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I've been playing piano for over a year now. I am self-teaching. Initially I've spent majority of the time on memorizing pieces I liked. I then moved on to mostly practicing sight-reading. Based on that, I noticed structured study approach really works for me (i.e. you have a lesson with some examples and then exercises where you need to accomplish specific goals, and then you move on).

Currently I have a little more time, and I'd like to devote it to some book based piano course. I'm looking for something that will focus on technique, and give me enough variety to further develop my sight-reading. Ideally it would be a course that starts somewhere at the beginner level, then moves to intermediate, and finally advanced. Do these books come with CDs? I'd like to be able to verify that the pieces I'm playing sound the way they're supposed to.

I really don't know what's out there. I've seen some posts mentioning Alfred. Any recommendations are welcome. Thanks.

Eternal-

There are many posts about the Alfred series in this forum that you would probably find useful. I personally used the Alfred's Adult All-in-One series and was very happy with it.

another book to consider is Humphries "Piano Handbook"....moves along quickly and has a CD.

david

Alfred is very popular on this forum so you would have a great place upon which to fall back if you had any questions or comments. I've also heard good things about the Faber adult series and even the Bastien Adult series, although I've never tried either myself.

From purely a practical point of view, I consider piano method books which don't open up comfortably on my music stand to be of little use, Alfreds Adult All-in-One is ring bound and opens up perfectly. The Carl Humphries book is also ring bound but heavy and cumbersome so consequently I have only ever browsed through my copy away from the piano. You could always tear the pages out of other books I suppose, or Xerox them.

Eternal,

I have not really seen a method book or series that takes you all the way to Advanced classical literature. For a reference, advanced classical literature to me is: Bach's P&Fs from WTC (not the easier ones), most of Brahms, Liszt & Chopin Etudes etc.

Carl Humphries books leave you about in the intermediate range, and in fact push you up to early intermediate literature within the first third of the book (a mistake IMO if this is your primary book). John Thompson's older Modern Course for the Piano 5th Grade Books gives a long list of intermediate to late intermediate pieces that are expected to be studied along with the pieces in the lesson book. Even if you look at literature series books, Keith Snell's Piano Repertoire series takes 11 levels with 33 books total to get up to what I believe is early advanced literature (easier P&F's, Liszt Consolations, etc.)

By comparision, Alfred's Basic Adult Piano Course (I don't have the all-in-one edition, so I can't comment on that version) takes you up to early intermediate level in the third book and then presents several intermediate level pieces as goal pieces in the last part of third book. At this point you are expected to work through classical repertoire books if your goal is to play advanced classical music.

For discussion of technique, Carl Humphries books are great for an adult beginner. Add in plenty of piano repertoire books to give yourself enough material to really master the additional information at each level.

Alfred's is not a bad way to go and gives you a good basic cirriculum.

I'm personally working steadily through the Keith Snell piano repertoire and dreaming of the day when I can play the advanced literature I've mentioned above.

Good luck finding the right set of books.

Rich

Eternal, having just started with John Thompson myself I feel it would probably meet your needs up to around mid-intermediate level. Like Rich, I'm not aware of anything that would take you all the way to advanced. I think you'll find that Alfred's All-in-One also leaves you to go it alone around early-intermediate level, though I don't think I've looked at book 3.

Crusader's point about bindings is a good one. I wish all music books came comb-bound or spiral-bound as standard. The John Thompson books aren't spiral bound, and it's a pain (though I have a feeling Santa might be bringing me a comb-binding system so that I can bind it myself). I recently took a book to Staples to be comb-bound and they managed to get one of the pages turned around so that the affected song now goes from page one to page three to page two. Fortunately it wasn't one of the songs I bought the book for and it's one I'm unlikely to ever want to play.

Hi Eternal,

You've gotten some good advice here. I'll just add my thoughts to the mix.

Alfred's is a nice, steady method with good technique. The All-In-One books contain some blues, jazz, gospel, and other material, so you get introduced to a wide range of styles. In my opinion, the music isn't always tremendously inspiring, but then I always have my students supplementing a method book with other repertoire they love. There is a CD, which is OK -- but it's not just piano on the recordings. They've 'jazzed' the songs up... so you get a feel for the songs, but you can't always hear exactly what the piano is supposed to be doing.

There are threads here in the ABF for all three levels of the Alfred's All-In-One, so you'd have plenty of other people and teachers to interact with as you work through the book.

I really like the Fabers' Adult Piano Adventures -- the music, to my ears, is much more interesting. Nancy Faber is a composer, and I find even her beginner level pieces lovely. The Fabers have a website of their own, and you can learn more about them and their method books: http://pianoteaching.com/

What I also love about the Faber method books is that they have produced a whole line of fun, supplementary books called PreTime to BigTime, which are style-based, graded books for all levels. So if you want to play marches, or hymns, or ragtime, you can find a book that fits exactly with the level of the method book you're currently in. They also have the Developing Artist set of books which is all classical repertoire (not simplified versions).

You can get the Adult Piano Adventures books with CD's as well.

Hope this helps!

Best,

Kim

Thanks for the suggestions. I guess it's off to the Barnes & Noble's now to see what's in stock. I like the spiral binding tip.