Debussy's Reverie (1890)
- One thing you found easy: I think this piece is good for learning about color. It's such a lovely composition that it helps guide the player as the dynamics come rather naturally.
- One thing you found difficult: Think I'm still somewhat learning it, but have gotten to love the piece so will continue to work on it. There's a lot of piano and pianissimo but I'd like to find more gradations within the two for more subtle coloring of the piece.
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Anthony Miyake it‘s such a lovely piece! Thanks for sharing, Anthony!
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Anthony Miyake Very nice playing! I agree with you- there is so much color in this piece.
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Anthony Miyake I love the way you allow the music to "breathe", and you make the phrases communicate so much. I got goosebumps. Lovely!
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Anthony Miyake wonderful playing! It’s flowing very nicely!
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Andrea Buckland , thank you! yes, I love this piece, too.
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Vidhya Bashyam , thank you, Vidhya. Use of color and texture seems to be a common theme with the French composers.
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Gail Starr , thank you, Gail. I appreciate your kind words. I credit it to Debussy's compositional talents, although he did not think much of this piece himself from what I've read.
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Anthony Miyake it is such a lovely piece! Thank you Anthony, I can really understand why you want to keep enjoying it a bit longer!
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Anthony Miyake Very nice playing, Anthony! Very good job with the color and dynamics! It sounds beautiful.
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Angela Fogg , thank you!
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Juan Carlos Olite , thanks, Juan Carlos!
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Here are my two videos that I managed to put together for the end of the challenge. I did want to participate more, but I just ended up focusing on various other things. I think the Romance did improve, and I liked for the most part how La Fille sounded, though most of it was basically sightread (I apologize for all the pauses). Congratulations to everyone who was able to work through the whole 3 weeks though, I hope to be listening to your performances soon!
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Thurmond R Lovely pieces and playing! Thanks for introducing everyone to Chaminade!
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Thurmond R Thank you for your Chaminade! I never knew her works before this monthly challenge.
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Vidhya Bashyam Gail Starr Thank you! She's one of my favorite composers, so I'm glad to see more people getting into her music! She's written a wide variety of pieces (Op. 122 no. 2 compared to op. 130, for example), and a lot of very beautiful works.
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Thurmond R Lovely to hear some Chaminade! You are sparking an interest there.
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Thurmond R Great job, Thurmond! They are lovely pieces, I have never played Chaminade. I should do it. Thank you for sharing it.
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I learnt this before - Debussy Passepied from Suite Bergamasque. Decided to work on it and try to improve - rather than learning a new piece.
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Johnathan North3 Lovely sense of lightness in this one. So Debussy! And I love your piano! It has such beautiful sculptured legs. How old is it?
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Johnathan North3 Loved it! Great playing!
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Johnathan North3 Fantastic performance, Johnathan! Bravo, it sounds wonderful in tempo and feeling.
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