Self Teaching Courses

Can anyone offer me advice, please ?

I am 60 yrs. old and finally in a position to learn to play. I'm looking at the following course'ware and would like to hear from anyone who has used or is using, any of them.

Alfred's Basic Adult Piano Course
Piano for Dummies
Rocket Piano Course
Duanne Shinn - 52 weed crash course

Any advice is apprciated.
Thank you
Vincent

Alfred's Basic Adult Piano Course: It's a very good method, and it seems to be very popular here. There are three main volumes of books in the method, and each volume has a thread on this forum dedicated to people going through it. So there's a defacto support system available for it.

Piano for Dummies: I haven't seen this method so I can't comment on it.

Rocket Piano Course: I have this course (my version is pretty old but I think it may be the same). It does cover a fair amount of material, but I didn't like the pieces that you go through in the course. They're musically uninteresting. That's a personal opinion though, so take it with a grain of salt.

Duanne Schinn 52 week crash course. It seems to be pretty well regarded by people who have gone through it (I have not). But wow it's crazy expensive compared to a lot of other methods (though maybe not compared to a year of lessons with an in person teacher). Still, if you're a very visual learner, having the DVD's to show you what you need to do may be worthwhile. Also, if you're interested in playing popular music or jazz from lead sheets or this may be a better course, as there seems to be a focus in this course on playing lead sheets as well as the grand staff.

Another method you didn't mention but which may be worth considering is the Fundamental Keys Method book. It's a method designed for adult self learners based on classical music repertoire. It's very well regarded here. I have it and like it a lot. If you google fundamental keys you'll find the website. The author also is in the process of making videos to go along with the lessons.

Hope that's helpful.

Sure helped me.....Thanks !!!!

Vince I use Alfreds and its great. My tutor even used it when I had a few months with her.

Also remember that youTube has all alfreds pieces in, so if your unsure how its supposed to sound go there

the guys ok, and it really helped me

https://www.youtube.com/user/PianoNoobAlexMan/videos?query=alfreds+book+1

Thank you very much. You have been very helpful.
Happy New Year !

Thank you very much for responding.

Happy New Year !

Alfred.

I have looked at Piano for Dummies and Alfred's. If I was choosing between the two it would be Alfred's. Alfred's even has a substitute for book one called Alfred's Self Teaching Piano Course with a CD and DVD which you can get at amazon here: http://www.amazon.com/Alfreds-Self-Teaching-Adult-Piano-Course/dp/0739078453/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1356769835&sr=8-3&keywords=alfred%27s+teach+yourself+piano . After that volume you can go on to book 2 and three. Shinn is outrageously expensive if you ask me, but I have never seen the course. I just don't see 52 weeks of books and DVDs costing that much. It could be the greatest thing since sliced bread for all I know, but that still doesn't stop it from being expensive. If I were to go with Shinn I would get a teacher, assuming of course that would work out for you with travel to and from and your schedule. I myself am disabled and never know when I am going to have a bad day and wouldn't be able to get ready and go.

I myself went with something most people wouldn't have available to them, a course from the now defunct U.S School of Music which was a correspondence school that taught all different instruments from the early 1900's through 1975. If you can ever run across on Ebay a set of lessons from the 60's or 70's with the records that came with it, do yourself a favor and buy it. It's seems far more in depth and discusses each piece more than any method book I have ever seen. Since someone gave me mine I just have checked Ebay a few times and they do come up from time to time, but you have to watch from when. I would be leery of getting something too old due to paper breakdown and record conditions.

This would also be my recommendation.

Very professional approach for learning classical music.

The author of this one is a PW member:

http://playingpianoblog.com/learn-to-play-the-piano/

Great response, Bill! Alfred's "Self Teaching Adult Piano Course" with the DVD is superb. When I reviewed the new DVD, with Gayle Kowalchyk as the presenting teacher, I thought: "Universities should use this in their pedagogy programs for new teachers." Gayle is such a profficient teacher and author! Alfred will be featuring more products with this kind of audio/visual support in future publications. Please feel free to get in touch with us for product assistance or just to offer feedback on our teaching materials. We are at keyboard@alfred.com or (818) 892-2452. Keep the music playing!

Yesterday I got the chance to look through "Piano for Dummies" (Spanish Language edition). I can´t recommend it to you. It is not a method book to learn playing piano. Instead it is a handbook for beginners, who want to repeat from a different source once more what they already learned about theory and about general knowledge around the topic "piano" in their first 1 or 2 years of classes.
It does not contain step by step instructions, which you would need for learning. It contains hints on a lot of topics, though. It might be nice to read in bed before sleeping, for freshing up in your head things about piano playing and to become curious on the things to come. But it is not made for your hands.
It would better be called "Piano Theory for Dummies"