One year ends and another begins. This is a great time for thinking about new goals and resolutions. It's a good time to think about what you'd like to do with your piano studies. Obviously, for a resolution to mean anything, YOU have to commit to it and buy into it. It's great if you choose and follow your own goals. However, if you're scratching for ideas, here are some suggestions.
1. Commit to 300 days of practice.
Here's how it works. You don't plan for 300 days. You plan for 365 days, but you understand that things come up, and you might not be able to practice every day. Hopefully, those days where you can't practice won't happen often, but you must commit to achieve this. 300 days is 6 days a week for 50 weeks per year. To prove you've done this: keep a log of your practice. Here's an example of how your log may look.
2. Add 5 more minutes to your average practice time than you did in 2013.
I hate even suggesting practice times because of differing goals and schedules. Any time you add, even 5 minutes per day, will make a difference. But if you really, truly want to make leaps and bounds on the piano, you need to be thinking much more than that. However, let me offer the next suggestion to go along with this one.
3. Shoot for at least 3 hours of practice within a week.
If you're keeping track of the numbers, that's 6 days of practice at 30 minutes per day. Now, maybe you've had a busy day and can only practice 10 minutes. That means you'll have 20 minutes to make up later on. A good solution is to plan for, as an example, 45 minutes of practice, which gives you some leeway. No matter how many minutes you practice, the days matter the most! 4 days X 45 minutes equals 3 hours, but it's not as effective in the long run as 6 days X 30 minutes. Keep in mind that this suggestion is only intended for those who are not already doing 30 minutes per day on the average. If you're doing more already, then just see if you apply goals 1 and 2. 30 minutes is a floor, not an ultimate goal. More practice, provided you're practicing daily and correctly, is always better.
Does your practice schedule match the type of pianist you want to be?
4. Become an expert at practicing, note reading, and technique.
A. Practicing - Learn how to aggressively and strategically break a piece down and to overcome any difficulties. Learn how to estimate the maximum number of measures you should expect to learn in a practice session, and become really good at those, not just barely improved over the whole piece.
B. Note reading - You need to know all the notes you ever see in a piece of music, AND you need to be able to name the notes without having to think about it. You should be able to see a note and name it instantly. If you can't yet do this, go here several days per week at http://www.musictheory.net/exercises/note, click the customize button in the upper right corner to set up your exercise to suit you, and get good on the notes. Answer 100 notes correctly within 3 minutes, and you are an expert.
C. Technique - Play your scales with the right notes and the right fingerings on every single attempt no matter what the speed. Learn all your chords and arpeggios for your level. These are the things you just plug into practice and speed up the process.
What else musically do you wish to accomplish next year?
