Supporting Your Piano Pathway
Written by Andrew Eales
HAPPY NEW YEAR!
As one year turns to the next, it is customary to reflect on the changes we want to make for the better as we move forward.
As we do so, let’s first pause to take stock of the last twelve months, considering both our triumphs and disappointments. An honest evaluation of where we are in our journey enables us to make positive, realistic, actionable resolutions for the coming year. With that in mind, I invite you to consider the following:
- What moments at the piano did you find encouraging this year?
- Can you name three pieces that you especially enjoyed playing?
- Can you think of three pieces of Active Repertoire which you can play at a standard you are happy with, right now?
- What challenges have you overcome over these last twelve months, and what strengths were revealed?
- What habits and routines supported your practice, and which proved less helpful, or even draining?
- Which aspects of your piano playing life do you want to carry forward into 2026, and which would you prefer to let go of?
- How would you describe your piano playing at the end of 2025?
- What is the single thing about your piano playing that you would most like to improve in 2026?
As usual at the start of each year, I would like to offer a few general ideas for New Year piano resolutions that some might want to adopt. Having reflected on the questions above, try to personalise or consider your own goals…
1. Deliberate Listening
When I was eleven, I had to attend a weekly ‘hobby’ session at boarding school. From an extensive list, I chose Listening to Music, which turned out to involve sitting cross-legged on the floor of the maths teacher’s office while he enthusiastically worked through his LP collection, memorably including such horse-scaring avant garde delights as Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire and Varèse’s Ionisation.
Nearly half a century later, I still enjoy listening to music as much as playing it, and have an unquenchable curiosity for fresh sounds and hidden treasures. But sadly for many, music exists merely as background noise to accompany other activities. We too rarely listen to music with our undivided attention.
I invite you in the coming year to actively, curiously, deliberately listen to music purely for its own sake. Experience live music, savour recordings: stop and fully listen.
2. Explore new piano repertoire
Provoked by the wealth of music you listen to (rather than picking titles off an official list), I hope you will be keen to explore new pieces at the piano, and January is a great time for starting new repertoire projects!
Consider trying a ‘challenge piece’ that inspires you. But if you haven’t had much time at the piano recently, it can be equally rewarding to get back on the bench with an easier piece that can be mastered with just a few hours of practice, restoring confidence in your ability and ongoing piano journey.
The Pianodao Music Library includes hundreds of repertoire suggestions, reviewed in depth, with plenty of choices and styles for players at every level:
Pianodao Music Library
Bringing together hundreds of publications, sorted by level, and with top recommendations of the best musical and educational material, the Pianodao Music Library is the place to discover your repertoire!
3. Improve the quality of your practice
Are you ever frustrated to find that, having spent time practising, you have little to show for your efforts? It may be a cliché to say that effective practice is a matter of quality and not quantity, but it is so true.
To discover a more rewarding approach at the piano, please check out my little book How to Practise Music, which is packed with top tips for success:
How to Practise Music
Accessible and authoritative, HOW TO PRACTISE MUSIC is Andrew’s highly acclaimed book of tips for anyone who wants to get more out of their practice.
4. Revisit your piano technique
Practising scales, arpeggios, studies, and watching videos about how to play “correctly” have their place, but can in turn be damaging if not pursued with a healthy mindset and clear intention.
Pianists who obsessively pursue competitive goals, or who practise for long hours with engrained bad habits, can develop discomfort and even injury.
How is your technique? Do you have harmful habits that you haven’t paid enough attention to? The following articles is worth considering as you reflect on changes to your technique in the coming months:
Preventing Injury in Pianists
In this in-depth article, I consider the link between piano technique and injury, discuss other important risk factors, and suggest a pathway that freely leads to a more healthy piano playing approach.
5. Physical exercise
Well here’s another cliché! We all know folk who tried out a new exercise regime for the first three weeks of January, and no ‘New Year’s resolution’ list is complete without the obligatory reminder to get healthy.
But playing the piano is (among many things) a physical activity, and looking after our physical wellbeing should be a priority for all of us. Our technical fluency at the piano literally depends on looking after ourselves.
Chinese Qigong practice offers a range of traditional, simple stretching and breathing exercises which support pianists’ needs. And get this: no gym membership is required! Pianodao includes free, easy instructions to help you get started:
Qigong and Piano Playing
Qigong practice can lead to improved physical health, mental clarity and emotional well-being. And it can also have a surprising impact on your piano playing…
6. What can you play?
Rather than just focus on learning new music, why not develop an “Active Repertoire” of three or four pieces that you can play at any time, any place: without notice or embarrassment, and hopefully over time from memory?
Pianodao’s Active Repertoire Project runs quarterly, and is all about rediscovering enthusiasm for playing our favourite pieces, developing our confidence, personal expression, and fluency. Find out more here:
Active Repertoire Project
The Active Repertoire Challenge aims to encourage all piano players to develop an active repertoire of three or more pieces which can be performed to others with freedom, expression and confidence.
7. Get feedback on your playing
Whether a beginner, adult returner or performing pianist, we all regularly reach points in our journey where feedback is as welcome as it is necessary.
If you are looking for a teacher, consider these essentials:
• the teacher must have appropriate qualifications and experience to help you develop without limits
• the teacher must have a friendly, positive attitude and be sympathetic to your musical goals, interests and taste
• the teacher must be approachable, reliable, and somebody you are happy to spend time learning with
• the teacher must have the flexibility to accommodate your lessons at a mutually convenient time.
To find out more about how private lessons can help you, check here:
Who needs piano lessons anyway?
More and more learners are trying to teach themselves piano without the support of a good teacher, using apps, videos and online resources. What (if anything) does a teacher offer that can’t be found elsewhere?
If you don’t have a teacher, or if you would like a fresh, expert perspective on your playing, you may be interested in using Pianodao’s innovative Online Feedback Service. It is inexpensive, and incredibly flexible:
Online Feedback
Discover a more flexible and musically satisfying format for improving your piano playing online, with the freedom to access individual, expert advice whenever YOU want to.
8. Share your music with others
Performing in public is scary for many, not least because those who took traditional piano lessons were often encouraged to compete against each other from a young age, so now indelibly associate playing for others with judgment and criticism.
Positive performing begins with sharing our music with those closest to us: our friends, family, and neighbours. Forget the artificial constructs of professional perfection and the “classical recital”, and start playing to your network of people for shared enjoyment, as regularly as possible!
I was delighted this Christmas to receive videos from a couple of parents sharing their children’s playing, not to show off their talent, but to showcase the wonderful part that music now plays in their happy family home life.
As we pass the mid-point of the 2020’s. I am more convinced than ever that the future of piano playing will be less about the commercialisation of music, and more predominantly about personal expression, satisfaction, improvement, and informal community music sharing.
Positive Performing
Performing and communicating are regarded by many as key goals for learning to play an instrument. But is it essential to play to others, or to perform in public? And if so, how do we overcome anxiety, nerves, and any negative past experiences?
9. Playing with hope
Around the world, 2025 wasn’t the best of years, was it?
After watching, hearing, or reading a cycle of news which seems designed to promote anxiety, fear, blame, and division, the time we spend sat in front of the piano can too easily seem little more than a pointless distraction from our problems, real or imagined.
Playing with hope invites and requires us to suspend this negativity.
At the piano, let’s return our gaze to what really matters to us as players, embrace positive creativity, personal development, and cultural enrichment. We can rediscover the sense of hope that brings meaning and joy to our individual and shared lives.
We can share our love of music far and wide, blessing those around us through our positive playing. We can reject competition in all its forms, and celebrate cooperation and collaboration with others for our shared benefit and happiness. We can connect with the musicians of the past and present, and imagine a better future.
My wish for all Pianodao readers at the start of 2026 is exactly this: that our piano journeys can be filled with hope.
10. More ideas to consider
I’ve been writing lists like this for a few years, so in case you need more inspiration, here are some of the other suggestions I have offered in the past:
We truly share in one of the most extraordinary and rewarding of pursuits, and I hope you will make 2026 a year in which your own piano journey becomes even more enjoyable than before.
Space is provided on the Winter Active Repertoire Sheet, which is free to download here, where you make a written contract with yourself at the start of the year.
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