Hi:

I learned of this book here:

http://pianoeducation.org/pnomethd.html#Choice

The info on that site seems a little dated. However, they are consistently against "position playing" which perhaps the popular Alfred method uses? Not sure. But I can appreciate the "intervals" and note reading emphasis that they attribute to the "Play by Choice" method. I think I will check it out.

Does anyone know about the "Play by Choice" book and have an opinion on it?

P.S. I will be beginning to learn piano completely from scratch! At present my only musical knowledge is a few weeks on the alto recorder. And I'm studying a music theory text. I seem to have very strong relative pitch. And I'm a Chopin fan.

I do not know this book, but I know Fred Kern, who has written music for Hal Leonard's method books. These method books do not stress hand positions, and this is something that I think is the best approach. This is why I don't use Alfred. It develops a dependence on knowing the hand position rather than reading whether the note goes up down or repeats, as well as reading the actual pitch. IMO, hand position teaching gets the student to play something that sounds nice quicker, but at the cost of really developing good reading skills. There is also a tendency to play chords in the LH very early, much sooner than the finger dexterity is developed and thus making injury or bad technical habits much more pervasive.

Thanks for the input!

I'm curious about what you use. I've been using Alfred's and have been disappointed with it's emphasis on chords. I took organ lessons when I was a child and can readily recognize and play chords on my left hand but have a very hard time reading individual notes. It looks like to me that most of the major publishers start chords very early. What's a good alternative to Alfred's?

Thanks,
Kris