WEEK THREE Updates: Main Thread - Finishing up the Challenge!
Hello and welcome to the WEEK THREE Main Thread for this challenge! 
Awesome job everyone! As we are nearing the end of this community challenge I want to commend everyone for being so determined and committed to holding ourselves accountable to practice! This is great stuff :)
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 June 17th - July 8th I hope to be reading your daily updates in this very thread right here!
Download the music:
Handel: Chaconne in G major HWV 435
Please use the following format when commenting (feel free to copy & paste!):
- Variation you worked on:
- One thing you found easy:
- One thing you found difficult:
- (Optional): a video of you performing it!
Sample daily update:
- Variation you worked on: No. 1
- One thing you found easy: Learning the notes, and rhythms were rather straight-forward, and not challenging!
- One thing you found difficult: Playing the trills/ornaments in an elegant way was what challenged me the most.
Feel free to make these updates as short or long as you wish!
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Heading for the last two days on vacation, unfortunately I don’t have possibility to go on with this challenge, unless finding a piano in roundabouts of our seaside resort:), but absolutely looking forward to join you all during the final party ob 10th of July!
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I had chances to practice the whole piece, and I am going with the edition I have (20 variations).
The result is still far from performance level, but I'll try to record it to mark as mission accomplished, for now. I'll come back to this piece sometime in the future to fine-tune it for sure, for it's a lovely piece.
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Handel 14.
Difficult. Perhaps having the confidence to slow it right down. I started off playing it much faster and more uniform, but it was a bit boring sounding.
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Richard George Littlewood I’m having the same problem with no 14 . It’s as if my piano is out of tune ( it probably needs a tune ) . I think you were speeding up a little as you played it - this is coming from someone who has no qualifications in music whatsoever !
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mariannejhampton so I may not know what I’m talking about
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mariannejhampton I wanted to speed up toward the end, putting a bit of energy into the last few bars - saying this also as someone with no formal training!
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Unfortunately I had to take a week off and trying to catch up now . I wonder if Dominic could allow us to keep this forum after July 10 th ? It seems such a busy time of year .
Variation you worked on: no 4
- One thing you found easy:The notes were easy to play. I found it interesting that he had a 9/8 time signature in the left hand and 3/4 in the right . Wish I knew the significance !
- One thing you found difficult : Just getting it up to speed . It feels like a jig to me . I presume the 1 st beat of Bar 38 should have the right hand 3rd playing with the last triplet.
- Variation you worked on: no 9 and 10
- One thing you found easy: The adagio , I love slow tempos
- One thing you found difficult: More of a challenge really making sure each voice has it's rightful place in the music. I decided to keep the longer notes legato and staccato the 1/8 and 1/16 notes.
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- Variation you worked on: No 14
- One thing you found easy: The notes . No large chords
- One thing you found difficult : I have videotaped myself and it just seems drab , at least with the articulation and phrasing that I used . I notice that most of these variations have a base that descends with G F E D and I think it probably takes a lot of skill to make each one sound different . Just my two cents !
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mariannejhampton Thanks for posting, I know what you mean about watching and feeling different than when playing - I sometimes watch the videos and just don't want to post them... I'm glad you did though!
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Tim Thanks for the encouragement. I really dislike watching my own videos let alone putting them out there for everyone to see . Still , pretty sure it’s good to do something uncomfortable every so often and I do love to listen to all the others .
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I recorded myself while practicing today. The whole session was more than 20 minutes, but I cut out the “bad parts” of the play and made it into one uninterrupted piece. It’s just practice so I cheated it this way :p
I am using different edition of the score, so I put up the photos of it in the video. I didn’t make repeats except Var 18-20. These are so fun to play, I wanted it to glow and glow and glow, so I repeated and made some changes to the repeated plays. As to the ending, it’s not written in the score. It was an inspiration from a harpsichord performance on YouTube.
There are some wrong notes, wrong chords, unstable tempo, uneven 16th notes, etc. Please bare with me. For me, as long as finger numbers are figured out, then everything goes. For my 2nd take, in the near future maybe, all the trills needs to be carefully fine-tuned, as well as phrasings.
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Heng-Pin Chen
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mariannejhampton Thank you
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Heng-Pin Chen I so enjoyed listening to this! Thank you for posting, it inspires me to keep going even though it is very slow for me to learn.
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Tim Thank you! It's a nice piece. I am sure I'll come back to it and bring up to performance level.
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Heng-Pin Chen I enjoyed your playing.
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Dave B Thank you
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Also had a week off as hurt my hand gardening. So have worked on variation 9 as it is easier and oh so beautiful. Difficult bit is as always to play without hesitations, Easy bit is that this section is not hard at all. Tried the theme today and my hand is not up to it yet.
The other week I played through the entire piece, very slowly with mistakes but it is mesmerising and beautiful and so satisfying when you reach the end. Have played very little Handel so it has been a joy to get to know this piece.
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- Variation you worked on: Still working on #9
- One thing you found easy: Playing through before the repeat feels easy as the repeat has all the ornamentation added it. Was happy with how much easier it finally felt.
- One thing you found difficult: Recording with repeats! So much more pressure to get the second repeat correct - plus add the trills has been hard for me - but I love them!
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Tim Trills in the repeat are beautiful.
- Variation you worked on: Still working on #9
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Richard George Littlewood Bravo !
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Richard George Littlewood Bravo ! That was great .
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