NEW YEAR'S RESOLUTIONS! š„³š¹š„
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! š š¹š¤
181 replies
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My upcoming entrance exam for historic performance practice with baroque violin at Musikhochschule MĆ¼nchen in summer 2023 requires keyboard skills, which I need to build basically from nothing. The piano requirement includes something at the level of difficulty of Bach's first invention in C Major. My goal is to be able to perform that invention in style at some viable tempo from memory on July 1st and to record that performance on YouTube. I commit to posting my planning and a progress report each Sunday in this thread. My preparation will involve work from the Alfred book on scales, chords, arpeggios and cadences, lessons from the course Intro to Bach's Keyboard Music here on tonebase Piano and other materials. I will post a video at least every other week.
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This is great! I usually don't have New Year's resolutions, but I love this idea so here it goes. I know there'll always be pieces and things I need to learn that show up during I year. So I want to make a list of pieces to learn that I think is very doable. These pieces will be:
Ravel: Sonatine
Beethoven: Op 14. No. 1 and 2. Sonatas in E major and G major.
Mozart: K332. Sonata in F-major.
Haydn: Hob. XVI:34 Sonata in E-minor.
Chopin: Op. 27 no. 2. Nocturne in D-flat major
The goal is to learn and bring these pieces to a concert level. Looking forward to it!
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My resolution for 2022 was to find a duet partner, and I've managed to find 4 (3 pianists, 1 violist). My resolution is to enjoy our time together and not get in my head about perfection.
I think I'm also going to go with Seymour's advice to spend 10-15 minutes a day playing tunes by ear. Six months is small investment to have that intervallic skill.