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Hello.

I was a member of this forum (and an infrequent contributor) a few years ago who just rejoined. (My old handle was Matt H.) I began learning piano in my late 30s. I have been taking lessons with the same teacher for going on six years. I have recently reached a point where I need to start thinking about my goals to give some direction to my lessons. I know my teacher has specific goals for me when assigning rep, but I need some long-term goals. At my last lesson, my teacher asked if I had any goal pieces I wanted to work toward. I said a Chopin nocturne.

I’m not asking you to tell me what my goals should be, but I’m wondering how you think about your own long-term goals. Do you think of them in terms of specific pieces you want to play? A level you want to reach? Some set of skills you want to acquire? Something else?

I’m somewhat at sea because I’ve achieved many of the goals I started out with. At first, my goal was to stick with it for a year. I wanted to finish the Adult Piano Adventures method books. When I achieved those goals, I decided I wanted to be able to play pieces at an intermediate level, and I wanted to play the music in the “easy” book of Christmas carols I had bought. Now that I’ve done those things, I still want to continue to improve, and I still enjoy taking lessons, but I’m just trying to figure out how to think about where I’m headed.

-Matt

Just some philosophical thoughts on the subject...

I think "Goals" are something we need to work on not just have.

I have goals for each weekday when I sit at the piano. I have target pieces for the weeks, months and years ahead. The more long term the goals, the more adjustment they get as time passes. I'm quite confident of reaching them simply because I can measure my current and previous progress. I know how quickly or slowly I work by looking at my daily journal.

I practise piano 7 - 12 hours per week. It's more important that I enjoy that time and have the desire to get back to it the next day than that I reach a target. I tend therefore to make my goals more about what I want to be doing than about what I want to achieve.

An achievement is as likely to make me stop and rest as spur me on to new things. When I learn another piece I add it to the list and move on to then next one, that's all.

I need something to get me back to it each day.

Piano playing gets better by practising each day.

Enjoying it comes from practising better each day (or something like that).

Enjoyment is a better incentive and pat on the back than an achievement.

I play pieces much better and enjoy them more if I don't have to battle with technical difficulties. Difficult pieces challenge me more and increase my technique. I pick from a range of difficulties.

I would like to, one day, play a concerto with a full blown orchestra... Perhaps by then pigs can fly.

Well, when I've started learning piano (I was about 12 years old), it was my teacher who chose the songs I would learn. Nowadays, I'm in a different music school, with a different teacher (I'm almost 18 now) and now the teacher gives me the freedom to choose what I want to play/learn and I "use" this freedom to "create" my own "goals" (if we could call them goals). I go to the youtube, I start listen random piano pieces and then I'm like "I like this one and that too and even the other. I would love to be able to play this pieces, how wonderful would that be?"

I use this desire to be able to play those pieces as an encouragement to be better. Also, the fact that you are playing something you like gives you much more enjoyment when learning than when you are learning pieces you don't like.

And the fact that the list of pieces I want to learn is constantly growing and it was me who chose those pieces, this feeling of be better to play the pieces never ends.

Like ThePianistWay my goals is a list of pieces that I want to learn to play. But I had my list already at the start and my list is not really growing.

My goal is to keep having fun.

My long-term goals so far have turned out to be more mid-term.

When I started piano lessons this September (after some spotty piano education in my childhood, totaling about two years of formal lessons and a lot of noodling on my own), my teacher gave me a book of Bürgmuller studies and assigned some short repertoire pieces that she thought I could learn something from. I'm still working on the Bürgmuller, so I guess you could call that a long-term goal (the idea is to finish all 25 studies in opus 100 by September 2013 at the latest), but I learned the five assigned repertoire pieces in about ten days of practice each -- let's call it eight weeks in all.

The next goal after that became the Christmas in-class recital, which I was scared shitless about because I never do well with an audience. But I practiced the heck out of my two simple pieces (a very early minuet by Mozart, and 'Impertinence' by Händel) until I could literally play them with my eyes closed. The recital went unexpectedly well. So there went that goal.

Highly energized (and perhaps a little over-confident) after this positive experience, I told my teacher that I wanted to play Beethoven by June. I proceeded to demonstrate to her that I already had the first twenty measures or so of the first movement of the Moonlight Sonata more or less down, so she found me a repertoire book that had this movement in it. It's now looking like I'm going to play Moonlight Sonata movement 1 (and maybe -- hopefully -- 2) for the April in-class recital. That takes care of another of my goals.

The next leap I'm contemplating is to learn a Chopin Nocturne (opus 9, number 1 or 2) for the June recital. I don't know how realistic this is, but I plan on taking Easter break (when I will have no piano lessons for two weeks) to figure that out. If I can play any portion of it to the point of being able to demonstrate in class by April 15, I will go for it.

After that, I don't know. I hope one thing will just lead to another.

Ironically enough, that's how goals will best be reached.

I tend to be more interested in process, than landmarks. I know a lot of others are the other way, it may be a left brain, right brain kind of deal.

Someone already mentioned having fun. Music is a hobby for all but a very few on the adult beginners forum, and most of those exceptions are piano teachers who aren't piano beginners at all. Hobbies are supposed to be fun. If it stops being fun, it is time to find another hobby.

I stumbled upon a John Coltrane quote and paraphrased it to fit me (below). It won't make much sense to some, and probably sounds puffy or goofy to others. However, when I read it, I knew that it fit as a worthy goal. It is worth mentioning that I mostly do original music and enjoy performing live.

My music is a spiritual expression of who I am.

My long term goals:

1) Play Clair de Lune, and kill it, consistently.

2) Play New York State of Mind, and kill it, consistently.

3) Have a repertoire of several pieces/songs (including both above) that are enjoyable/fun, memorized and ready to play at the drop of a hat.

At my current pace, these are 5-10 year goals.

Based on your post above, it sounds like you might want to set some more outlandish goals, to make yourself really reach and keep you engaged.

I think we all have goals when we start something. Long term or short term but some kind of image of where it will take us.

My goal with the piano is to be able to play jazz. I have a musical background with guitar and jazz saxophone(the piano is actually something I had to do since sax practice is impossible with small kids in the house). I love all music and instruments and have noodled on ALOT of different instruments.

When it comes to practice discipline I'm on the verge of insanity so I know I'll get there it's only to soon to tell how long it's gonna take me.

I went from never have held a sax to be a gigging jazzplayer in little over a year but it cost me 5-6 hours a day.

Now with kids I think 1-3 hours a day is what I can swing. But the most important part is to have a good practice schedule and STICK TO IT.

P.S I love being a complete beginner. You see progress really fast. It's like having kids enjoy it they grow up so fast! D.S

I thought about this question a while back and this is what I came up with then:

I hear what Richard is saying about goals for every time he practices, but I haven't found myself very naturally being able to be that analytical about my practicing (which is perhaps odd, given that I'm generally a very analytical type of person). Maybe piano taps into a different part of my personality.

So my goals remain what they were when I got my piano: play Bach Preludes and Fugues, and Beethoven Sonatas.

Now that I've had the piano for almost two years (plus 10 years of childhood self-teaching), I have come to be unsure whether I'll ever reach those goals. But I am happy with what I'm working on and playing now.

I have also acquired some technical goals: increased facility at scales, chords, and arpeggios; and (more important) better ability to voice a chord within one hand (that is, play certain note(s) louder and others softer).

I taught myself to play by ear, simple left hand chords and a single note melody with the right. I realized that to improve beyond this point, I needed to get serious and take lessons. So I set as my goal, to be able to play music that includes the complexity of chords in the right hand. After five years of lessons, this remains a pretty good (as yet unreached, but achievable) goal for me. At the time, I had no idea what a long term goal this would turn out to be!

Perhaps, I should add that my idea was not to take lessons aimed specifically at achieving this particular goal. Rather, it was to follow a traditional lesson plan and possibly reevaluate the lessons when I achieved the goal. So maybe not exactly a goal, more of a milestone that I'm watching for.

I'd have to say that my long-term goal (more like fantasy wish) would be to eventually learn Beethoven's Piano Sonata #14 (esp the third movement!!) and #15.

But, more realistically, I'd just like to get myself practicing every day instead of letting so many other things get in the way. Stupid life...

I think I just set myself a new, truly long-term goal. I want to learn all 21 of Chopin's Nocturnes. I'm going to start with number 19 (which, I heard, was actually not really intended as a Nocturne when Chopin wrote it). I figure I'll be working towards that goal for the rest of my life, or at least for the next twenty years or so.

As an added bonus, if I can play his opus 69, n° 1 (l'Adieu) by the time I have to stop taking lessons (about 8.5 years to go, still), I'll be mighty pleased with myself.

Just to play well and enjoy it. I thought hard and that's all I got!

My long term goal is to compose music. Much music is composed on piano. I need to learn theory well enough to compose. I already have tons of words going through my mind. Many thoughts of the heart I wish to share. I need the melodist. This is my impossible dream, my unreachable star.

Having composed a couple of my own pieces of music (mostly for piano and some other instrument, like oboe), I really don't think you need to know much theory to compose. You don't even need to be a very competent musician.

You Just need to listen. Learn the skill of writing down the music in your head. Maybe forcing yourself to practice music dictation (where someone else plays a melody on the piano, and you write it down) will help the most with that.

Just do it. Sit down and write music. Use composition software (MuseScore is free and good) and put notes on the staff, or sit at the piano and bang out some original music. Do it for an hour a day, actually write music, and after a month you will have done something. Keep learning theory and after a year more of learning, you will have written nothing.

Many novice composers and songwriters seem to expect that if they keep studying something will come to them. No it won't. Don't wait for inspiration, start working on the craft.

If a person has no idea how to start, there are any number of exercises I have used and suggested for others:
1) Try to replicate music you don't know well. It might be from a TV commercial, or a movie, or a pop song on the radio. Most beginners will not do so accurately, but that isn't the point of the exercise. Focus on mood and tempo. Keep playing notes until the melody seems pleasing. Again, don't worry if it matches the original or not, better if it doesn't. Record what you have. Odds are it will be a derivative and original piece.

2) Start with lyrics. You say you have words, write them down. It is not magic that makes a song. It is two verses and a chorus. Maybe 20 lines of prose all together. Sing them out loud, and record that. Try and match the melody. If you can't sing them, it probably isn't a song. Edit down the words, replace words, doesn't matter if it is proper English, many songs have dangling participles and worse. Again, just do it.

3) Work on a melody line to lyrics. If a person doesn't have any lyrics. Go to the MusesMuse forum and find some good lyrics in their monthly song contest and write melody to those lyrics. Keep working for that hour a day until something sounds like music.

4) Once a person has a melody line, start with simple harmonies. A beginner might start with simple triad chords in the same key, or even single or two-note harmonies. A pianist with more than a year of experience can do this, it isn't difficult. If a person feels lost, get a fake book and look at the simple harmonies in there and emulate. Many popular songs have three or four chords.

It usually doesn't come quick. It may take many hours or days to get a decent melody line. Most of us will never work as fast as Elton John (look up some of his workshops on YouTube, it is amazing), but no matter. Record the best of what you have and work on it the next day.

I promise anyone reading that if they actually work on writing music for an hour a day for a month, they will have something. It won't be Lennon and McCartney quality, but it will sound like music. Do the hour a day for three months, and you will amaze yourself.

The alternative path is to keep reading books on theory, keep complaining about not knowing enough theory, and write nothing. A year more of that and a person will still have written nothing and post again about their dream next year. The star is in reach, but a person has to start building that rocket ship.

Learning to play the piano is a good analogy. No beginner expects to read books about it and be able to play. Most beginners understand that they have to put in significant time to move forward. Yet, so many would-be composers expect to roll out of bed, or read yet another book, and be able to write music. No, it is a process, and for almost all of us, involves writing a lot of so-so to low quality music.

I knew next to nothing about theory when I started writing songs. I still feel like I know very little theory. Folks tell me that my recent pieces have counterpoint, I've never studied counterpoint. I do know about process. Some folks tell me I have talent. I have a modest amount. What I have more of, is a passion and dedication to the task. I spend time on writing music and that time translates into results.

You have the passion. Put in the time, and it will produce results. Don't worry about the "bad" music. Just record the best of what you have, and keep moving forward. Do this for an hour a day and in three months you will be amazed at how far you have traveled.