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Beginner pianist here, so my goals are tempered with both hope and ignorance.

Goals for 2022.

Greatly improve the speed of my sight reading (I know I can do this one).
Play passable (clumsy, but all the way through) versions of:

Dubussy - Arabesque No. 1
Rachmaninoff - Prelude in C# Minor

It probably sounds nuts, but I'm suuuuuuuper stubborn, so I'm going to find a way.
We'll see after 1,000 hours of practice and teaching my parrot new swear words.

Johan, thanks for keeping the tradition alive. Those are some impressive goals. Its wonderful that you can play the organ in that church.

Is this your Church? St. Willibrord's Church It's beautiful!

I'm going to have to think about my goals for 2022 - I want something I have a reasonable chance of actually reaching!

Sam

It's beautiful - must be very inspiring to play the organ there!

Sam

I envy you Johan. I would love to play on a real organ. Unfortunately, that's not a realistic goal for me.

My goals for next year are:

1. Improve my sight-reading.
2. Continue learning quick study pieces every 1-2 weeks.
3. Learn some longer pieces - I'm thinking of a Bach French suite and/or a complete Beethoven sonata.
4. Learn something from composers I've been neglecting - maybe some Brahms or Scriabin.
5. Build a larger music library.

For 2022 I have technical and repertoire goals.

Technically I want to work on touch and fluidity. I want to develop my general technique and improve my nonlegato touch.
I have a lot of repertoire goals:
Chopin: 2 Nocturnes (easier ones), 2 Preludes Op 28 nos 10 and 14 for faster practice.
Schubert Op 90 no 4 for a piece that is longer than the stuff I usually learn
Godowsky-Chopin Tristesse Etude for the left hand
Scriabin: a couple of the preludes Op 11 focusing on octaves and chords
Busoni Prelude #2

I think that is doable—I’ve practiced most of those pieces, but I want to play them well. Also a wish for me is to practice some Bach sinfonias—I don’t really have aspirations of performing them, but I want to work more concertedly on counterpoint. Depending on time and my workload I want to practice some Debussy and Lili Boulanger. And as a push piece if I’m up to the challenges of everything on my list I would like to start work later in the year on Ravel’s Valses

Thank you for starting this thread. This gave me a chance to think deeply about what I hope to tackle this year. As a very early beginner, I have 6 process goals (“how to” do) and 6 task goals (“what to” do) for 2022.

tl;dr version:

Habits:
* 5x practice sessions/week
* explore: shorter, more often?
* primed by exercise
* use a timer daily
* keep a piano journal
* via frequent practice, hard-wire the “start slow to go fast” learning method, focusing first on scales, then difficult sections of daily lesson/rep work

Tasks:
* Finish PGS intermediate and advanced lessons
* Sight Reading: study, immersion, testing via Piano Marvel
* 40 easy songs, to be determined
* 2 stretch goal songs, ‘Succession’ and ‘Howl’s Moving Castle’
* improve Roland:GO travel piano with vi Labs ‘Modern U’.

Please skip this detailed version of the list above, if you are annoyed by long posts. It’s for my recall and clarifying ‘what the heck did I mean by that’, as I try to move forward. Thanks— and have a wonderful, happy, and productive New Year!
m.

==================== “Process Goals”

schedule habits: 3 habit goals
* frequent: practice 5 days a week (ideally: 7 days, at least 10 mins)
* short: experiment with shorter practice sessions, multiple times in a day
* primed: prioritize piano practice immediately after workouts (swimming, walks, etc.)
* “… we have it within our power to induce in ourselves a state that is ideal for learning… by exercising briskly just before we do so.” positive learning impact on cognitive function lasts for up to 2 hours after moderately intense activity. - research finding, “The Extended Mind”

practice habits: 3 habit goals
* pivot: “don’t overfill a full cup”:
* practice pivoting focus after 25 minutes
* timer: use 25/5 minute timer daily to encourage frequent breaks
* journal: keep a piano journal
* reflect weekly: what’s my current ‘rate limiting step?’

technical habits: 1 habit goal
* focus on hard-wiring the ‘super slow, teeny tiny’ method of fast learning
details: “To Go Fast, Start Slow”
* commit to slow, methodical ‘very small’ tempo increases
* relax, slow down
* use metronome and
* very explicit & clear plan/pattern
* to methodically increase tempo
* in very small increments
* at 100% accuracy each time:
* @ scales: learn and practice, using the method
* @ rep: daily, integrate ‘slow, tiny’ into daily learn/practice of difficult sections of lessons, songs, pieces

==================== “Task Goals”

lessons: 3 achievement goals
* PGS:
* complete Intermediate Lessons
* complete Advanced Lessons
* Piano Marvel: focus on sight-reading
* learning: complete ‘Sight Reading Samurai’ lessons
* integrate SASR into practice:
* initially, once a week
* during immersion, once a day
* immersion: complete one 7-week Sight Reading Sprint during the year
* research findings @22:51 mark:

repertoire: 2 achievement goals
* playful:
* 40 songs in a year - focus on easy songs, a little below current level
* stretch rep:
* Brittell’s “Succession Theme”, simple version
* Hisaishi’s “Merry-Go-Round of Life”, Howl’s Magic Castle, simple version

gear: 1 achievement goal
* upgrade piano sounds on Roland:Go Piano
* install vi Lab’s “Modern U” VST on laptop (purchased Black Friday ‘21)

——
“The Extended Mind”, Annie Paul
The Extended Mind: The Power of Thinking Outside the Brain: Paul, Annie Murphy: 9780544947665: Amazon.com: Books

Hmm, I don't like goal setting like this. I do stuff in a rather disorganized way but, I will try.




-Play as many Bach inventions until I think I get what I needed from them
-Learn all 24 scales, be able to distinguish minor/major/augmented chords by ear (I can already do ​this I think), circle of fifths in all 24 keys, learn all chord inversions,
-Start actually writing down my compositions, and doing more composing exercise like transcribing pieces I already know in diff keys
-Learn basic sight singing/solfeggio and conducting, not at any good level, just understand general concepts
-Learn one movement of a Beethoven sonata (probably F minor, or the easy g major one)
-Listen to all of Feinberg's compositions, and Scriabin's
-Do 1-2 more concerts after my first one in Feb
-Start russian piano school club at my college
-Watch all of Andrew Furmazyck theory videos, and start using musictheory.net seriously, complete Bastien theory books to test myself
-Look into Yizhak Sadai Harmony book, and Tchaikovsky Harmony book
-Start practicing slowly, and for sight-reading sight read pieces I already know while training myself to look ahead, my biggest weakness as a sight reader is I don't have the habit of looking ahead down.
-Learn some of my scales in thirds/sixths as in the Plaidy book, and maybe complete a whole Czerny book??!?
-Lastly, try to start focusing on one piece a week/or two pieces a week, instead of a bunch of pieces. Narrow my focus more.


EDIT: ALSO PRACTICE ARPEGGIOS WAY MORE I AM SO WEAK AT THEM COMPARED TO SCALES AND OCTAVES/CHORDS GRRRR!!

@mtb I like the idea of practicing right after a workout. I did that today without even knowing about this and I like how it felt. Will look to keep that up this year. My overall commitments re my jazz piano efforts:

Learn rootless chords, two hand voicings, and shells in all keys (major, minor, and dominant)

2-5-1 progressions and Tritons substitutions in all twelve keys - major and minor

Practice at least 6 days per week, including at least 15 minutes on scales with emphasis on minor scales

Build in time for practice right after morning walk at least 3 days per week

Learn 6 songs for my repertoire at a proficient level

Thanks,

Marla

My goals for 2022 are the same as for 2021 which I wrote down in my piano journal and just finished reviewing.

1. Sight-read 2x/week for 30-45 minutes. (Without this goal, I wouldn’t sight-read at all)
2. Play with more dynamic contrast and crescendo and decrescendo more gradually.
3. Play with less/no tension, which means lots more slow practice.
4. Better control of voicing and phrasing.
5. Develop more endurance by playing longer pieces.
6. Play with more energy and precise rhythm.

My goal for 2022 is don't give up.

1. Encourage my wife to play more and ensure she has the time to do so. It’s her piano and she loves it, but other things get in the way of her playing it.

2. Learn all the major scales myself and start on the minors (both guitar and piano)

3. Decide on and purchase a clavichord kit.

4. Start building said clavichord kit and be ready to complete it in 2023

I will go with three things again, just to keep it easy.

1) Learn to do historical improvisation. I'm taking the course from John Mortensen - hopefully I can finish it and actually improvise a prelude "in the style of..."

2) Play something in all the online recitals.

3) And play some more clarinet/piano pieces!

Sam

My goals for 2022 are as follows:

• Add 30 minutes of material to my memorized repertoire. I acknowledge that this is an ambitious goal, and adding only 25 minutes would also be a big success
• Memorize a work at Henle level 7
• Learn at least one piece by Beethoven
• Learn at least one piece by Tchaikovsky
• Learn at least one piece by Schubert
• Learn at least one piece by Debussy
• Learn at least one piece by Ravel
• Learn at least one sonata movement
• Learn, without memorizing, 15 songs from the Danish "Højskolesangbogens melodibog"
• Listen to all of Tchaikovsky's "The seasons", while following along in the score, once during the year
• Listen to all of Debussy's "Childrens corner", while following along in the score, once during the year
• Listen to Ravel's "Miroirs" and "Gaspard de la nuit", while following along in the score, once during the year
• Get proper lighting above my piano
• Get started with video recording of my own playing.

Woah! That sounds ambitious. Are you sure this is realistic?

The last five points are of course fairly easy, but for the others the really difficult one will be memorizing 30 minutes of material. If I manage that one, learning one work for each of the named composers will be a done deal, since that simply fits into the 30 minutes. The piece at Henle level 7 I do not expect to be able to play well; my goal is simply to memorize the notes.

Learning the 15 songs from the Danish melody book is not as hard as it may seem, since these are very easy arrangements, and the songs are quite short (and I know the melodies well already). It should require less than 15 minutes work per song (I will not be memorizing them).

There is no doubt that memorizing so much is going to take a lot of effort, but I have memorized a lot of material this year, despite it being a difficult year for me because of time-consuming non-piano related matters. I believe I can do this, but time will tell.