I have little past experience teaching, and I'll soon begin lessons with an adult almost-complete beginner. This student wants to play classical music and wants to learn by a traditional, note-reading approach, and is not interested in playing by ear or improvisation.

I'm looking for a method that would incorporate a good proportion of classical arrangements, and provides good teacher support. Innovations for making the study fun are not necessary, as this student is already motivated.

I'll also want to get some supplementary theory study materials to be used in parallel.

There is not a music store nearby with a wide selection to browse. I have looked at some of the methods available at sheetmusicplus.com and so far I'm inclined toward the John Thompson adult piano course. I'd like to hear anyone's opinions on this method, and suggestions for others to look at. In past threads I've seen the Hal Leonard and the Faber methods spoken of well, but I'm not sure these would be appropriate for an adult student. I'd much appreciate hearing your thoughts. Thank you.

Hal Leonard makes an adult method book (in books 1 & 2) which I think work very well. This does have some chances for improvisation if you choose to use them (and I recommend you do...improvisation helps students trust themselves and also helps them understand music better). The improvisation is not the main thrust of the method book, so it should work well for your student. This method starts with the assumption that the student knows nothing about music or the piano. It uses pre-staff symbols (using notes that are not on a staff), and after a short time adds the staff. If your student can read a bit already, then you can breeze through the beginning portion as a review.

Faber & Faber have come out with an adult method as well, but I haven't had a chance to check it out.

For a more serious student, you may also want to try Francis Clark's Keyboard for the Adult Beginner. However, this book does assume that the student already understand some basics about reading notes. You mention your student is an "almost" beginner, so this may work out just fine. This book has everything your student would need, and incorporates a lot of classical standards once they get about halfway through the book. It teaches intervallic reading from landmark notes (like reading a 3rd above Treble G for example).

Since you don't have a music store nearby, I recommend buying all of these methods and looking through them. JW Pepper (www.pianoatpepper.com) offers 100% satisfaction guaranteed, allowing you to return items for a full refund, so this might be worthwhile to do. I actually keep both Hal Leonard and Francis Clark's methods on hand and choose whichever I think suits the student better.

I really like Faber and Faber's Adult course. After the student is part way through the first (of two) books, you can supplement with additional classical books. Faber's Developing Artist series is good, and there are other beginning classical compilations as well.

Ferdinand:

Are you in MTAC? My branch always has a few adult students taking the same Level Prep - Advanced course. I once evaluated an adult student who had to dash in from work to take her test. After her scintillating evaluation, she told me, if it takes her another 20 years, she will finish Level Advanced. I admire their dedication much more than the kids.

Just go with the Syllabus, and things should fall in place. You can also skip levels if you find the student making speedy progress.

Thanks to everyone for your thoughful suggestions.

Knabe26 - I checked out the Faber Developing Artist series, and it does look like a useful supplement. I'll probably get the first couple of them as I'm sure they'll come in handy when it's time to branch out.

Morodiene - Excellent idea about getting several method books. Even if one does not work for this student, it may be just the thing for another (hypothetical) student. Good to know about the returns policy too.Your point about improvisation is well taken.

AZNpiano - Thanks for the encouraging anecdote! It's great to hear about such a well-motivated student.
I am not an MTAC member. What little teaching I've done has been rather informal. I want to get more serious about it, and if I find myself with more students I'll certainly consider joining. I work a full-time non-music-related job but would like to cut back some hours there to make more time for music and teaching. I notice on the MTAC website that the syllabus is available for non-members. I've never seen it. Could you say more about it? Would it be useful somehow even if the student is not initerested in pursuing the Certificate of Merit program?

You should buy a copy of the syllabus and study it. It's not perfect (lots of typos), but the information is important. It also suggests what to teach at each level. The music books listed are aligned with the technique and theory, more or less. I look at the syllabus as a starting point of my teaching, sort of the "minimum requirement" for what students ought to know and be able to do at the piano.

CM is a good program for all students, regardless of age.

Please think about this: there is often absolutely nothing adult about adult method books.

A great example is the Alfred series. If you look on the back of any cover, you will see that each time you move from the books supposedly for tiny children to ones for older children to the next level and to the "adult books", if you example the materials very carefully, you will find out that they are mostly the same, but with a tragic flaw: each "step up" deletes pages.

The idea is that adults learn more quickly and need less practice, which is insane.

What happens is this: they change the pictures. Some explanations are changed. But if you look at the books that are the goal of the whole series, level 6, there is absolutely nothing childish there at all, and that is where the prep book are meant to get to.

This will be your biggest challenge with adults. Basic materials will try to appeal to adults by appearing less childish (different pictures, supposedly more adult explanations), but the materials themselves are not superior.

Now, please look at the standard Thompson books, not the ones for adults. There are some fine ideas there, but the biggest flaw is that many things are left out, and the materials are not well "graded", meaning that the skills are not presented smoothly.

Thompson, any of the books, would be on the bottom of my list for a single method book, but there are some fine things there if you integrate those materials with other methods.

I used Schaum, Aaron, Thompson and Alfred at the same time with one adult student, and that gave us the freedom to skip anything that was boring, or badly arranged. If something appeared in more than one method, we could examine difference in editing.

Schaum is probably one of the worst method books ever written when it comes to absolutely horrendous simplications of famous "classical" music, which is why it has a bad name among serious teachers, but right in the middle of some real junk you will find a few pieces that are interesting, fun, and not to be found anywhere else.

Same with Aaron, but there you will find less simplification. You will find a simplifed and shortened version of "Waltz of the Flowers", but since this is not for piano in the first place, it's rather nice as an introduction to the Nutcracker. I believe there is a nice arrangement of Sugar Plum Fairy there. Later books have some of Aarson own music, mostly rather weak, and the series may not even be easy to find.

Same with Thomspon, but I don't recall simplifactions of music that will be harmful later.

Right along with these methods, you can grab so many different graded collections of "classical music", and members here will be able to rattle off the names. The advantage is that they are all original. The weakness is that some of them can be incredibly boring.

I have spent years collecting anything in the public domain from every source I've found, and I've edited them all in Finale. I did this because the books become terribly expensive, and so many have (in my opinion) real clunkers right along some excellent things. Plus you will tend to find many student favorites in almost every book, thigs such as:

Bach Prelude in C, WTC Book I
CPE Bach Solfeggio
Chopin Waltz in Bm, Prelude in Em
Hadyn Allegro
etc.

Any syllabus from any major educational group is a wonderful place to find more ideas, and at least one has been suggested here. I use such collections of graded materials to explore even more music to add to my own collection. They are great for taking things like the Chopin Waltzes, Bach Inventions (2 and 3 part) and so many other things with suggestions about which should be taught in what order. Sonatas are always a huge problem, because one movement may be on a completely different level from another, and here too collections are helpful.

If you can't get to music stores and browse everything in them, that is an incredible limitation. You will be shocked to find out how often children and adults will pick the exact same things as their favorites, once both groups have advanced far enought to reach more sophisticated music.

By the way, I'll probably be stoned by someone for mentioning something like Schaum, which I want to repeat is probably one of the weakest method books if not used with great care (skipping things that will be damaging in the long run), but I wanted to at least advance the idea that the worst of method books have some good things in them, and the best of them have things that are in the wrong order (for intuitive learning) and are incredibly boring to many if not most students.

[pelting you with rocks]



I stopped using Schaum a long time ago, for exactly the same reason. Other available method books are far, far superior.

I've never used Schaum except with this one student, and as I tried to explain, we went through the books very critically, discussing what worked and what didn't.

For an example of one thing that does work, I think, there's a piece called "Dangerous Journey". I believe the composer is someone named Koelling. I'll check later.

There are a few other things that are useful.

But here is an example of what I teach and how. I have music, all notated in Finale, in folders, roughly grouped according to difficulty. I move things all the time, whenever I find that something works better earlier or later.

So these are grouped together:

A somewhat elementary arrangement of Swan Lake. (It's easy enough so that I would have no problems teaching an advanced transcription later, if someone asked to play it.)

Swabian Folk Dance (you can find an arrangement of this is Diller Quaile)

Govotte and Minuet (also something you could find arranged in Diller Quaile)

Mozart Minuet, K. 6

Bourée in E minor, Leopold Mozart

March in D, CPE Bach

Minuet, Hässler

I teach everything in Anna Magdelena Bach, all the Kabelevsky Pieces for Children (some of which are fine compositions for people of any age), and all the compositions by famous composers that are used in standard teaching materials. The only thing I change in such series is the order in which I present the pieces.

For me about 75% of teaching is knowing *when* to teach something.

(In each group there are dozens of things I've written myself, and any composition from any book, in any style can be added at any this time so long as it does not present problems I have not yet covered.)

Some of the books being discussed here for adult teaching were written in the 1940's and 1950's.

They were the cutting edge at the time they were written. There was a lot of music in these books, that was not musical at all, the lyrics were strange and stuffy compared to today's speech.

They are still in existance in the retail business, but that doesn't mean we have to buy them.

At the same time, I wouldn't want to light a match to them because you will find something in each book (almost guaranteed) that has a "gem" in it, or a well taught concept. I have some favorite people like: Guy Maier, Bernard Wagness, Robert Dumm, the list is longer, but this is quick recall speaking. They taught in their books.

The arrangements of opera, symphony, classics really bothers me because they are a one page theme, usually with poor rhythms for simplifying for beginning pianists. I try not to go there. I would rather use original early classics, there are plenty of materials from the teachers compositions in Baroque and Classical Music. The teachers were also your composers and fine performers at the time. Not just anyone hung out their hat and called themselves a piano teacher as they do now. They didn't rely on someone else's published materials (there were basically little to none).

Today, everyone is having "fun" and "recreation" with very little being taught through at least 4 levels of books, each requiring a method book, a recital book, an ear training book, a theory book, a performance book, a fun book, a patriotic book, a hymn book, a pop book, etc, etc, etc. At a minimum of $6.95 each! And, these books continue through the levels.

When you are finished using these books, exactly how empowered is your student? How exciting has it been? What has following a method helped you and your student do?

I think it's great that some teachers (including me) prepare their own materials, have their own curriculum, rise above the mediocrity that has become the results of piano methods. And, they take a long time to get through all the books, all the levels. And, we say, when we get transfer students into our studios, they can't play to our requirements. What is this all saying? There are many more books sold at prep and level 1's than there are at level 2, and it continues to decline as you reach each new level.

I say use your wits to get your student launched into music making as soon as possible. When you do the lesson choices for yourself, and call the shots, you are truly teaching from your capacity, a very joyful place to be. A connection made that is special because your teaching and your results are special.

If it isn't working, you don't use it.

Now, I love music education composers books and recommend them highly. But I think each piano teacher who calls themself a piano teacher has to be prepared to teach from their own bag of tricks and formulated materials.

Carrying a big stick about this, but that probably comes with the territory when you have taught for 38 years, and you think you've begun to see and understand it all. Finally!

Gary said: "For me about 75% of teaching is knowing *when* to teach something."

And I would add....'When' and 'How' to teach something.

It's very doable. Don't deprive yourself of the experience!

Betty

That's a simplified version of Koelling's "Flying Leaves" Op. 147, No. 2.

But I must agree with you, I liked it as a kid.

Betty, I checked Schaum through book G, and the only thing in all of those books that I teach is this:

Dangerous Jouney, Koelling (which happens to be in book C).

I have no idea where to find it elsewhere, so I simply added it to my own material with Finale.

I only used Schaum, all the way through "H", as additional sight-reading practice. I happened to have the whole set (don't know where I got them from) and loaned them to an excellent adult student. Anything else in those books that any of us recognize is horribly mutilated.

I've never used it with any other student.

However, there are two books called "Volumes after the H book" that apparently were added later, and they have a curious selection of music in them. I don't use them, but they are of interest to me for such things as this:

Classic March (transcribed by Edward McDowell), which is just just March in D BWV Anh. 122(Anna Magdelana). I don't actually like it, but I haven't seen it anywhere else, which makes it interesting to me.

Then there is Intermezzo in Octaves Op. 44, No. 4, Leschetizky. This may or may not be of interest regarding his way of teaching. I have no interest in this either, but I again, I have not seen it elsewhere. Perhaps you would have to find a book of studies by Leschetizky. There is also something by Clara Schumann I've never seen before.

(I would certainly want to work on countless other things with students who reached that level.)
For the most part, even in these books the lyrics disappear in later book, as well as the silly pictures. There is a much bigger problem even with literature that appears in these books that is standard: even if the notes themselves are left alone, you can never trust the editing. Dynamics are added or changed, phrasing is changed or added, and so on.
That was my point. Even the worst of method books occasionally have good concepts, and sometimes they give me ideas of how to add materials for my own students when I'm just stuck. I try to write something new every day, and the majority of things I come up with I discard. They are not original enough, or they are not practical (too hard). Or I may like something, but my students don't, and then it goes in the "circular file".
I also use these materials as a huge part of the foundation of what I teach.
Yes, and perhaps the worst of these in terms of a financial burden are the Alfred series, which do exactly what you just talked about. The "lesson" book ends with the CPE Bach Solfeggio, book 6. The "recital" book ends with the first movement of the Mozart K.454 C Major sonata. So what does grade 6 mean? Six years to get there? And the theory book has little or nothing to do with the compositions in the other books.

Not only do these books progress at a speed that is agonizingly slow, how many students quit long before they get through most of the dreary, boring materials in the earlier books?
Yes, because the "how" is what makes the "when" possible!

Amazing! I don't recall ever seeing a collection of works by Koelling. And yes, I loved it as a kid. I played it when I was eight.

Where can I find the original?

Gee, this is a good workout today, guys!

I'm glad you are around today!

I'm now off in the car to find a place to take my mind off my woes.

Golly, that's even a rhythmic sentence:

"ti-ti-TA-ti-ti-TA
I'm now off in the car

ti-TA-ti-TA
to find a place

ti-Ta-ti-TA-ti-ti-TA"
to take my mind off my woes.


I need to go....NOW! Bye!

Betty

I know the RCM is catching on in limited capacity in the US under a different name. Formally I'm a violin student under the RCM program, but I also have one piano repertoire book and one piano technique book from the RCM requirements. There is nothing "childish" and no silly pictures even in the grade 1 pieces, which little children would usually do. With the RCM you have technical requirements and a book to go with that, and pieces that reinforce and use what was taught in the technical part. There is also an outline of theory that should be learned at each grade level for those doing the exams. Would any of that fit the bill?

In case it means anything, the cover of the grade 1 repertoire is called "Celebration Series", published by Frederick Harris. It contains 34 pieces divided into Baroque and Classical; Romantic and Twentieth Century; Inventions.

(Writing as student, of course)

A progress report.

I now have the Hal Leonard Adult Piano method book 1, Frances Clark's Keyboard Musician for the Adult Beginner, Faber's Adult Piano Adventures book 1, and the MTAC syllabus.

It's an exciting challenge to figure out the best combination of these materials to use. They all have something unique to offer. Of the three methods I like the Clark volume the most for the way it's organized and presented. I need to spend more time and investigate them all more thorougly. So far I think I'll need to use one of the others at the beginning and then transition to Clark.

I'm amazed at how many people offered advice in this thread. It has been immensely helpful. Thanks to all who have so generously shared your hard-earned wisdom.

It's anthologized in Recital Winners, Volume One.