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...

WieWaldi

Nightowl I agree with SK, you did a fantastic work. With 46 pieces, you were diligent this year.
This entitles you to leave the Bloody Beginner™ level, and call yourself a Total Beginner™.

Nightowl

ShiroKuro Thanks! 🙂 It's not much of an achievement compared to @WieWaldi though - he gets every piece up to a decent standard and records it - now that's what I call commitment!

WieWaldi Thanks, it's an honour to be termed a Total Beginner! 😃

Sophia

Absolutely, I insist: you are now ready to join us in the rank of total beginner. Though, in my opinion, Wie Wie has actually moved up in rank to the next stage... I forgot, was it negligent beginner? Or terrible beginner? No, ABSOLUTE beginner, that's what he is now, even though he vehemently denies it 😃

But you and I: total beginners for sure!

WieWaldi

Nonono, I am still a Total Beginner™. I will move up after I will have finished the 40 pieces challenge this year. Currently, we are now the Three Total Beginners™ (TTB).
But not for long, I'll move up too soon to Absolute Beginner™, exactly as Sophia said. Enjoy the few days on my level, I'll leave you back in the dust in two or three days. Har Har 👹

Sophia

WieWaldi I'll leave you back in the dust in two or three days

I (we) expected nothing less 🥰

WieWaldi

I am heading to a New Year's Eve party, so this is my last update in 2025. Unfortunately, I failed to reach the 40 mark. 🙄 The last piece took much more time than expected, and I am happy to have at least this recording, with all its flubs and hesitations. Having only a Casio CT-S1 and the Numa VST as my only recording options didn't make it easier, too.

👇🔷🔷🔷🔷🔷🔷🔷🔷🔷🔷👇

I'll do better in 2026 - promise.🤥

ShiroKuro

WieWaldi congratulations!! I wouldn’t call it a failure but a remarkable accomplishment! Bravo!

I now need to go and count the number of pieces I played in 2025…probably not as many as I’d hoped… I think I worked on too many hard pieces.

Maybe in 2026 I can bump up that number with a better mixture of easy and hard pieces.

keff

WieWaldi Like to add my congratulations and happy new year.

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!

rsl12

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

Sophia

Now I in turn neatly missed this post. Well done, I absolutely love that last piece. Very pensive and played with great expression. You definitely made it to absolute beginner now!

The Likas arrangements are deceptively tricky to play, so in a way the piece counts for two. 😊

Welcome to a brand new year! 😸😎💤

WieWaldi

Sophia Wait - stop it! You can't level me up to an Absolute Beginner™. I failed!
39 < 40

I didn't reach the 40 and according to the rules, this doesn't count. Where would we go if we didn't follow the rules?!? The rules are important. You know, I didn't make the rules. (Ok, actually I did - but who I am if I didn't follow my own rules) But there is a line that was not crossed. And this line counts 40. Not 38 or 39 – no, the only number that counts is 40. And you can't just say this or that piece counts for two. In this case you would find an excuse everywhere. Nonono.

Sophia

WieWaldi Nonono

Now you’re talking sheer nonsense and you know it 😋

What counts is how much progress you made. Quality, not quantity. You are objectively at least one level ahead of me at this point.

But if it makes you feel better, you can graduate yourself after your next piece, that would make 40 😊

WieWaldi

Anyway - a happy new year everyone!

Now someone has to create the 2026 version of this thread... @Nightowl !!!

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. 🙂

WieWaldi

Geeeezzzz...
I think I can't avoid being level up... can I?
Ok, then I will call me officially an Absolute Beginner™.

Yeah!

ShiroKuro

Here's my list. Huh... It's both better and worse than I thought! 😃

I am included all the pieces I worked on in 2025. Not all of these were polished, and some (e.g. the hymns) were for reading practice where I played them once a day for about a week before moving on. Some in the list are pieces I've played in the past but brought back into my fingers so I could perform them for someone, so I'm including them in the 2025 list.

So it's better than I thought because it's waaay more than 40. It's also worse than I thought (hoped) because I would have liked to have recorded and performed more pieces. But that's ok.

This list is in alphabetical order rather than chronological order.

SK's 63 Piano Pieces 2025 – the bolded ones are the 17 pieces that were polished, performed, and/or recorded during 2025.

Air in Dm
And So It Goes
Anna Magdalena Notebook p. 6
Anna Magdalena Notebook p 7
Arioso (p9)
Autumn (p14)
Bluebird
Bourree (MFM)
Canon (Crain arr)
Canon (my arr)
Chorale book p.70 – C major
Christmas Time Is Here
Comptine
Croatian Rhapsody
Doll’s Funeral (MFM)
Gavotte
Hana-Bi
Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas (Susan Staples Bell arr)
Hymn – come thou font of every blessing
Hymn – Jesus Saves (p.3)
Hymn #1
Hymn #10
Hymn #11
Hymn #12
Hymn #13
Hymn #14
Hymn #15
Hymn #4
Hymn #6
Hymn #7
Hymn #8
Hymn #9
Hymns (MFM)
I Giorni
Il Tuo .. Einaudi)
Invention #4
Jesu Joy Canon in D (Nevue arr)
Joy to the World (Nevue arr)
Love
Menuet (Croft, p16)
Midwinter Memories
Miracles
New Day
Nocturne
Nuvole Bianche
Oil on Wood
Painting the Sun
Petit Prelude (Satie)
Prairie
Prelude in Em (Chopin)
Prelude Op 3 No 2 (Rach)
Sarabande (Einaudi)
Sightreading & Harmony book p. 71
Smooth Operator (Neil Archer arr)
Sonatine in Gmaj Lichner
Song for Gavin
Song Without Words 19.6
Valley
We Wish You a Merry Christmas (Hal Leonard)
While the Trees Sleep
Wind (solo, and with violin)
Wishing
Written on the Sky (Richter)

This is actually really inspiring. According to my notes, I played 35 pieces in 2024, so this doubles that! Also, My plan to work on easy Bach pieces in 2026 is a nice "replacement" for the work I did with the hymns in the first half of 2025.

Well, I guess this helps me define my goal for 2026:

Work on at least 40 pieces
Continue to include a mix of easy and hard pieces
Work on a big chunk of easy Bach pieces
Record and/or perform more than 20 pieces. (yikes, that's a big number!)
Make and share at least 8 piano videos (bc in 2025 it looks like I did 7 YT videos)

keff

ShiroKuro That is an impressive list. I wouldn't be anywhere near even if I could remember all the pieces looked at in 2025. I know I have played solo pieces in seven out of eight piano group meetings ( I was ill at the May meeting) and about four duets. Then there are the forum recitals and PIYW but for these I have used some of my piano group pieces.

If I go back to November and December 2024 I did many recordings for someone making an audio advent calendar, perhaps fifteen pieces and it was at that point I idly wondered if I could be a musician...unlikely though.

ShiroKuro

keff even if I could remember all the pieces looked at in 2025

I write down titles every time I practice. I have a notebook and I write the title and depending on what I’m working on, I leave notes for myself about what to focus on the next session etc.

So to compile this list, I went through and wrote down all the titles in a word file. That’s why I put it in alphabetical order, so I don’t write something down twice. (Like if I worked on something, set it aside and returned to a few weeks or months later.)

This also helps me make sure I’m not neglecting something too long if I have short practice sessions where I don’t get to all the pieces I want to.

lilypad

Here's the rest of the pieces I did this year. I forgot to post the November pieces so there are more additions than normal. Without all those quick studies that I work on for no more than a week whether they're "finished" or not, I'd be at 33 pieces for the year.

63 Traditional - Two Guitars, Piano Adventures Level 5 Lesson book (regular piece at my level)
64 William Duncombe - Sonatine in C, Piano Adventures PIano Sonatinas - Book 1 (quick study)
65 Inspector Gadget (main theme), Piano Adventures Popular Repertoire - level 3A (quick study)
66 Le Couppey - Study 4, The Alphabet Op. 17 (quick study)
67 Faber & Faber - Bearcat Boogie, Piano Adventures Level 5 Performance book (regular piece at my level)
68 Scarlatti - Sonata in G Major , K. 431 (L. 83)
67 Joe Hisaishi - Starting the Job, Studio Ghibli, Recital Repertoire Vol 1 - Beginner (quick study)
68 Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller - Love Potion No. 9, Piano Adventures FunTime Piano Jazz & Blues - 3A-3B (quick study)
69 N. Faber - Smoky Mountain Prelude, Piano Adventures Level 5 Lesson book (regular piece at my level)
70 Salutrinskaya - Sonatina in D, Piano Adventures Piano Sonatinas - Book 1 (quick study)
71 Jerry Bock - Sunrise, Sunset, Piano Adventures Popular Repertoire - level 3A (quick study)

Sophia

You guys are all so prolific! Not to mention administrative 🙂 Congrats everybody!

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.

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).

😁

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.

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