2024 NEW YEAR'S RESOLUTIONS!
Happy New Year and welcome to 2024!
I hope that you have had a wonderful, merry and bright start to this new season and want to hear all about your New Year's resolutions!
Share with us what resolutions, or goals you might have for this year
They could be:
- Repertoire goals (what pieces you want to learn!)
- Lifestyle goals (I want to practice 1 hour a day, 5 times a week!)
- Personal goals (I want to get outside my comfort zone and perform in public for people...on a tonebase community concert for example
) - Anything else!
By sharing your goals and resolutions with us, it helps hold you accountable and also provides inspiration for others as they seek to find or stay the course on their own!
Cheers and Happy 2024 everyone!
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Happy New Year tonebase community! Here’s to a great and musical 2024. I hope you have all had good holidays.
Whilst working on the Schubert challenge, and several times last year, I was thinking that I hadn’t been playing much Beethoven recently. So, I’ve had the crazy idea to revise many of the sonatas that I have learned, but also to learn some of the ones that I have not played in the past. I have played most of the ones with titles, although not the Hammerklavier and I don’t see me playing that any time soon if I’m honest. But I thought I would start at the beginning with the first one in F minor, and continue to learn/revise the first 12 over the course of this year.
One a month. How crazy is that?
But I would also like to work on the Chopin studies.
I was very interested in the Cortot exercises that were discussed in an earlier challenge last year, so, I was thinking to add one study per month as well , this is probably truly crazy.
I don’t know how long I’ll be able to keep this up, although the holiday month has been quite busy and I have made a reasonable start to the first two of each opus so this is where I’m going to start from.
January will be Beethoven Sonata Op. No. 1 in F minor which I have never played before, and Chopin study Opus, 25, No. 1.
Hopefully I will be playing some of these in the online concerts.
Right now I’m off to practice!
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Angela Fogg Sounds amazing! I just started Op. 14 @#2, thanks to Vidhya's recommendation. Those Cortot exercises are a great idea also. I should do them, too.
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Gail Starr That’s great Gail. I shall certainly have to take them slowly to begin with to make sure I’m not pulling my hands around. Chopin must have had such flexibility in his wrists!
Hope I get to hear yours!
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Angela Fogg These goals are amazing, and they don’t sound ambitious at all… ;-) Seriously, do it! And record, and share! It’ll be such an inspiration to all of us! If I had the discipline to limit myself to it (which, alas! I don’t), I would absolutely love to spend a year or two learning and studying nothing but Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier, Beethoven’s Sonatas, and Chopin’s Études - the Old Testament, New Testament, and Catechism of piano music, so to speak.
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Hi all,
It’s great to read of everyone else’s goals, very impressive!
Good luck with them!
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Alexander Weymann Well thank you Alexander. I’m not sure you’d want to hear a Beethoven sonata after only a month of study, bound to be lacking depth - and a few other things as well! Also, a major cog in the works was going back to work after the Christmas holidays. I love my teaching but it does take up a lot of time.
Nonetheless, I’m enjoying the challenge and feel it is going quite well so far. As for sticking with it all year, that remains to be seen. I know I am such a magpie and easily distracted by shiny new pieces so we will see!
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Gail Starr I find some of them quite awkward, more awkward than the actual piece so I treat them with a lot of respect!
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Angela Fogg I can VERY MUCH relate to the feeling of being a magpie attracted to shiny new pieces - that’s so totally me! In fact, that’s one of the major benefits of studying with a teacher again: I can’t stray very far from the straight and narrow way because the next lesson is looming and I better have some progress to show in the pieces I’m supposed to be working on. :-)
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Alexander Weymann The attraction of forbidden treats! Good luck for your lesson!
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1. This year, I would like to learn the following pieces : a) Schumann : Children Scenes, b) Mozart Sonata K 309, c) Chopin Valse op.34 Nr2
2. I will try to study 3 hours per week
3. I intend to perform the above pieces to my family and friends
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Alexandros Papakostas Can't wait to hear you when you are ready!
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Resolutions have not always been a thing for me, but since I am a new lifetime member here I will give it a go.
Repertoire goal:
J S Bach's Inventions & Sinfonias....with Magdalena's help! She is super awesome!
Lifestyle goals:
Practice at same time everyday. I will make this happen!
Personal goals:
push myself to actually see what I can achieve on the piano. I am re-inventing myself. To stay fit a daily walk with my backpack filled with weight. Not sure if I will have the time to hit the woods this year, but if I do I want to be prepared !
Anything else:
As long as I am pushing my brain, I will throw in a language or two...half hour of German and maybe French everyday. woooo hooo !
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Repertoire Goal for the New Year: learning a Haydn sonata for the first time. I am going with Sonata no. 53 (Hob XVI: 34) in e minor.
Practice Goal: to memorise things as I learn to play them. I tend not to do this, but would like to get into the habit of committing pieces to memory alongside learning them. I am starting with a Kapustin Jazz Prelude (number 4) and Chopin's "minute waltz" to see how I go.
Fitness Goal: prepare for and complete a local trail run in the Blue Mountains, Australia: UTA 11: https://uta.utmb.world/races/uta11
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- Repertoire goals (what pieces you want to learn!): My teacher has given me Liszt's Sonata in B minor as my next assignment. It will easily take me the entire year to learn a first rough draft of this piece, especially since I have been admonished to "practice slowly for the first 10 months". - My other goal for this year is to learn the entire set of "Métopes" Op. 29 by Karol Szymanowski. I've had a hopeless "musical crush" on that cycle since my teenage years; so far, I've only been playing the last one ("Nausicaa") of those three stunning "poèmes", as the composer calls them.
- Lifestyle goals (I want to practice 1 hour a day, 5 times a week!): I don't really need to set myself goals for how many hours to practice; I'm obsessed enough that those add up very quickly each week.
Instead, I need to work on more balance in my life - exercising regularly (aiming for 8,000-12,000 steps and some yoga each day to start with), meditating twice a day, eating and drinking in a more conscious and healthful way. Not very original, I know, but those are the things that would benefit me most as a living human being and as a musician. - Personal goals (I want to get outside my comfort zone and perform in public for people...on a tonebase community concert for example ): After decades of almost never playing in public, joining the tonebase piano community last year has encouraged me to occasionally perform and even record a piece, but it's always a struggle because I get stiff and frozen with fear and nervousness each time I play for an audience. So, my goal this year is to not just keep playing for people, but to get more comfortable doing so. I've subscribed to the "Bulletproof Musician" podcast and mailing list, have found a couple of helpful books on the subject by Don Greene, and look forward to the tonebase seminar on overcoming performance anxiety this Friday (1/12)!
- Anything else! I have bookmarked dozens of interesting looking tonebase courses of which I want to watch as many as I have time for this year!
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Alexander Weymann Great goals! I’m sure the Liszt will be amazing. Can’t wait to hear it! Will also look up Szymanowski- a new composer for me.
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Vidhya Bashyam oh, you’re in for treat, then! The Préludes Op. 1, the Étude Op. 4 No. 3, the Variations Op. 10, the first and second Sonata, the “Métopes” and “Masques”, as well as “La Fontaine d’Aréthuse” for violin and piano, and the two gorgeous violin concertos! So much wonderful music by this composer waiting to be discovered…
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Alexander Weymann Thanks! Will listen to these!
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Happy new year to all though a little late.
- Repertoire goals:
12 classical sonatas, 12 romantic big works, Grieg and Schumann concerto, 1 Prokofiev sonata
12 modern pieces I dig out myself - Lifestyle goals
4 hours (or up to 12 mini sessions) a day practice - Personal goals
Concerto with orchestra by winning auditions, 6 solo or chamber recitals a year - Anything else!
Be rich, Find a life partner lol
- Repertoire goals:
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Repertoire: Bach Goldberg 18 and Aria (at least) and Couperin Barricades.
Life: Connect deeply with friends more often
Personal: Make time to exercise as well as practice piano. I have no problem making time to practice, but I need to be very disciplined to also invest time in my personal physical fitness.
Other: Find a way to host a collaborative event for musicians at my house, which could include a paid performer or a space for several people to perform what they have been working on.
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Geoffrey Grosenbach that sounds great! where are you from, Geoffrey?
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Andrea Buckland I'm in the Seattle area
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Geoffrey Grosenbach I love every single one of these goals so much!
I heard Couperin’s “Baricades” for the very first time just a couple of weeks ago and immediately got the sheet music; I find it a lot harder than it sounds if you try to hold each note’s exact duration with your fingers and use the pedal sparingly. Can’t wait to hear you play it!
https://youtu.be/tnL_qz4QHYU?si=9mPD8uN7uW7upYDM -
Geoffrey Grosenbach Have you looked into Meetup.com? I found my local Piano Meetup in Orlando, FL that way and my friends there also happen to be in Tonebase. My friend Daniel in Madrid can help you set up your own Piano Meetup, if you like. He’s developed an awesome platform in Spain!
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Gail Starr Thank you so much for suggesting Meet Up research in our own cities. So many terrific opportunities to complement the Tonebase experience. I am exciting about pursuing some connection in person with folks where I live. It hadn't even occured to me.
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Thanks, Dominic and Tonebase.
- Repertoire goals
-- Schumann Kreisleriana
-- Beethoven Sonata Op. 111
-- Bach French Suite no. 2 in C minor - Lifestyle goals
-- Practice Sight reading 15 minutes every day
-- Practice piano with Mental practice while traveling - Personal goals
-- Public performance at least once a month
-- Increase article writing (in Chinese) efficiency, from 1500 words/ 6 hours to 1500 words / 3 hours. - Anything else!
-- Make sure I travel to Japan in May.
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Fingers Lan Schumann Kreisleriana is a fantastic goal! Very ambitious; gorgeous music; rarely played (compared to several of the other big works by Schumann)!
- Repertoire goals
