Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I tried three beginner's adult piano books, and I found this by far the best. The other two were The Complete Idiot's Guide to Playing the Piano, which had too much talk and not enough practice pieces, and You Can Play Piano, which was OK. Another reviewer mentioned that the book uses an unorthodox notation. This is true; the musical notes have the letter written on them, so that, for example, a middle C is not just a black spot, but a black spot with a white C inside it. This is certainly non-standard, but I found it very handy--at the early stages of learning you're trying very hard to coordinate your sight of the notes on the page with your fingers and your understanding of which notes on the keyboard are which. Every little helps, and this helped me a lot. It doesn't hurt much, because you do get familiar with the standard notation at the same time, and it makes getting started much less painful. The best thing about this book, however, is that there are lots of songs you can play to practice. Within a week I was playing (not perfectly, but recognizably) Cockles and Mussels, When the Saints, Londonderry Air, Skater's Waltz, Home Sweet Home, Row Row Your Boat, Now is the Hour, Marianne, Long Long Ago, Frere Jacques and Greensleeves. This is *lots* more fun than playing the same one or two songs over and over again. Plus these songs are all arranged for two hands, with very simple left hand arrangements to start with. At the back of the book are twenty more songs arranged both for complete beginners and for people who have completed the first half of the book. Even at a very early stage it is fun to poke around in this section and pick out at least the melody line with the right hand. Overall, very strongly recommended. I've had a lot of fun with this book and I expect to have a lot more.