New Year, New Approach - 40 Pieces Challenge 2025

WieWaldi I strongly vote to count an advanced piece as more pieces with a simple rule: Each movement section/part/chorus/whatever counts as a single piece. This does not address easy vs difficult, but it addresses short vs long. About the difficulty level, this challenge is to master 40 pieces in a year, meaning you must do whatever is easy enough for you to reach 40. Remember - the concept behind this this challenge is based upon the "surprising power of quantity" [see link in original post].

I like that idea, it's a way of tweaking things so that people who are playing more advanced pieces can credit themselves for tackling longer, complex pieces. For instance, a Chopin piece might easily be 3 or 4 times more difficult than a piece from Alfred's book 1, so could justifiably count as 3 or 4 pieces for the purpose of this challenge.

@BartK I see the reasons why you recommend sticking to the original rationale of the concept to gain the maximum benefits, but I can also see why people might like to adapt the concept to suit their own playing level/preferred practice methods - it's rarely the case that "one size fits all".

I think it's fine to adjust the target number down a little, to take personal circumstances/difficulty factors into account. Maybe I should change the thread title to read "40(ish) Pieces" or "30-40 Pieces"?

@Animisha If you prefer to work on stretch pieces I can see why it might be hard to reach the target of 40 (easy) pieces a year in addition to those stretch pieces. Perhaps you could set your own personal target lower - how about 25 a year? Is it doable to play one easy piece over the course of 2 weeks, as well as your other pieces? The easy pieces might be a refreshing break from the stretch pieces.

Gooseberry But I would like to make sure that we are free to define by ourselves what we consider as “a piece” and to what degree the piece should be “learned”.

Of course - tweak the concept in whatever way works best for you. Be as fluid or rigid in how you define a piece, and how far you polish it, as you want to. Jot down the names of pieces as you complete them, or record every minutia of the process in a mega complex spreadsheet - whatever floats your boat!

Sophia I can see where you're coming from, because you are already juggling many things at once, so might not have time to do this as well. Anyway, whatever you're doing is clearly working for you. This is just my way to move forward, but if I find I'm floundering, there is always the option to buy A's book 3.

ShiroKuro I had the feeling you might go down that route... I can picture you drawing up a mega spreadsheet as we speak! Meanwhile, I'll be scribbling the titles on any random scrap of paper I can find, probably using one of my coloured gel pens that I bought for doing crosswords.

Maybe I will start a new thread before New Year, where people can post their monthly updates. I could include a link to this thread so people can read all the suggestions and adopt whichever approach suits them, but the new thread would be the place to log our progress.