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In the past few weeks, I've begun practicing piano again after a way-too-long hiatus. Just now I dug up my old lesson books from my last year as a piano student. I had advanced past the lesson books at that point and my teacher bought me a selection of books from each era to study. What I've decided to do is to continue where I left off in my old books-- study the next songs in the books and learn from them what I can. Three of the books I have a lot of work yet to do: Baroque is Bach, 18 short preludes edited by Willard A. Palmer (Alfred). Classical is Sonatina Album compiled by Louis Kohler/Ed. Allan Small (Alfred). For the modern era, I have Bela Bartok For Children vol. 1 (Boosey & Hawkes). I have a long way to go in each of those three books.

The Romantic era is probably my favorite, and is probably the reason I only have three more pieces left to learn. The book is Heller, Selected Progressive Etudes, edited by Lynn Freeman Olson (Alfred).

I am also working on additional pieces. Currently I'm simply brushing up on pieces that I was once good at or began studying before I stopped taking lessons so many years ago. I have been averaging 60 minutes of practice a day. I'd like to increase that eventually, but with a 2 year old and a 4 year old at home, I'm not holding my breath. Does anyone have any suggestions on a book that I could use next as my Romantic-era "lesson" book? Thank you!

Carolyn

Carolyn,

I can give you quite a few suggestions, but it also depends on what approach you want to take. It looks like you are going for more single composer books. This is one way of approaching pieces, however, it becomes harder to find pieces that are at the same level. If you want to continue with that trend here are some suggestions:

Burgmuller Twenty Five Easy and Progressive Studies, Opus 100 (follow this up with Opus 109 then Opus 105, if you want to continue with his works.)
Schumann Album for the young, Opus 68 then Scenes from Childhood, Opus 15
Tchaikovsky Album for the Young, Opus 39
I have a nice collection for Schubert: Dances for Piano. This will keep you going on Schubert for a very long time. Note that it is not easy to determine what pieces are easier or harder in this set.

More advanced options would be the following:
Chopin, An Introduction to his Piano Works. (Alfred)
Liszt, Keyboard Essentials. (Schirmer)

Alternately, I find that there is some advantage in working through a set of repertoire books that are selected to make sure that the pieces are very close in level. I use the Keith Snell series. (See www.kjos.com for more information, including a complete list of all pieces in each level.) An advantage of this is that you are exposed to many other composers. There are plenty of other series like this if you choose to follow this approach.

Rich

Thanks for the tips! I'm going to take a look at all those suggestions and figure out where to go next. I'm not committed to sticking with the "single composer" route; it's just the books my teacher got for me when I completed Alfred's book six.

And a question... after I completed Alfred's book six, I was considered "level seven" which I was in for about a year until I graduated high school, at which point I studied music for a while and took a few lessons after that, at one studio was considered "level eight." Would I start in Keith Snell's level eight? How can I determine which "level" I am in? Many of my books that I work out of are considered "early advanced," but I use those for performance pieces, not so much improving my technical work (which is the goal with continuing with my lesson books). While I will make improvements working on my performance pieces, I feel I need a more methodical approach to just selecting a song that is pretty.

Thanks again for your help!

Carolyn

That's not an easy question to answer, especially since so many of the grading systems differ from each other!

My best advice is to find the books at a local bookstore, if possible, where you can browse through them and judge for yourself, or failing that, shop at a website that lets you look at a sample page.

My hat's off to you for being able to practice an hour a day with a 2- and 4- years old. Mine are 9 and 12, and I'm only now feeling like I can come up for air...

Carolyn,

Levels in the method books really don't compare to the levels listed for piano repertoire or for levels as they may be determined by the studio.

For example, Piano Town to Keith Snell's Piano Repertoire series follows this progression:


As Monica states, every system of grading or assigning levels to pieces is unique. Your best bet is to see what the levels are for pieces you are already playing.

For Keith Snell, this is easy, as they have a complete index available of his series. Here is the link:
http://www.kjos.com/pdf/brochures/snell_reper_index.pdf

Bach's Little Preludes range from about level 4 - 6 in Snell's series. If you want to start with this series, that is where I would start looking at the table of contents to see which one fits your level best. It also would not hurt to start a bit lower as a review. The pieces may be easier and may give you a good chance to practice your sight reading.

I don't get any commision off Snell's works, it just happens to be one that I like, so I know it better than other series. The series does have it's limitations - there are occasional wrong notes, there is little help with ornamentation, sometimes it seems like it takes you forever to go through all of a level. The strengths are that there is a nice variety of music in each level, and each level seems to be very carefully chosen to be at about the same difficulty.

Rich

There's an Alfred level 6??? Geeeeez I am never going to finish this series...

chiyosdad,

Alfred's Adult Piano Course only goes up to level 3. The books often have a diagram that shows that the Adult level 3 is covering the same material as the Basic levels 5 & 6. In fact, I even found the chart online:

http://alfred.com/img/jpg/abpl_leveling_chart.jpg

Rich