40(ish) Pieces in 2025

Nightowl · 2024-12-27T21:45:28+00:00

The 40 Piece Challenge has been around for a few years, as a way to improve sight reading skills - here is a link to an article which outlines how the concep...

ShiroKuro

Sophia administrative

I’m nothing if not administrative!! 🤣🤣🤣

Joking aside, I got into the habit of keeping a practice journal years ago (like, maybe 20+ years ago when there was a lot of practice advice floating spring PW) and now it’s just second nature.

pianocat

It was motivating to follow this thread even though I didn't participate. I decided to start actually tracking which pieces I'm working on over the course of 2026. I'm not going to set a specific goal, but what gets measured gets done, so I wouldn't be surprised if I study more pieces because I'm paying closer attention.

ShiroKuro

Sophia Not to mention administrative

BTW I just realized that this is not limited to piano, it is obviously a ~~personality disorder~~ personality quirk of mine.

Today we put our Christmas decorations away. I have been increasing my ornament collection slowly over the years, and I always keep a record of the number of ornaments and which I used or didn’t use each year.

This year, well December 2025, I had two Christmas trees and between those two trees, I hung 446 ornaments and had two tree toppers. Last year, I had 379 ornaments (the increase is because I inherited a box of ornaments from my mother this Christmas, and I also bought two boxes of 6 ornaments each).

😁

Sophia

ShiroKuro 446 ornaments ... 379 ornaments

Hahahaha! Ok, I would officially call that a personality ~~disorder~~ quirk for sure 😂 I have my own... plenty of them in fact - not sharing mine... but I can tell you that's not it 🤣

ShiroKuro

Sophia in my defense… some years back, I switched to single layer storage containers because those are the easiest and fastest to take the ornaments out and then later to put them away. Plus I can more easily see the ornaments as I’m decorating, so it’s really mainly about efficiency.

A side benefit is that the containers make it very easy to get a count of the ornaments …
😅

Sophia

Haha no, you don’t need to defend yourself at all, I was only teasing. Trust me, my ~~insanities~~ quirks are every bit as quirky as yours 😸

Nightowl

WieWaldi Not me, I will leave that for someone else as I won't be doing the challenge this year.

Well done to everyone who rose to the challenge, hopefully your sight reading improved as a result of taking part in this exercise. It can be difficult to judge these things for oneself and the only true way to be sure of the outcome would be this method:

Clone yourself.
One of you does the challenge, the other just meanders along playing what takes their fancy (they would be the "control" in this experiment).
At the end of one year evaluate the results by taking part in a sight reading contest (perhaps using an online test).

Simple! 😄

Happy playing everyone. 🙂

ShiroKuro

Nightowl Clone yourself

I’ll get right on it! 🤣

Joking aside, this underscores how hard it is for any of us to know if we’re doing things the “best” way.

To me that just means that we should just keep doing what we think works best for ourselves, striving or not as fits our personalities and lifestyles, and at the end of the day, congratulate ourselves.

This comment isn’t directed at anyone in particular by the way, I’m just reflecting on how common it is for people — self included — to be really hard on themselves…

WieWaldi

Nightowl Cloned...

Nightowl as I won't be doing the challenge this year.

But but but... why???

Nightowl

WieWaldi I'll be taking a more casual approach, I might keep a rough tally of how many I play but I won't post a list of them.

Most of the people who do the challenge take a very disciplined approach and upload numerous videos, while I can barely manage 4 reasonable recital videos for the whole year and I don't enjoy the process. I prefer watching vids to producing them, but I will still take an active interest in following your progress. 🙂

lilypad

WieWaldi I just want to say that I'm envious of your graphic skills with that cool "Failure" stamp. I could use that stamp for how I didn't manage to finish Faber Piano Adventures Level 5 this year (still 3 1/2 pieces shy).

As far as how the stamp applies to your efforts on the challenge, I think 39 pieces more than qualifies for the "ish" part of the thread title.

I see that the "ish" isn't in the title for 2026. No wiggle room there. Happy New Year!

WieWaldi

lilypad Yeah - but the FAIL-screen didn't help. I prepared it already one month ago and did go purposefully to only 39, just to miss the 40-goal and therefore stay at a mere Total Beginner™ level. But Sophia insisted me to level up. And the 40-ish thing didn't make my plan work any better.

WieWaldi

Nightowl Nobody forces you to upload videos of your pieces. Only nerds do so. And strivers and overachievers. This thread is for people who would usually work on 4 or maybe 5 big pieces over the year. Polishing them until Carnegie Hall level. And while doing so, all sheet music got baked into muscle memory, letting the (sight) reading skills withering away. Basically, this thread is meant for people like me – without it, I would memorize all my music.
I think, in 2025 this challenge helped my reading skills to improve a lot.

Nightowl

WieWaldi Well, whatever you're doing it's clearly working very well for you. My memory is not great so I always keep the sheet music in front of me. I'm not sure whether doing this challenge helped my sight reading but it certainly didn't harm it. Progress feels slow but I think my playing is gradually improving.

WieWaldi

Nightowl Funny thing. Even with my polished recital pieces I need to have sheet music in front of me. I don't look at it, at least most of the time I don't look at it. This means, after polishing I will have memorized it completely. But without sheet music, I can't remember.
It sounds hilarious, I know. But this is exactly what is happening. I have a theory:
I need a picture in front of my eyes to revoke a sequence of muscle memory. Otherwise, I can't. I figured this already out when I was solving the Rubik's Cube. I have all the algorithms in my muscle memory, but without the "trigger-picture" of the cube, I can't recall them reliable. Hilarious, right?

rsl12

WieWaldi if you move to China, you have until February 16th to finish your 40th piece.

WieWaldi

rsl12 but I can't start yet

plop_symphony

Oh, I forgot to update this, haha. I did hit 40. It was close! I'm almost certainly not going to hit 40 in 2026, however, as I have some major life events coming up.

"Footsteps in the Snow" by Angeline Bell
Aria in D minor, K. 32 by Domenico Scarlatti
Minuet in Bb major, BWV Anh. 118 by Johann Sebastian Bach (attr.)
Minuet in D minor, BWV Anh. 132 by Johann Sebastian Bach (attr.)
March in D major, BWV Anh. 122 by Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach
"Once Upon a Frozen Winter" by Heather Hammond
"Pleading the Fifth" by Chilly Gonzales
Andantino in A minor, op. 137, no. 8 by Henri Bertini
Ballade, op. 100, no. 15 by Friedrich Burgmüller
La petite réunion, op. 100, no. 4 by Friedrich Burgmüller
"Late Night Subway Platform" by Jeremy Siskind
Innocence, op. 100, no. 5 by Friedrich Burgmüller
Minuet in C minor, K. 40 by Domenico Scarlatti
"Trucking" by Christopher Norton - quick study from his Level 1 'Connections' book
"Dots and Dashes" by Christopher Norton - quick study from his Level 1 'Connections' book
Fugue in C major, P. 144, T. 264 by Johann Pachelbel - who says fugues have to be difficult? Not that this one was a walk in the park, but it's definitely a "beginner fugue", easier than the Bach inventions. From Trinity College's Grade 3 piano syllabus.
"For River (Johnny's Version)" by Kan Gao - posted to Recital #4.
"Onward and Upward" by Rick Robertson - from 'Circle of Friends', 24 early intermediate pieces in all keys.
"A Moray's Clock" by Akira Miyoshi - short and sweet.
Invention no. 8 in F major, BWV 779 by Johann Sebastian Bach - a big one.
"Along the Potomac" by Carol Matz - second movement of a suite whose first movement I posted back in an earlier recital. For some reason I always finish these America-themed pieces right around 4th of July.
Leçon d'arithmétique by Alexandre Tansman
Jazz-Invention no. 1 by Manfred Schmitz
"Suspense" by Fons van Gorp
"Innocence" by Fons van Gorp - These pieces are from a book that cheekily calls itself "Beatmuller", because it's a modern-styled homage to Burgmuller's opus 100.
Romance in C by Akira Yuyama - from "Piano World 2", second in a three-book quasi-method series for Japanese students.
"Lost in Thought" by Victor Labenske - from a set of miniatures in all keys.
"Waiting for Summer" by Naoko Ikeda - from "Seasonal Scenes at the Piano"
"Blues" by Barbara Arens
"Prelude IV" by Barbara Arens
Prelude (In Memoriam), op. 116 by Dianne Goolkasian Rahbee - this is a tribute to the composer's student who died in the September 11 terrorist attacks.
"Chinatown Rag" by Melody Bober - from "Jazzy Rags".
Sonatina in A minor, no. 3 by Jiří Antonín Benda
"Prelude V" by Barbara Arens
"Prelude VI" by Barbara Arens - all the Arens pieces are from a collection called "21 Amazingly Easy Pieces".
Pièce pour l'œuvre du Vêtement du blessé, L. 133 by Claude Debussy - I'll post this to the November recital.
"Sir Kay Mokkynge Sir Gareth" by Barbara Arens
"Little Dragon" by Vincent Ho
"Minuet" by Barbara Arens
Ballade in C by Akira Yuyama

WieWaldi

plop_symphony That's a perfect accomplishment.
And on top of that, all of your pieces were quite challenging. At least they sounded good. And challenging, nothing easy amongst them. Every single one I picked randomly was a pleasure to listen to. Well done!

Sophia

Well done, plop!

plop_symphony I have some major life events coming up.

That sounds exciting 🙂 Good luck with all that!

plop_symphony

Sophia It is exciting, but it'll probably involve me not having access to a piano for a few months. 🙁

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