25 piano goals for beginners, daily practice and your first performance

Piano goals for beginners

Beginner goals are about sitting down every day and finishing one whole piece.

• Practise 15 minutes a day for 30 days.
• Name 20 notes on the staff in 60 seconds.
• Play a C major scale with both hands together.
• Play one piece hands together at a slow, steady tempo.
• Play your first whole piece from start to finish.

Piano practice goals

Practice goals count minutes and days, and they are the goals every other one depends on.

• Practise on 100 days this year.
• Practise 100 hours in a year. That is about 16 minutes a day.
• Practise each new passage hands apart first, for a month.
• Play every new passage at half speed before full speed, for a month.
• Record yourself once a week for 3 months.

Piece and repertoire goals

Repertoire goals count finished pieces. Playing from chords to back a song is a skill shared with guitar goals.

• Learn one new piece a month for a year.
• Memorise 3 pieces.
• Build a 15 minute set you can play at any time.
• Learn one piece that is above your level, over 3 months.
• Play 5 songs from a chord chart.

Piano technique goals

Technique goals are scales, arpeggios and reading, measured with a metronome.

• Play all 12 major scales with both hands together.
• Play all 12 major scales at 100 beats a minute.
• Play arpeggios in 5 keys.
• Play one piece at full tempo with a metronome and no stops.
• Sight read for 5 minutes a day for 60 days.

Performance goals

Performance goals put a listener in the room, which changes how you practise. Playing for a singer is the meeting point with singing goals.

• Play one piece for one person.
• Play in a recital.
• Record one piece and share it.
• Pass your next grade exam.
• Play a duet, or accompany a singer.

What is a good piano goal?

A good piano goal is specific about the piece and the standard. A review of 35 years of goal research found that specific, hard goals lead to higher performance than being told to do your best. "Get better at piano" gives you nothing to open the book at. "Play this piece from memory by June" does.

Practice matters, and it is not the whole story. A review of 88 studies found that deliberate practice explained about 21 percent of the differences in music performance. That is a large share, and it is practice of a certain kind: slow, focused, on the hard bars. So set goals about how you practise, not only how long.

The length still counts, and it is the easy part to track. The research on goal tracking found that keeping a record raises the odds of reaching a goal.

How to track piano goals

Tick off the day when you close the lid. A review of 138 studies found that people who monitored their progress reached their goals more often, and that recording it beat keeping it in your head.

Practice days are a day count. Minutes and pieces are amounts. Many creative challenge ideas are built the same way, as a count of days you showed up.

A piece takes weeks, and most days sound the same as the day before. A picture that fills up one practice at a time shows the weeks adding up.

Frequently asked questions

What are good piano goals for beginners?

Practise 15 minutes a day for 30 days, learn to name the notes quickly, and finish one whole piece. A short daily practice is easier to keep than one long session a week.

How much should I practise piano each day?

Choose an amount you can keep for a year. Sixteen minutes a day adds up to 100 hours in 12 months. What you do in those minutes counts too: a review of 88 studies found that deliberate practice explained about 21 percent of differences in music performance.

Should my goal be a piece or a number of hours?

Both. The piece tells you what to work on. The hours make sure the work happens. Write one of each: a piece by a date, and a number of practice days.