Happy New Year!

A Happy New Year to all my readers, visitors, family, friends, and all people around the world. It is a beautiful day with the snow falling outside my window as I write this. My lovely daughters returned this week from their musical tour in China, safe and sound. They had many stories to tell, some amusing, some interesting, some inspiring, and some thought-provoking. This week was also Armenian Christmas, to be exact, January 6th. On that day, I played a concert with some wonderful people.

I also had my own personal retreat this holiday season, as my daughters were in China and my husband went to Croatia on a business trip. I spent some me time for four days. Time well spent being productive, as I accomplished a great deal, practicing, writing, and evaluating my goals for 2026.

Does any of this apply to music in any way? I think it does. If you want to study music at any level, it is important to set goals. A clear vision of the repertoire you will work on, concerts, rehearsals, dates in your calendar that you already know, and groups you might want to work with. And most importantly, a look back at 2025 for self-reflection will help move forward. Therefore, this time of year is an excellent opportunity to look into all aspects of your life, not just music, and decide what you want to achieve in the year ahead.  Also, even when you are just starting to learn music, you might want to make some plans and think about where you want to be a year from now.

I will continue posting on my blog about music and short stories throughout the year. And I will have several new additions to announce soon. So, you can follow up on that.

As for practicing our instruments, based on a post I wrote before the year-end in 2025, a good place to start for cellists is practicing scales. It builds the strength much needed to play this instrument, helps with intonation issues, and develops one’s technique beyond recognition. One goal during this practice could be to observe both hands for relaxation and eliminate tension if it occurs. As a warm-up, warming our hands before starting any repertoire is crucial; playing scales is quite beneficial for this purpose.

I have noticed that sometimes it is difficult to recognize tension in our bodies as we play. It might be worthwhile to find a class or course that teaches students relaxation techniques. These techniques can be applied afterwards while practicing. If someone is having difficulty relaxing, a coach or instructor can help them relax by offering additional ideas for letting go.

Another way to deal with tension would be to completely let go of the body when there are opportunities during our playing. Especially when we are accompanied by the piano, there will likely be some breaks. Or in string playing, open strings offer such opportunities to let go of the muscles and gain much-needed energy. We must then learn to conserve energy.

Even when we are working on technical aspects, we can still explore musicality during our practice sessions. One fun exercise I have asked my daughters to do is to take a phrase or a section from an etude and play it in different moods, such as happy, sad, angry, and joyful. Even when the key is minor, we can try playing it in a happy tone to see what we can achieve. The result might surprise us.

We cannot remind ourselves enough that practicing is an everyday adventure if we want to attain results. It is, therefore, unreasonable to try several times and then give up. I would also recommend we practice both in the morning and in the evening, if possible. That would be ideal, again, as long as we are not overdoing it. Of course, that might not work for everybody, but that is an idea to work with or explore in the year ahead.

One aspect of practicing we must remember is that, as much as our teachers help us and make things easier for us in different situations, the major part of our work lies with us to improve our playing in our practice rooms. Somewhat like an exploration to find answers to our problems by listening to the masters, asking questions, observing wonderful players, and, if possible, even playing with well-trained musicians. Therefore, we should proceed with an open mind if we want to move forward in our playing.

Finally, taking care of our instruments is an important aspect of playing music that we must not forget, especially in this cold weather. I personally have difficulty in this area, as my instruments are in a room where the humidity drops significantly during winter. I have a humidifier in the room and a hygrometer to keep the humidity as constant as possible. And I have to continuously check on the humidity and make adjustments.

On these notes, I wish my readers and everyone a wholesome musical New Year and much strength and courage in your music-playing journeys.