My 2013 piano goals:

1. Faithfully complete MOYD 2013
2. START and COMPLETE Alfred's Adult AIO Course Book 1
3. START Alfred's Adult AIO Course Book 2
4. Journal my practices (accomplishments, struggles, pieces, page notes, hours, etc)
5. Upload selections as they are "mastered" (youtube or other site)
6. Seek constructive criticism of my work AND accept what is offered to me so I can grow as a piano player
7. Submit at least one offering to ABF Recital
8. Take care of my piano, as it will take me to places I have always dreamed about...


My best to all!

Mostly Similar to last year....

1. Reading. Read something new every day, whether it is sight reading easier fare or slogging through a few measures of more advanced material, just keep reading. Continue with the Read/Sing/Play of Bach's Invention #8 as per the reading exercise suggested by one of our members.

2. Technique. Continue working on tension and relaxed concentration/focus. Continue speed work in scales.

3. Practice habits. Continue MOYD at 2-3 hours a day. STOP practicing when it isn't working and do something else for a while. Reduce everything to smaller and smaller steps. GO SLOWER.

4. Performance. Participate in my teacher's spring recital and host pre-recital "practice session" for the adult students. Submit more things to the piano bar or ABF recitals. Jam with one of my guitar-playing buddies.

5. Pieces. I think I may be better off not setting a time-related goal for getting to any particular piece of music.... I will get there when I'm ready.

6. New this year. I have decided to start holding on to more of my pieces and will see if I can have a little more of a repertoire at this time next year. As the pieces get harder and time invested in each longer, it seems a shame to just let them go when completed to my teacher's satisfaction. She agrees and thinks it will be good for me. A handful of jazz standards and two or three of my harder classical pieces would be a good start and something to shoot for by year-end. I'm not sure how much time I will have to give to this effort, but it will come in the evenings, which I usually reserve for "playing".

Which book of John Thompson are you studying? I have the "modern course", wondering how you like it? Did you pick the Thompson's for yourself as the method book?

I just flipped through the book, so many classical music, just what I needed! but I thought the book can get difficult pretty quickly, wanted to get to the book when I'm more ready... Thanks for sharing your experience!

I had no idea what MOYD was, but now I do

I think playing every day is probably the one thing that I do not need to set as a goal. Because I am still (have been ever since starting to play in May 2011) so addicted to the keys that I would only not play when away from home on a trip or really sick or tired after too much overtime at work. I think during the past 18 months I have missed less than 15 days.

I have waited for my natural lazyness to catch on, but somehow I just need the fix everyday, even when I have bad times and really suck.

But anyway, I hope I will still feel this way at the end of 2013!

Thank you, Happy New Year

Thank you. All the best for you too

Hi there,

Nice goals you set.......I will remember you next year....more members and more goals....???


Cheers,
Johan B

My goals for 2013...

1. Finish the pieces I started and put away two years ago - Debussy Prelude No 2 Book I 'Voiles', Beethoven Op 90, Bach - Prelude and Fugue in C minor - WTC Book 1.
2. Commit to daily practice
3. Have 5 - 6 pieces memorised and ready to go anywhere at anytime. When I was playing the organ regularly I had a 2 hour repertoire ready and memorised - but I have NOTHING to play at the drop of a hat on the piano. So my goal for this year is to start building that 'play for public' repertoire.
4. Enjoy my practice sessions and not bash myself for not being good enough.

Become more at home in keys of B and E.

Work my way thru my old Chadwick "Harmony".

In the last month, I think I've gotten into a good pattern that I want to continue in the New Year.

1. Continue learning and practicing how to learn and practice pieces effectively.

2. Continue memorizing some of the pieces I learn.

3. Continue learning the pieces in Khachaturian's Children's Album I.

4. Continue learning pieces across periods: Baroque, Classical, Romantic, Modern.

5. Participate in the Mendelssohn BIG Themed Recital and all four ABF Recitals. Depending on the difficulty of the pieces, participate in other themed recitals.

6. Continue practicing scales. Add chord inversions and arpeggios.

7. Add prima vista sight-reading to my practicing.

In terms of skills, I want to improve at learning and practicing, memorizing, voicing, dynamics, big chords, inversions and arpeggios, and prima vista sight-reading. I'm also hoping that disciplined practice (start slow, use metronome to build gradually) will improve my ability to play quickly with precision.

To keep studying and practice, practice, practice...

Halfstep,

Time for practice.....that's the main problem for all of us....

Best regards,
Johan B

So far so good! What's the date?! LOL

Hey Nutty, your list is pretty much identical to mine:

*Take Grade 4 ABRSM or Trinity Guildhall
*Learn to play any of Einaudi's music
*Play better in front of my teacher (and others)
*Understand theory better-I've only done the book for grades 1&2 (not sat exam) and most of that hasn't sunk in
*Improve my sight reading-the only way is up on this one, I can't not memorise as I'm learning a piece, still can't decide if that's a good thing or a bad thing!

Neil.

I started in March 2012.

On the short list for the new year:
* Make a permanent place for the rig I have. Right now I have to pull it out from under the bed and set it up every time I want to play.
* Eventually a new rig. The 61-key Yamaha NP11 has served me well and taken me far, but most folks on the forum continue to tell me it is "toy."
* Continue to write original music, or make my own arrangements of known pieces. I will keep that flame of creativity burning.
* Continue to find the occasional inspiring cover piece to learn. While these tend to be major projects for a poor sightreader like me, they add familiar landmarks for the audiences to my repertoire, and on the whole, good projects for me to undertake. (I have no real desire to make a project of improving my sightreading. I would much rather spend my time and energy writing new music.)
* Continue to take care of, and be patient with my hands, wrists, shoulders, neck, etc, etc, etc. Years of flute and whistle playing, and heavy computer use, means that I have learned to manage what at times becomes chronic discomfort. Overuse can lead to pain. I have to watch carefully because I can get lost in the music.
* Continue to participate in the ABF recitals and the occasional post to the piano bar.
* Continue to play live at Songmakers, and also seek new audiences.

From the mental health program that I volunteer and participate in, these are relevant to my piano adventure.
* Endorse for the effort not the outcome
* Plan, decide, and act
* Do things in part acts
* Lower my standards so my performance can rise
* There is no right or wrong in trivialities (and by definition, everything hobby related tends to be a triviality).

/edit to add: I found this quote from John Coltrane, which seems so appropriate as a goal:
"My music is the spiritual expression of what I am."

I feel that at times I have gotten near to that place on whistle, and in my songwriting (over 10+ years). On piano keyboard, I am getting there, day by day. Some days I lose myself in music. On other days it feels more like frustration and a wall in front of me. As for being an ant before Everest, I share that sentiment, but the mountain ain't coming to me. Today's Daily inspiration expresses it so clearly for beginner pianists:
"I don’t need all the answers at once. I simply need to move forward one step at a time."

I started on September 2012, when I felt like an (mature) ant in front of the Everest, so my goals are:

-feel the keys more each time. I'm just beginning to do it and it's the first step.
-relax my hands and shoulders/keep hands closer to keybed.
-practice some scales every day, as a warm-up.
-improve sight reading. I tend to memorize and then I no longer read. I'm not bad at reading, but I can´t read and play in time, all together.
-read theory books, specially of harmony and chord progressions.
-start some blues scales and chords on my own. My piano teacher is on the classical side of the moon.
-work with musescore.
-learn some pieces (or covers adapted to my level) just for more fun: La vals Kendall (Calderazzo/Marsalis); some tunes from Tom Waits; Goodbye pork pie hat (Mingus); Armellodie (Gonzales)...the wishlist would be so long!
-participate in term recitals/play in front of people/control my nerves/not to begin missing notes as soon as I play record button!
-not to fall in love with my theory teacher (she's soooo nice)

Do you think this is realistic?

Hi there,

my music goals for 2013 are the following (at different levels):

-Relevance: Improve my motivation and understanding on what I want to learn music for.

-Efficiency: Play at least 15 hours per month, in a relax and concentrated manner. Continue assisting to Harmony Class every Wednesday.

-Effectiveness: Complete by June 2013 the VAI manual on harmony exercises. i started the year in page 150 and it has 195 pages.

-Impact: Continue playing with the Big Band. Assist every Thursday to rehearsal, and be able to follow, to play the assigned solos and contribute to the overall quality of the music. 18 May, we will play in a friend´s wedding. It must be awesome.
Furthermore, by end of 2013, i will have worked one full Beethoven sonata. Septimino op.49.2.

-Sustainability: I need to be able to improvise a bit better every month. It must also become part of my family life, giving good example to my two sons, and general fun and entertainment to all.

-Accountability: I will come back to you and report progress and issues ;-)

Wish you best 2013, full of respect, loyalty and harmony.
Manuel

Good question. I chose the John Thompson Modern Course for the Piano, red books, Book 1. There are 5 books in all, 70 pages of music for each book, so lots of music. I love the method for several reasons. It is challenging and very informative. I went to a large music store in town and look at about 30 methods. John Thompson came way ahead of any other method book - for me. But to be fair, I have played as a basic player,

so I know that I:
must play very slowly
repeat pieces every day
always play pieces without mistakes else I play it slower and slower until it is played without mistakes.
I can count so I know to grab a metronome if I am having trouble.
So I am okay for the moment and when I have trouble, I will get a teacher.

If you take the time to walk through the method books one by one over several months, you will see for yourself what will work for you. Most teacher say that they like to pick different stuff for each student's problems, and that is awesome. But the factors are different. People are paying money each week for a lesson and expect results from the teacher, and rightly so, and teachers want to keep the students interested and growing progressively better and improved. When you are self-taught you have to be motivated and I can take the time to slow down when things get tough and take a little longer to learn a particular technique without the risking
giving up where others might be discouraged if suddenly they have a difficulty learning something.

I have heard people say:
Johm Thompson is boring, dull,
steep learning curve,
not as good as the colourful
books that some people are using.

To this I say, piano books since pianos were invented were black notes on black staffs. If you want colourful
music books then perhaps you should be going to art school where everything is all about colour. Yes, I agree
John Thompson has a steep learning curve, but it is like lifitng weights, if you lift 1 pound weight 10 times
nothing will happen and you won't feel it. If you lift a 10 pound weight 10 times, you feel the 'pain' and feel
the 'glow" and life gets better. If you lift a 100 pound weight and have never done it before you break your
arm and tear your muscles and have destroyed your arm for life. So you have to know where to start. It is
whatever you want in life. I love having to work hard to learn a piece. It it usually takes a week to work through a piece and then weeks to months to learn the details that polish the piece to its best. To some poeple want to lean a piece in a day or two and move on to a new piece. I on the other hand love to play all the pieces I have ever learned and play them day after day as time permits day after day. It is all about playing the piano every chance I get.



To be fair, I had a guitar teacher, a voilin teacher, a few piano teachers for short periods of time over my lifetime, an excelent sax teacher for 4 years, all basic music, and also played in a blues band, 2 concert bands, a jazz band. I only says this because to be fair, I can only play basic music but I have lots of basic music experience, especially with other musicians. Playing with other musicians, you either sink or swim.

I have some general goals for this year:

- to learn how to play with others (either duets with my teacher or other musicians.)

- learn how to do basic improvisation

- learn a small amount of repatoire (why or why can I not spell that word?)

- continue with MOYD

- continue improving basic skills and theory