So I was talking to one of my adult students the other day. This is a very capable adult student. He is working on some extremely challenging repertoire (song). The kind of repertoire that he’s currently working on is the kind that doesn’t just come together over a week or even two weeks. He’s probably going to be chewing on some of this material for maybe even a couple of months. It can be a little bit harder to stay motivated and not get frustrated when you’re working on something like that. A lot of music students begin early on, even for the first several years learning material that they may put together in a week or two, or even less if they work hard. 

So one of the things that we were talking about is how to create more attainable goals in other areas of our musical development apart from repertoire. And that’s important for every musician. Repertoire is great, and we should always be trying to learn new material. But sometimes that material may be what I like to call project material, stuff that’s going to take us a long time to learn. 

There’s so many different things we can work on for manageable and attainable goals but I would suggest focusing on fundamentals: 

• Speed, fluidity, and accuracy in scales, arpeggios, and chords using a metronome, be specific. 
• Dynamics and expression, a little bit more difficult to objectively assess but video saved to your Google drive can be very helpful on this. 
• Slow groove, the exact opposite of speed, like (a) But at ridiculously slow tempos, often even more challenging than speed.
• For wind instruments and vocalists, range is a great goal, increasing by one half step at a time. For piano or stringed instruments, how about adding octaves to your scales or arpeggios.

I would love to hear from you—what are some attainable goals you like to work on or suggest from your students?