I wanted to put this out for anyone interested. After visiting their website I emailed the publisher and they sent me this in reply. I'd love to hear from teachers who have used this as a core method or supplement.

"Our Prep Level is intended for use in the first year of study, after you've used your preferred approach to getting a student onto the grand staff – so, depending on the student sometime between November and January of the first year. There are no "hands together" pieces in the Prep Level and the musical concepts are benchmarked to every major method on the market and specifically to Piano Adventures and the Hal Leonard method.

Level 1 is "hands together", however with few position shifts and none in both hands at the same time. The student vocabulary is still limited enough that every piece continues to have a teacher accompaniment. Level 2 is the first Level where the student language is sophisticated enough that the Lyrical pieces and Rhythmic pieces are solo piano pieces with no teacher part. The Ensemble pieces continue to have Primo / Secundo and the backing tracks on CD to form a "trio" experience.

The ground-breaking Improvisation Etudes start right at the Prep Level and form a key component of the overall course of study at every Level. The Etudes Albums also contain traditional "technical etudes". The Skills books cover level-appropriate pattern recognition, sight reading, rhythmic and aural ear training, and technic. Currently the Skills books and Technic books are available for Levels Prep, 1, & 2."

Here is a link with students performing APP duets with J.M.I. a faculty member at MacPhail Conservatory in Minnesota.

Jon Michael Iverson

Oh, that's fun! Think I'll see if I can find those books to play with my niece -

Thanks for the link.

Cathy

I've seen Christopher Norton and Scott McBride Smith do workshops on the books. The accompaniment cds are wonderful and the songs are fun to play.

I just tried these books with my "average" students today. They weren't impressed by the pieces or the CD. Upon hearing the CD, the students' mother commented that she felt like she was at a cheap nightclub.

Like all the other series, the music is hit-or-miss. But I must say this series has more misses than hits.

The pieces are so fun to play, students have so much fun to play the pieces and keep ask more pieces to play from American Popular Piano. According Norton/McBride Smith, this method is desgined for regular students, not for advance students. I have fun to teach it and students also like to play with CD too.