Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Adult Beginners Forum "40 Pieces A Year Club" for 2021

This is the official signup and participation thread for the 2021 "40 Pieces A Year Challenge"! We'll use this thread for signups, tracking progress, recordings (if you decide to share them) and discussion.

The Goal: To learn, perform and/or experience forty piano pieces in a year.

The Method: Pieces can include any genre (e.g., classical, jazz, rock, pop, arrangements). Most of these will be (should be) below your current skill level. These pieces do not have to be completed to a polished final standard. Ultimately, the pieces are for skill building, technique development, rhythm work, sight-reading, exploring new music and having fun.

The Rules: There are no rules. It is up to you on how to craft this challenge.

Tracking Your Progress: Please check in with this thread when you complete your pieces - we'll keep a running total for everyone at the top and edit it as needed. Please feel free to upload any recordings that you're making (this is not a requirement). We are a supportive group, so the more you participate and ask questions, the more you will get out of the challenge!

Some Notes About Skill Levels and Competition: We all have many different backgrounds and skill levels, so this challenge will look different for each one of us. Our goal is to support and foster people's drive to complete their challenge, no matter what skill level. Please be kind and refrain from bringing negative attitudes into the thread, whether towards yourself or towards others!

For more details about the inspiration and source of this challenge, please read these pieces by Elissa Milne:

Where Did the 40 Piece Challenge Begin?

The Surprising Power Of Quantity

Suggestions for Getting Started

Participants ... welcome aboard!

AndresVel
barbaram
bSharp(C)yclist
Crocus
dsheets1974
facdo
Forest77
Greta99
Lontra
Maira713
Meap6
mel_lem
Monviso
MrPozor
Myssk87
Peter Hontaru
Saan
scorpio
Sebs
sisi
Snejana
Sol Finker
SwissMS
trooplewis
Zenga
ZoeCalgary

New to the forum and to the challenge. I'm in 🤗

I'll join as well, although I don't aim for 40, but similar to this year, around 20-25 solid pieces (and plenty of sight reading on the side).

Count me in.

Thank you.

I will join again as well, but I am doing a different approach this year. I am going to focus on building repertoire at my level, so I will probably do 20 or less pieces in 2021. These will be longer more complex pieces, and I want to polish them more before recording.

I should do this! I'm really good at picking pieces too hard and wasting weeks on them then giving up. This would get me to select pieces in and below my skill level. 40 is a lot, it's a little intimidating but I imagine the reward is worth it? I went to read the links in the OP but they're expired. Can someone that has done this let me know if this adds a lot of learning value and enjoyment? Thanks!

I need to do this too.
Need to narrow my focus to learning just a couple pieces instead of trying to work on a lot of them.

I'm in, sounds like good motivation to practice.

This sounds like a fun project. Please count me in!
I think I might be able to reach that number given that I work on around 2 new pieces every week/week an a half plus a main piece that usually takes me 1-1.5 months to finish. Reading the thread of last year, it seems to me that the experience is more interesting/rewarding if recordings are submitted. Given I have a fairly bad red-dot-syndrome case, I see this as a very good exercise to record myself more often and improve on that. I might just do audio recordings for all these smaller pieces, and only videos for the main pieces since they take a bit more time to put together.
Looking forward to this

I've sat this out the last couple of years, but I'd like to give it another go this year.
I haven't entirely decided how to approach it yet, and I'm giving myself complete permission to change track as I go but for now - sign me up!

I am in this year too! It has been over two years since I practiced the piano. I have had withdrawals and eagerly look forward to getting back.

I will be using this project to help with my discipline and to set my goals for the year. I doubt I will do 40 pieces. In the past this challenge has always
helped me move forward and provide structure. So let's give it a go and have a good year!

Please count me in.

Thank you scorpio.

New here! I'm in

I'm also in for this year. I've decided on a lot of pieces already and can't wait to get started!

Please sign me up, thanks.

The journey has officially started! My list:

1. Minuet in C K6, Mozart

The links are active once again.

very nice

Thanks! I will give them a read.



Sounds great!

I would like to join the challenge, thanks. I am not entirely sure I will make it to 40 because my teacher has me working on challenging pieces that tend to take a few months to learn. But I like the idea of filling in the blanks with easier and shorter pieces.