Piano Lessons Book 1: Hal Leonard Student Piano Library Paperback – 22 July 1999

As a piano teacher of 20 years I have recently come across this book and it is without doubt the best I have found! My pupils absolutely love it and so do I!It breaks away from the usual initial learning of CDEFG right hand and then the left hand CBAGFThe clever thing is how it introduces improvisation at the same time as learning to read music. I find that doling improvisation and playing by ear alongside teaching my pupils to read music, often results in them loosing interest in practising from their piano books because why play very basic tunes when you can play more rewarding ones by ear!. This book manages to incorporate both at the same time whilst keeping the written tunes inspiring! The tunes are also far nicer than other booksAll the little tunes are very clearly presented, have a teacher accompaniment and a CD to use at home and the second player arrangements of the tunes are SO good. They have harmonic and rhythmic interest that I haven't seen in other books and often have an element of jazz and also some of the black note pieces are atmospheric and use the whole tone scale.Instead of the usual way of first teaching where a note is written on a stave and going through C, D, E tunes etc it introduces lots of other parameters before that which is such a good idea.The book starts with pieces on the black notes which teaches you the groupings of two and three black notes and then you get to improvise on the black notes which will always sound nice because it's the pentatonic scale. Then the book teaches you to recognise what the notes on the keyboard are, then what number each finger is, then using both hands in one piece, then some basic rhythm and simple rests and it isn't until half way through the book that the pitched notes on the stave are introduced.By this stage, a lot of the other things are learnt and so there is more brain power to learn and remember what note is what on the stave which I find is the hardest part for most people. So, therefore my pupils are learning' to read the notes much quicker than average and are whizzing through the pieces, are getting less frustrated, everything seems easier than with other books. They also love going over the old pieces because they sound so nice and are rewarding to play!i highly recommend this book and look forward to trying the next book up in the series!

but it wasn't what I wanted.

A well-designed method book for young beginners, which gives some emphasis to an intervallic approach to reading.There is a version of this book available in the UK that uses British terminology (crotchets rather than quarter notes etc.) and contains a code to access the backing tracks.

The book is fine but it was supposed to come with a CD and didn't

Fast Delivery, Value for money, Quality Product.

Only been having lessons a few weeks and already working her way through near to the end. Its been a great starter book for her. She's 6 years old.

Easy to use. Like the numbers for where your fingers are to go on the keys.

So cool that even my wife is loving it. But it is good for kids.