Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Adult Beginners Forum Alfred's Basic and ALL in One Adult Piano Course Book #1

@dogperson, totally agree. It makes a huge difference for beginners like me.

What do you all think about accompanying the book with a course such as the Learn and Master Piano?

Thank you so much for sharing your teacher’s channel. I watched a couple of the videos; she is excellent. The book she teaches out of is the Alfred’s ‘Group’ Piano for Adults book, which I think is different from the books discussed on this thread. Is this the book you’re using in your lessons? It looks very good and I ordered it. I am starting to get back into piano after not playing much for a number of years, and could use a refresher.

Debra

I knew there were vids and recording of each one of the tunes out there in the Ether but the one post on here are really good - great find
@Debra - I do believe that there are a number of versions of each book by Alfreds but all are essentially the same bar one to two tunes - oh and on comes with a CD.

Andy

It is a different Alfred’s book than the all-in-ones or the smaller individual books that make up the all-in-ones. This one apparently is used in college courses and is by different authors. Quite a bit more expensive, too.

https://www.amazon.com/Alfreds-Grou...mt_other?_encoding=UTF8&me=&qid=

I bought it and just received it today. It moves more quickly and would be difficult if I was starting from scratch.

From looking on Amazon, it also looks like it is group instruction rather than private lessons or self-testing.

I see Debra even more version then. I never knew they did this one. Notes of Staves hey he he.

I've just joined the forum this morning as I am going back to learning piano after a 40 year break! I am self teaching at home and worked my way through Alfred's book 1 back in February then kind of lost my way a bit ( boredom - gardening )so, here I am back at the start of book 1... again!
My question is this, I am really lazy ( always was a bit ) learning the theory side and tend to skim in order to play, I managed to get through book 1 yesterday afternoon but I've woken up with lazy theory remorse, is it worth going back to really get to grips with all the theory now before I progress to book 2??
Is it going to hold me up if I can't remember the slurs etc?
Thank you

I'm sure you've probably gone on with Book 2 by now - but everything is recapped at the beginning of 2, so no need to revisit 1
The only time I look at 1 is to play the songs at the back, which are still some of my favorite pieces ("Laura" is so beautiful)

Don't skip the theory. You don't really need it to learn to play by rote, but it comes in handy when trying to figure out why the lessons are trying to get you to do something in a certain way.

Understanding notation is important too. Those dynamic are in there for a reason and you need to learn how to do them in order to control your movements and touch. Without learning that you can't play soft or loud. You can't do a crescendo or ritardando. And you will not know what all the italian language regarding how to play means or the what the hashmarks or little "b's" at the beginning mean.

So theory is important. Not end of the world important but you do need to learn enough so that you're paying attention to what's going on so you can play the piece a intended.