NEW YEAR'S RESOLUTIONS! 
Happy New Year to the whole tonebase Piano community!
As much we may love the piano, itās not so easy to set goals and stay committed to realizing them over the course of a yearā¦ at least, itās not so easy to do this alone, which is how I often try (and fail) to undertake such goals.
Thatās why Iāve created this thread. Here is a place for anyone and everyone in the tonebase community to come up with your individual piano-related New Yearās resolutions and support each other in our efforts to realize them.
PARTICIPATION
- Make a post below to announce your piano-goals for the new year,
- over the coming days, weeks, and months, use the sub-thread of your own post to keep us all updated us on your progress (videos encouraged!)
- and in the meantime, scroll through to read each otherās resolutions and click āreplyā to offer advice or words of encouragement.
RULES
- Please try to keep conversations within sub-threads, and only make a single new post to share your resolutions. This will help keep the mega-thread clean so we can navigate more easily and check in on each other.
- Keep in mind that there are people of all ages and ability levels in the tonebase community, so if youāre one of the more advanced ones donāt gloat about it, and if youāre a novice donāt be shy.
- If you donāt want to share your goals, youāre still welcome to comment on other membersā thread.
SEE MORE SEYMOUR
- Watch the inspiring new video from Seymour Bernstein (see below) where he gives new year's advice to pianists from all walks of life. And, if you ever feel discouraged or stuck, this video is always there for you!
MY RESOLUTIONS
- I will go first! Iām supposed to play Rachmaninoffās 2nd Concerto (henceforth: āRach 2ā) with an orchestra in the fall. Iām usually a terrible procrastinator with learning new music, so my resolutions will try to counteract that:
- I resolve to give a beautiful, original, and confident performance of Rach 2 this coming fall!
- I resolve to have the full piece learned by the summer, with the 1st movement memorized and in my fingers by February 1, the 2nd movement by April 1 (Rachās birthday), and the 3rd movement by June 1.
- To get there, I resolve to practice the piece a minimum of 30 minutes every weekday, and 2 hours each on Saturday and Sunday.
- Finally, I commit to mindful practice, enjoying playing the piece slowly and carefully (itās sounds great slow), and always listening.
NOW ITāS YOUR TURN! LET'S GO! 
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Iām going to follow Benās example of practice, and goals. But the piece for me is the Barcarolle. I have the first 10 pages memorized. But the last 3 are just awful. I WILL finish it by summer! I keep reworking the first and am just so scared of the rest.
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Judith I agree with Gail Starr : a few measures at a time helps me when I get blocked.
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My piano goal this year is to play as much as I can in front of others and with others, no matter how easy the pieces are. Playing for others makes me nervous. Tackling easier works makes playing for others more manageable and also makes me feel more confident. My ultimate goal is to muster the courage to play one song on the little beat up piano outside the town coffee shop:))
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Judith you canāt eat an elephant in a single bite! Divide up the last 3 pages into tiny groups of phrases, and work on a little bit every day. I get overwhelmed easily and this method helps ME. Post tiny clips for us to help you anytime.
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LuminiČa That's a wonderful goal. I think easier pieces are often the ones people want to hear :-)
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Hello Ben, Happy New Year to you and all at Tonebase and thanks for a great TB 2022! Good luck with the Rach 2!
It's about 18 months since I returned to the piano and joined TB. I am really pleased with my progress and aim to consolidate my work to date in the coming year. That's pretty much a resolution that shouldn't be difficult to achieve!
I am with Seymour Bernstein on New Year's Resolutions. Therefore, I shall set out below my overarching plan for the foreseeable future.
I am intrigued to see your practice plan includes practising every day. This was an aim of mine, that has been kept mostly over the last eighteen months, apart from holiday breaks, but I am approaching my practice slightly differently in the light of Rebecca Penney's comment that anyone practising everyday is completely mad [or words to that effect]. There are the two extremes on this subject - Liszt saying you should read a book at the same time as you are hurtling through technical exercises [all day seemingly] and those who advocate mindful practice [Barenboim has said that he never practised for more than 3 hours a day, excluding rehearsals for concerts with others presumably].
I am planning to put something into practise that I used to do with competition horses, when I had them many years ago. The process is heavy training on Day 1 [3 hours: 1 hour in an arena and 2 hours across country] Day 2 is light exercise - walking and stretching exercise only, along with one day off per week mooching around in a field, which is also the predominant activity on Day 2. This allows the muscles, and the brain, to relax and recover after intensive use on the previous day.
This translates for the piano into 3+ hours on Day 1, and then just playing through chords on Day 2. This could be for an hour or more but it's lighter work, as I am focusing on inversions and learning patterns that are the most economical in terms of movement. I am doing a lot on the various 7th chords, 2-5-1, etc., at the moment, which is part of my plan to improve my memory/playing by ear, which I see as two parts of the same coin.
I have bought Jeremy Siskind's book and am working through it. My aim is to complete a chapter each month. He sets aural work - listening to seminal Jazz recordings. He says to listen to the bass to get the rhythm as the melody lines are syncopated. I find this works for hearing the bottom note of the chords too. Jeremy hasn't said it yet but I can see that working out the chord patterns then establishes the basis for adding the melody later. This is the opposite of what most people seem to do, including me [and fail to achieve], which is to pick out the melody and then try and figure out what chords go with the tune. The inverse is akin to Baroque figured bass style - working from the bottom up with a clear chord structure on top of the bass note.
The above covers my Day 2 work, which has its own inner direction of being able to have complete familiarity with straightforward key/chordal structures so that I have enough facility to improvise fluently, even if at the most basic level.
Day 1 follows Seymour's advice to have three pieces, one of which is to stretch my technique by being just outside my current capability.
Piece 1 - classical; Piece 2 - jazz/modern; and Piece 3 -could well be a study but could be either jazz or classic. My focus is on cross-rhythms. It's the opposite of my flute playing where all the fingers and the brain are directed to playing a single note in a single rhythm. This is the most challenging area for me. I am concentrating on slow perfect practice with the intention of gradually speeding up the piece without having, say, four and a half beats in 4/4, due to the lag as I manoeuvre across the bars.
Scales - I now have all the major scales [similar, contrary and thirds], arpeggios, and dominant sevenths under my fingers [but I am still reading where necessary ['cheat' sheets - look at the music initially, then play without looking at the music]. It is interesting to start on another note that is not the tonic, as it is then obvious in some of the scales that I am not absolutely clear about all of the fingerings within the scale. This can be as simple as F major, where D is 4 in the LH and 2 in the RH. It just happens by muscle memory if you start on the tonic, of course!
My scales plan is to rotate the whole series each month - 6 per week.
The jazz work has started to include the modes and the melodic minor [up and down the same]. This changes my original position that there was no need to play the melodic minors [except for the ones that repeat the tonic at the top] as the up is the same as the major, apart from the minor third, and the way down is the relative major starting on the minor third.
Technique - this is scales based at present - diatonic chords, inversions, etc., but will be focused on my long list of TB courses that I have drawn up last year and that I plan to do this year, starting with the Taubman approach.
The Youtube demonstrations are really good for bed-time reading. We learn so much when we are at rest.
Another technical area will be Mozart sonatas. I play through Sonata X, K330, the slow movement mostly, but I need to put my mind to the first movement too.
Final technical area - Hanon in about six months time, hopefully.
Enough... I had surgery yesterday and am not sure what they give you after the anaesthetic but it seems to include amphatamine, hence the essay!
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I have omitted to include the minor scales - similar, contrary and thirds, and minor arpeggios. The majors and minors at 6 per week mean that the whole series rotates each month.
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Roy James-Pike Wow, Roy, that is so thorough.
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Anne Thanks Anne. I am a process person. It's called teleology in philosophy, which put crudely is akin to engineering, i.e., work out your aim and then plot out how to arrive there!
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Roy James-Pike In Software Engineering, we call this reverse engineering, right?
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Anne Could well be, it makes sense. I apply this to my job. I am a surveyor, often dealing with property law matters so process is all important: due diligence and all that!
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Roy James-Pike Hope youāre recovering well!
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Angela Fogg thank you Angela. Much better than expected!
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I've just found the Public area in the '2-week intensives'. That's amazing! Thank you so much! These will be added to my Technical list at one per week, starting with Dominic's scales and Claire's areggios, then the Mozart, then Ben's theory class.
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New member here from Australia! The idea sounds interesting, I never made any new year resolution before. But my number one goal is pracitce with intention and purpose!! I found that i can spend hours in front of piano not learning a thing and go back to the same mistake over and over again... yes i had a great time, no I am getting no closer to finish that piece...
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Johnny That is so refreshing! New Yearās resolutions are a big thing over here, especially at school when I was a child , every year I had to think of something different and inevitably write about it. Ugh! These days, not surprisingly probably, I donāt make them. But I will continue to try to be a better human being and work to be a better musician. Hereās to 2023 tonebase friends!
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That's a thoughtful training plan, and really makes sense based on your artistic goals. You sound like you're setting yourself up well for all-around musicianship, with fundamentals in place that will help you improvise and compose if life takes you that way. Hope the surgery went well!
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Thank you Ben Laude for this thread!! I am going to make a resolution to become more united with each piece I play, and maybe that will unite me more to the composer. In this way, through the piece to the composer, maybe we can unite in Spirit. By unite, I mean to become 'one-with' in a unitive way which ceases to cause an emotional/mental barrier ... a complete openness which allows for a flow of psychical energy to be expressed ... a unitive state: heart to heart!! I pray for this and look forward to hearing everyone's resolutions coming to pass :) xx +
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Will Green That's a beautiful resolution.
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Hi, everyone!
My plans include: improve some Chopin Etudes; Ravel Jeux d'eau; the four Schubert impromptus Op 90, and Liszt's Rigoletto Paraphrasis, and maybe learn Ravel's Sonatine. (...my regards to Prof Mok...)
And most of ALL, manage my stage fright
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lucianocastro. sc I love Jeux d'eau. Hope to see a video when you're ready to share :-)
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Leah Olson Hi, Leah! Thank you. I'll be working on it.
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Bonne AnnĆ©e 2023 Ć vous tous communautĆ© ToneBase!
Happy New year to everyone.
Thank You Ben Laude for everything you offer to all of us.
Thank You Seymour Bernstein for you advices! I really appreciate.
My piano challenge for this year :
Let the music be born through me, listen, interpret, let the work express itself beyond my frightening, insecure ego, wich constantly doubts that I can do it.
Find a piano teacher in order to evolve in my piano playing.
Get me an acoustic piano to better work on my sound, my momentum, my pitch, and my technique.
Perform in front of an audience.
Trust me enough to believe that I'm making the right resolutions.
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Aline Valade I love these! Best of luck to you this year.
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Leah Olson Thank You Leah, best of luck to you to for this new year!
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Just saw this today! So my piano challenges for this year will be:
1) Learn Chopin's Ballade #1. This is probably the classical piano piece that changed my life, so I'm going to commit to at least walking through the whole thing.
2) Finish learning Chopin's waltzes (at least not the posthumous ones). So it would be 34.3, 42, and 64.3 left! And of course touching up on the other ones.
3) Finish the other movements of Beethoven sonatas in progress. So that would be Appassionata 2 and 3, and Tempest 1 and 2.
4) Learn 3 more new Beethoven sonatas, one from each "era" (early, middle, and late). As of now I think it would be Op.10.2, Op.78 (For Therese) or Op. 81a (Les adieux), and Op. 101. I'm skeptical that I can finish all movements of all these, especially Op.101, so I'll see how far I go!
5) Finish an "opus"/suite. Probably a likely one would be Chopin's Nocturnes Op.27 (so just #2). Others could be Schubert's Impromptus D899 (#1, #2, and #4 left), Debussy's Suite Bergamesque (#1, #2, and #4) left.
6) Learn 4 more Bach pieces! A big commitment for me this year is to learn Bach properly, so nailing some Inventions/Sinfonias, and some WTC pieces and potentially some sections of the French Overture would be awesome.
7) Learn at least one piece from these composers:
- Haydn
- R. Schumann
- C. Schumann
- Brahms
- Mendelssohn
- Liszt
- Ravel
- Faure
- Prokofiev
8) Learn 3 20th-21st century pieces! At least the immediate ones I am interested in are:
- Barber's Pas de Deux
- Copland's Cat and Mouse
- Viola Kinney's Mother's Sacrifice
I might have bitten more than I can chew... But here we go!
