Several posts on Cindy's Master of your Domain thread mentioned the need for and use of a planner/journal to record practice, goals, successes etc.

This got me to thinking (doesn't take much, huh?) does such a thing commercially exist? Is it something we could put together as a group and then share? What type of things should be included?

I just happen to have access to a pretty creative design department and a whole bunch of printing equipment. If a group of us wanted to collaborate on such an endeavor maybe we could come up with something really cool.

Any thoughts??

I would love something like that, I'm very anal about keeping track of things, I have kept a running log since 1978, and there are tons of those out there available commercially. That's why I thought there might be something available in the piano world. Seems like there is a market for it. I'm fairly new at this though so i'm not sure I have many good suggestions on what it should contain.

While doing a Google search, I found a musician's practice log that may work for some:

Practice Log

I'm using a simple notebook with grids for now......

Thanx!! That looks like a good resource. I was hoping to build something that was really easy to use that a person could pre-plan a week, month, quarter etc. and then have a way to quickly see how they were progressing. I'm thinking more a planner to be proactive to help a person make thier plan and achive thier goals more than a log to just keep track of practice sessions.

Oh I like that! I may have to get one of those. Thanks!

I couldn't tell enough about what the inside of the practice planner looks like. The site says it shows an example, but it's all written in, so it's hard to tell what the layout is actually like... I guess the example they show is the weekly lesson plan, but there's no picture of the daily practice log. It looks like the lesson plan page is very structured... Has anyone purchased this log? Can you tell us more about what it looks like?

ShiroKuro,

Did you scroll down to the bottom of the page? It shows a small example of both pages without anything written in.

I created my own using Excel. It covers six days worth of planned practice. I list out in the first column the pieces I plan to practice, and then each subsequent column is a day's worth of practice with the amount of time I am going to spend on each piece. This allows me to easily add up the practice time in the spreadsheet and move items around to balance the practice time between days. I leave blank cells to write in the date and the actual practice time on each piece. If I can't complete a full practice day, I just pick up where I left off. At the end of the rotation, I modify the next rotation as needed. Following it has become a very important part of my practice routine.

Thanks sleepingcats, I took a look at the bottom and that was what I wanted to see. That log is not the kind I would use.

I agree with others who've said that it's not enough just to keep a log of what you've done after the fact, it's important to set goals and then record how close you've come to meeting them. The diary I use is actually one designed for business/work, but the way it's set up is perfect for what I want to do with my piano-diary.

The left hand page has a space for each day (i.e. 7 slots). This page can be used like a log or for daily reflections. The right hand page is just an empty (lined) page, which I use to write weekly goals on the top half, and reflections at the end of the week on the bottom half.

For about the last two years, I have always kept a "play list" on my piano. I started using this as a way to keep my repertoire up to "playability" (is that a word?) So it has three categories:
1)exercises (Czerny, Hanon etc)
2)pieces in progress (things I am currently working on)
3) maintenance pieces (pieces that are "completed" and that I simply want to maintain so they stay "playable")

Categories one and two are things I work on every day, and all the pieces in category three have a day written next to them (monday, tuesday etc) so I don't play all those songs every day, but I play all of them at least once a week. I can't play all of my repertoire every day, so if I didn't do this, I would forget which songs I have played and which I haven't.

I plan to keep using my play list to tell me what I'm playing everyday, and my piano diary I will use for planning, strategizing and reflecting about my practice.

Just my method, for what it's worth.