Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Adult Beginners Forum "40 Pieces A Year Club" for 2022

This is the official signup and participation thread for the 2022 "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

AndresVel
Greta99
KevinM
lilypad
MarkOfJohnson
MJBinTkPk
Monviso
mtb
Peter Hontaru
Qazsedcft
Randy Kimbrough
scorpio
Sebs
ShiroKuro

Links and Book Suggestions - place holder

I might as well sign up. I did over 50 this year. 😎

Sign me up too! I feel as if the practice of working on a relatively easy piece for a week or so improves my music reading skill better than my daily 'prima vista' sight reading practice does. I know recording isn't required, but I plan to record pieces also and get more comfortable with that also.

Please sign me up for the “40 Pieces a Year” community challenge!

Mine will certainly be “beginner-beginner” pieces: start somewhere, right? First time doing this and just a month into playing the piano again now that I’m retired (played for a few years as a kid).

Like Lilypad, I’ll try to learn how to record and post online— so I can learn to be a better contributor— but will keep the primary focus on the songs.

Don’t mind if I’m mostly invisible re: listing songs. I’ve just put a reminder in my calendar to post the songs I’ve learned at the end of each quarter or start of next (March 31-April 1), rather than pinging all of you as I go. (also: July 1, Oct 1, Dec 15-30, as the year wraps up).

Sign me up. I think I did about 21 for 2021 this year I’m going to get all 40! Last year it got me out of my comfort zone and I actually recorded and shared for the first time in my life. I definitely noticed spending time chatting in the forum keeps me motivated too.

I would like to try again. I managed 20 pieces last year. I know 40 is going to be a struggle and I'd be happy with more than 26. But being part of this I know will motivate me to not choose too many stretch pieces which is always my problem. I hope others are ok with me just doing my best to get close to 40.

I'll give it a try as well although I don't plan on getting all the way to 50

I’m in, but 40 pieces is probably too ambitious for me. Will aim for 20, and make it 25 as a stretch goal. Beginner pieces, here we go!

Please sign me up again.

Thanks scorpio for organizing this.

Please sign me up. Thank you.

OK, let me start the list then. I will not be recording these pieces as I treat them as "throw away" and don't get them to performance standard, but they are musical and up to tempo just not error-free.

1. Dmitry Kabalevsky, Rondo-Toccata, op. 60, no. 4

Oh, maybe I'll sign up as well. I need to go back and count how many I played in 2021, I bet it was over 50 between my read-play pieces (like sightreading) and actual repertoire.

So, how does one track how many pieces they've played? Write them here?

Right now my read-play piece is "You Be So Nice to Come Home To" (John Kember arr., the Jazz Piano Player collection) I'm guessing it's the read-play pieces that will get me close to or beyond the 40-piece goal. Although, now that I added the Jazz Piano Player Collection, I might slow down. Time will tell! I also sometimes play from a Music for Millions book or a Tim Richards jazz book.

My repertoire pieces (i.e., want-to-record pieces) are:
1. Hana Bi (Joe Hisaishi)
2. Painting the Sun (David Lanz)
3. Valse de Frontenac (George Winston)

I've been playing through David Nevue pieces (because I have a huge collection and hadn't played many), so here are the Nevue pieces I'm playing. I usually play one or two of these at the end of practicing, it's like the opposite of a warm-up, like a cool-down, or wind-down before bedtime:
1. Broken
2. Joy (not the Christmas one)
3. The Vigil
4. Eden Again

So my piano pursuits right now fit into these four groups:

1. Jazz
2. Read-play (MfM, jazz book or other easy piano book)
3. Repertoire pieces
4. Nevue Pieces

So does you come back to this thread periodically and update your own pieces/names?

ShiroKuro, to get a feel for what different people do, I would skim last years club.

http://forum.pianoworld.com/ubbthreads.php/topics/3062016/40-pieces-a-year-club-for-2021.html

Thanks for the link!

So it looks like some people upload videos, but not all, and maybe not even for all their pieces.

But the main thing, from what I could tell, is that you come back periodically and update your pieces, so you sort of have a running list.

Does that sound about right?

Yup that’s about it ShiroKuro. From what I have learned is that the main concept is for exposure to a large volume of pieces. You make your own rules and process. For example, I didn’t get 40 last year but this year I plan to and to basically do pieces below my level so it doesn’t take away from my lesson work. Yes you can post as often or as little as you want. I like to update my list often as it feels like a trophy. I would also add a big part is supporting others giving feedback if they ask etc. just like any thread here. Last year was my first attempt at it and it got me to play more than I ever planned so it was big win and I can’t wait to see what I accomplish in it this year!

Awesome!


this is the best part of PW/ABF!

Thanks to Scorpio for sending me this link!

I definitely want to sign up!

This will keep me motivated and accountable--more piano, less TV and mindless video games!

So, I have another one. I only started this piece around New Year and then I remembered that there is a Grieg recital but unfortunately I will not have time to record it this week before the recital deadline.

1. Dmitry Kabalevsky, Rondo-Toccata, op. 60, no. 4
2. Edvard Grieg, Fairy Dance, op. 12, no. 4