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Hello i am dazzled by the piano all the time, and i am working at becoming good at it.

Alfreds Adult complete course for beginners is killing me however. The songs in the book are all entirely painful for me to play, it is as if the tones are all very painfully boring. Its waltzes and melodies that sound to me to be centuries old. I simply cannot make myself do it.

The songs are killing my passion for playing the piano.

Everytime i listen to artists like Yann Tiersen, Phillip Glass, Coldplay, basicly any of the modern / new age / minimalistic piano types i enjoy it massively, pop such as cold play i also enjoy.

So i ask you, is there any books for learning piano through modern songs such as these ?

Do you know of some truthfully EASY songs that these authors made or of music in this genre, that you would say a beginner could start learning and evolving from and actually play the song ?

Kind regards, Henrik

I recommend Hal Leonard's Adult method, as the songs have been written in this century.

Also, you may want to check out music by Elvina Pearce (First Impressions I think is the name of the book) and Jeanine Yeager's Fresh Impressions (probably only level 1). This music is really accessible and new agey sounding and quite appealing for a beginner student who doesn't want to play nursery rhymes.

By the way, Hal Leonard does have some of those in there, but they do try to disguise them. You can also play along with the accompaniment CD once you learn the notes well.

I would recommend the Really Easy Piano Range. They have a variety of modern hits arranged for piano. They have some great arrangements.

you can get these from places such as amazon and musicroom.com take a look at one example.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_ss_i_0_15?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=really+easy+piano&sprefix=really+easy+pia%2Caps%2C225

If you are not enjoying what you are playing then it is important for you to change this very soon otherwise you will loose the enthuisam for playing and you don't want to do that!

Good Luck.

Henrik,

I was in the same predicament as you when a forum member was kind enough to provide this information to me a while back so I will pass it on to you and hope you enjoy the books as much as I do... They are not teaching books per say but they contain simplified arrangements that I was able to tackle with about 9 months of lessons under my belt. I presented them to my teacher and we went over them together. She said they were just a tad over my ability but not so much so as to be discouraging. She was right because I am doing well with them and she is happy that I am so enthusiastic about my choices. Based on your stated preference for new age minimalist music you should enjoy these two books, for starters.

"New Age Narda Easy Piano" (sampler). The works of 5 new age artists.

http://www.amazon.com/Narada-Piano-Sampler-Leonard-Corp/dp/0793528739/ref=pd_sim_b_8

The second is "The Ultimate David Lanz Collection" (new age easy edition). It has many of David's compositions in a bit simpler arrangements.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Ultimate-...mp;ie=UTF8&qid=1337259579&sr=1-5

I'm just finishing up the polishing of "Cristofori's Dream" in David Lanz's book... everyone seems to like it, even the dogs; it puts them to sleep and I enjoy playing the piece.

There are many similar books available but the material in these two should keep you busy for quite some time. Of course, the teaching books have their place too, especially in the beginning.