I gave my sister a copy of the Song Reader last night when my family came over to eat Christmas Eve dinner and open presents. She played through a half-dozen of the songs on our piano, it was really fun.

A couple of them were tricky/fast enough she couldn't really sight-read the piano part and sing the tune at the same time. So I tried doing the singing on those...probably should have switched places. She's a lot better piano player than me but she's a lot, lot, lot, lot, LOT better singer!

The only bad thing was my nephew left his ukulele back at college when he came home for the holidays. There are some of those songs that would really be cool with a uke.

She must be a pretty good player, seems the material is at an advanced intermediate level.

I don't remember the names but a couple of them had sections she had to kind of stumble through. Like that one with the two hands fighting each other, it gets pretty brutal toward the end. The book as a whole was somewhere around the top end of her "sight reading level".

But yeah, she's a real good player. As children I quit taking piano lessons after about six years she kept them up all through high school. And then when I went about 35 years without playing at all she was still playing pretty regularly (and taking voice lessons, among other things). Nowadays most of her playing time is accompanying people to sing at church and whatnot so she's a good reader.

P.S. I always say my sister and I were given equal amounts of natural musical talent. We're a great experiment, proving the difference between working real hard at maximizing your talent vs. letting it go to waste!

What a cool idea. I hope people like Stuart Murdoch and Sufjan Stevens follow suit.

I got this album and can play through a few of the songs pretty well now. Love the concept and just wish I had someone who could read the singing parts and sing along while I play.

Thanks Mark! I found some cool interpretations as well. I love this one:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ENWJkXRrcHY

Good one HouseHead78...