is anyone learning by themselves with the piano handbook by carl humprhies? i just started playing on christmas day and so far im on the piece by henry purcell but its really hard. ive been told that this is not a great beginners book. anyone know anything about hal leonard adult piano library? thanks.

It's not a bad book but the book basically covers what would amount to several years of learning I would say. So, in my opinion, what you need to do is take each few pages or so of the book as it progresses and then supplement that with material of the same degree of difficulty. So when near the beginning of the book he gives you Greensleeves as a piece to do you should also be trying to find several other pieces of about the same difficulty and not just think you can play greensleeves and then move on to the next level. In that way it provides a good outline or framework for you to expand upon with other books, repertoire etc.

I'm with limavady. I use the handbook as a supplement to Alfreds. The Handbook is very good, but it goes so fast that either supplement it or use it like I do.

Sorry, I do not have any experience with Hal Leonard.

BTW, the Etude in Am you are learning is still one of my favorites. I can remember struggling with it as well. It feels so good when you nail it the first time. It will happen. Slow and steady....

I've been teaching myself from the Humphries book. I found the quick acceleration in difficulty from piece to piece to be a draw. I can already read though. If I had to start from scratch I'd have selected something a little less condensed.

I 'supplemented' the book with music of similar difficulty but never thought of it in that way. I treated the extra material as playing for fun.

Oh yeah, I also use the book "Piano Exercises for Dummies". Despite the embarrassing title I found it really sped up my learning to work from it for 20-30 minutes a day.

I bought this book in 2003, when I first "contemplated" a return to piano. I now refer to it sometimes - just to brush up on my theory - but haven't done any of the tutorials.

Having studied piano as a kid, I think it's a great book for an adult "re-beginner" who lost all their piano lesson John Thompson books (like I did), but not good to learn off of if you're a true adult beginner.

I've heard nothing but good things about the Alfred series - lots of threads here on this.