New Year's Resolutions 2025
New Year’s Resolutions 2025: Let’s Make This Year Musical! 
Happy New Year, tonebase pianists! As we kick off 2025, it’s the perfect time to reflect, dream, and set new goals for our piano journey. Whether you're aiming to master a challenging piece, tackle scales with more precision, or simply find more joy in daily practice, we’d love to hear your resolutions!
Here are some ideas to spark inspiration:
Learn a dream piece you’ve always wanted to play
Improve sight-reading or ear-training skills
Dedicate time to consistent daily practice (even 15 minutes counts!)
Record and share more of your playing with our supportive community
Share your goals in the comments below and let’s keep each other motivated throughout the year. Together, we can make 2025 our most musical year yet! 
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Happy New Year!
My goal for 2025 my goal for 2025 is to memorize a small piano recital of 4-5 that i've previously learned. My dream this year is to learn a Prelude & Fugue by Bach (most likely BWV 850), but might need to wait another year before giving it a try. Other than this is to work on new pieces:)
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Gail Starr you teacher being Jarred Dunn?
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Gail Starr Thanks alot:) I've actually semi-learned the prelude with my former piano teacher about a year ago, but coudn't get the last part to sound particulary good. Hoping 1,5-2 years playing other pieces have made my tecnique better
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Continue my Bach journey by getting a few of the French, English Suites or Partitas in hand. I am also adding a couple of Haydn sonatas. And 10 minutes of scales every day no matter what. You can always find ten minutes, I tell myself.
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At the end of last year (some time in September), I decided that I finally wanted to give my local university's music program a shot. I've always had huge struggles and major anxiety performing in front of anyone and I just accepted that for what it was. Now, almost 8 years after the last time I ever performed, I'm getting back into it all at once. Throwing myself into the deep end.
My audition is February 8th and my goal for this new year is to perform at least 10 times before then and finally gain some confidence where it's been lacking. I'm nervous, my repertoire isn't completely learned/memorized yet, but I'm determined to make it happen and get into an amazing program that I really hope will bring more music to my life this year and for years to come!
If anyone has any useful advice for memorizing, preparing, and performing for an audition (especially as someone with performance anxiety) I would greatly appreciate it.
Happy New Year everyone!
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Gabi Young Hi Gabi, what a great goal! Are you auditioning for a degree program, or a non-degree continuing education format? I can only speak to the adult continuing education program I've done here in NYC, happy to share feedback on that if that's helpful!
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Gabi Young What a wonderful goal! Have you checked out Noa Kageyama's Bulletproof Musician? He has lots of great ideas and practical steps to take. And Molly Gebrian's book: "Learn Faster, Perform Better" has a lot of great tips, too.
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Judy Kuan Thank you! I'm hoping to get into my university's piano pedagogy degree but I would love hear about your experience. Anything helps :)
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Michelle R I haven't heard of either of those. I appreciate you sharing. They seem like great resources that I will definitely look into. Thank you!
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Gabi Young Michelle is right, Noa Kagayama has a video on YouTube with TB plus his own podcast and course. I'm struggling with performance anxiety (a new and strange problem for me!) so I'm thinking of taking Noa's online class in the spring.
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Gabi Young you got this! My suggestion is to put yourself under pressure by recording yourself, livestreams, and playing for friends and family. Practice performing over and over. Don't stop to fix. Top to bottom. Get used to the fell of the entire performance time. For me the cracks show up real fast and then focus on repairing them and do it again. Stephen Hough said we all worry way too much about mistakes and do that at the expense of making music. Be brave! And finally, I had a friend that was terrified to give a speech at a wedding. I told her to focus on me in the audience and only me. I was the only one in the room. Imagine I'm there. I am! PS. I can say all this but I too am terrified. I will try to practice as I preach. We'll do this together!
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Gabi Young Hi Gabi, that's amazing! I wish I could pursue something like that. Some tips that come to mind as someone who's also curious about performance anxiety, that are more general in nature:
- Extra preparation of the first 1-2 minutes of your pieces so that you can rely on autopilot as you get used to the piano... that buys you some time to settle into the piece. (Also in our continuing ed auditions, they never have you play the entire piece)
- Identify pick-up points that you can practice starting cold from, to reinforce your memory and in case they ask you to skip around
- Make / embrace *all* the mistakes during your practice run-thrus - which I try to think of more as "practice recoveries" rather than "practice performances". Sometimes I request extra distractions from the friendly audience
- Meditation! And "centering/anchoring" practice that Noa talks about - no need to dive in, it's your time to shine :) I also find this prevents rushing / starting at a faster tempo than intended
- Write into your score where you have mental bandwidth to take a couple of deep breaths (e.g., the calm before challenging codas/passages), the oxygen really helps mental focus and physical endurance (applies to climbing too
)Good luck! I hope you'll keep us updated on your journey!
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My new year’s goals for piano are to improve my technique and speed.
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Ok, my goals for this year. Many and lots of work, but I think I can do it if I stay consistent and break it down monthly. Plus some tasks can check several items on this list. (Last year I achieved almost everything I wanted):
- Include transposition to my practise (just a few bars in each new piece, but to get a small start with that concept)
- Get the pianomarvel major scales triplets done up to 4#/b (CGF, Bb Eb Ab, DAE in one exercise plus cgf and aed if possible). And b minor seperate.
- Add ii-V-Is to my scale practise and the blues scale and pentatonic version each.
- maaaybe learn all 3 octatonic scales and noodle/improvise with them
- Do all the ABRSM scales as requested up to grade 4. (It's scales and arpeggios up to 5 accidentals plus some contrary motion scales and chromatic, some of that is covered by my other scale goals, these are additional):
- B, Db, a, d, e, g, b, g, c, f, c#, g#, 2 octaves
- Broken chords ascending and descending in inversions (triads and octave) C G F a d e
- Arpeggios 2 octaves: d g b c, f, c#, g#
- C, E, A, F, Eb, a, c, d h.m. contrary motion unison 2 octaves, starting on tonic (plus see how many of them I can do in grand form, plus C, G, F in thirds and sixths)
- chromatic scale, start D, Ab, C (any key in grade 4) hands seperate
- Master/record two older pieces I had put aside/wasn't fully happy with (e.g. Shostakovich waltz, Leaf Rag, Chopin 34.2, Moonlight Sonata 1st mvt, At the Ivy Gate, River flows in you, Sonata facile 1st mvt)
- Learn a new Grieg piece, perhaps Arietta
- Learn a Bach invention (most likely no. 8)
- Learn to play one of my own compositions
- Have 10 secure pieces in my repertoire plus 2 current temporary ones (I have 8 now the are at +-70% with ups and downs...)
- Pianomarvel SASR aim for 700, at least finally get solid 650! (Am at a stable 630+, with several 650+ and one 706 and no clue how that happened haha)
- Get 40 new 100% stars in the pianomarvel technique/method section, especially those on ear training! (Might adjust the number, I haven't had a closer look yet)
- Compose 6 pieces
- 40x challenge grade 2+, with more 3 and 4s. (Playlist here
- Do the Musora full 30 days Blues course again and the 30 days Jazz
- Work on my technique (Zhdanov course, need to set specific goal here how many videos I want to do. Maybe 10 thoroughly, slow, mindful, no rushing)
- Do ear training more often (play by ear, think of a tone and then play it/try to find it, hear melody in advance)
- If possible, play at least once in front of an audience/recital situation
- Learn one Jazz standard from Leadsheet, including a sheet improvisation part (Fly me to the moon?)
I think that's it... I am sure this will help me improve a lot! I just need to make sure that I don't get bored by all that technique stuff...
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Dagmar What an amazing and detailed list of projects. You'll do great!
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Gail Starr Thanks. I try to set SMART (specific, measurble, achievable, relevant, timed) ,goals as much as possible, it's easier to evaluate and see what is done and to break it down for the next month. That's why the list looks so detailed. Need to make the ear training specific still, like "at 10 days a month".
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Dagmar I can tell you must be an amazing person at your job. Planning this way is the key to success!
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Gail Starr Freelancer + ADHD. It's a survival technique
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My Musical Resolutions for 2025
As I step into 2025, I'm setting some exciting goals for my piano journey. Here are my resolutions:
- Practice at least 30 minutes a day (1000 minutes per month) – Consistency is key, and I’ll commit to building a steady practice routine.
- Progressive Overload – I’ll challenge myself to gradually increase difficulty in pieces and techniques to push my skills to the next level.
- Focus on Methods and Techniques – Whether it's mastering scales, arpeggios, or other technical exercises, I’ll work on improving my foundational skills.
- Self-Examine My Performances – I plan to critically evaluate my own playing, identifying areas where I struggle and finding ways to overcome them.
- Chopin’s Op. 64 No. 2 – This is my dream piece! I will work on it diligently throughout the year with the goal of mastering it by year-end.
Looking forward to a year of growth and musical achievement! Let’s make 2025 our most musical year yet.
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In 2025 I am stepping down to a limited part-time, semi-retired status at work, and I hope to have a lot more time for music. Here are my 2025 goals, resolutions & aspirations for piano and other musical endeavors:
1. Improve and refine my technique
My main approach to technique in the past has been to try to play pieces that are too difficult for me. This year, I’ve signed up for Tonebase’s Technique Tune Up, and can’t wait to get started on it later this month.
2. Approach my practicing systematically.3. Continue my odyssey through The Well Tempered Clavier, learning as many of the Preludes and Fugues as I can.
Right now I'm just finishing F# Minor Bk2 and working on G Major Bk1, and re-learning C Minor Bk1, and B Major Bk2 so I can record and post them in our Tonebase thread. C Major Bk1 and B Minor Bk2 are done & ready to post.
4. Continue to explore other classical repertoire.
Some ongoing wish-list pieces and projects:
• Relearn and record all the Rachmaninoff Preludes (I have previously performed all of them, albeit rather sloppily, in a series of Adult Ed classes at New England Conservatory, about 25 years ago).
• Dvorak Humoresques
• Dohnanyi Ruralia Hungarica.
• Various Beethoven Sonatas.
5. Continue to develop my understanding of jazz harmony and rhythm, and modernize my sound.6. In improvising, to make my left hand parts more interesting, moving beyond basic timekeeping and harmonic support. (see also next resolution)
7. Incorporate Baroque thoroughbass and voice leading techniques and counterpoint into my improvisations.
I believe that thoroughbass and partimento offer an untapped gold mine of techniques for modern improvisers. I’ve been slowly working on this for a couple of years, aided greatly by Derek Remesc’s Tonebase courses, including “Reverse Engineering Bach”, as well as his books The Art of Preluding and his Compendium of Voice Leading Patterns.
8. Record an ‘album’ (or two) of jazz & pop standards and other music.I recorded a self-produced Christmas album several years ago entitled 'A Modal Christmas', and I still get lots of positive feedback on it. Technology now allows us to do this almost entirely in-house -- i.e. at home!--and I'd like to add some more to my catalogue.
9. Record my classical pieces.
After polishing and finishing each piece as best I can, I want to create a permanent record of them through recordings.
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Peter Golemme I can't wait to watch your musical odyssey progress!
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