Starting to Play Paperback – 4 March 2005

Nice

A brilliant book for starting to play the piano. It starts from the basics. I learnt so much from it

Está en inglés pero es perfectamente comprensible. Muy bueno.

I am learning to play piano at age 85 years as a good exercise to keep my brain sharp.

I started out self teaching from books and this was one of three books that I bought. This book does not go heavy on the theory and gets you straight in with understanding what the note lengths are and how to read the grand staff. It then starts you out playing within the range of fives fingers so you do not need to move your hands from their starting positions. This allows you to concentrate on learning the notes in the score and also the important task of keeping your eyes on the music notation and not on your hands. It then changes the starting position of your hands later on so you can learn to read from different places of the grand staff and then eventually works you into stretches and playing notes that require you to move your hands to different positions.Now, I have to be honest, when I began piano lessons, I had mastered a number of the pieces from this book but had not realised that I hadn't quite understood how the music was supposed to be played and was making minor timing mistakes that meant the music was not sounding as the composer had designated. The music teacher has helped me get these faults in order and now I am playing the pieces a lot better.I now play graded pieces for Grade 1 but here is the thing, the tunes in this book are really nice and even though I am playing more challenging pieces, I like to go back to this book and play through the music it offers. I haven't finished the book yet but I am still working my way through it to compliment my graded work. I would even say it is assisting my graded work as the later pieces are at about Grade 1 level.I agree with other reviewers that nothing beats having a piano teacher. I think that at the very least you should have a competent piano player listen to you playing the pieces from the book to ensure you are playing them correctly. However, as a book that keeps you motivated, I think it does a brilliant work. Carol did a really good job of choosing interesting pieces that are a pleasure to play and listen to.