Week 1: Choose your piece!
Welcome to the latest Community Challenge!
For this challenge "A Fresh Start" the goal is to pick a BRAND-NEW piece to work on this month.
This is the time to finally open that score that you have been thinking about and get to work!
What are we doing in week 1?
- Select your New piece to work on, and share it below! Let's see what everyone is choosing!
- Submit one video of your practice this week, perhaps featuring your favorite passage of the opening bars!
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Here’s how my Scriabin 16 1 is sounding at the end of week 1. Plus you get to hear me trying to sing different voices, haha (it turned out singing was pretty quiet because mic wasn’t pointing my way). I spent some of my time this week writing out a rough analysis of the piece…and some time down a rabbit hole making a video about how to achieve vibrato at the piano…so I’ve only got the first 6 bars together so far.
The link: https://youtu.be/aCcOm_iAM34
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Marc M I wish I could sing or whistle to help with focusing on the different voices! It seems very helpful. Maybe I will try on my (neglected) viola... Also wish I knew more about 20th century+beyond music theory to help with analyzing/memorizing more contemporary pieces.
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Thank you, Vidhya Bashyam Andrea LeVan Judy Kuan! And yeah, I've found that singing lines where there are multiple voices even helps eliminate some of my technical problems somehow. I've found it useful enough that I'll often do it as a matter of course.
No worries if your singing would scare the dogs...haha. I used to be terrified of singing, especially singing in front of other people, because I had a bad voice and couldn't carry a tune at all. GK Chesterton got me away from that mindset with his quote, "if a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing badly." :P
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Marc M Fantastic, Marc. I agree that singing really does help, in ways that one does not expect.
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Here is the result of first week. Although I played No 1 before, I just realized that it was more than 10 years ago. It's kinda hard to get back to the condition. Hopefully I'll be able to perform it by the end of the challenge. No 2 and No 3 are new to me. Thanks to this challenge opportunity, so I finally could pick them up. Personal opinion, No 2 and No 3 are easier than No 1. I feel playing 3 pieces together could be a very good program for performance.
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Heng-Pin Chen Gorgeous! You've retained a lot!
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Judy Kuan Glad you like them
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Heng-Pin Chen lovely performance. You have a great feel for the mood and colors of the étude. The "tenor solo" in sixteenth notes toward the end is particularly successful. Pieces No. 2 and 3 were completely new to me; charming!
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Alexander Weymann Thank you
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Hi folks. Here is my recording of the first page of Mozart's Sonata in C, 2nd movement. I haven't been super diligent about my practice. It's an easy enough piece that I've made some progress nonetheless. Thanks for all your encouragement.
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Randi Sounds great, Randi!
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Baby steps. The portamento top voicing is taking time. But trying to work that out now vs later.
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Jack vreeland Good, slow work. Very smart!
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