Piano books for beginners

Introduction.

I have purchased books one and two and I found them to be of very good quality packed with tuition and tunes over 48 pages.

Tuition format.

The first thing that strikes you is the illustrations and colour which break up the monotonous black and white feel a traditional text book would give you. This should appeal to children and won’t scare them away from learning.

The books can be used by the individual beginner (including an adult) or could be easily used by an accompanying teacher as a learning aid.

The books get straight to the point, learning the notes on the piano keyboard and there is an emphasis and getting the student to find notes themselves.  This is a theme throughout the book with questions and puzzles. Children generally like quizzes, so it’s a fun and effective way of cementing what they’ve learned.

As I mentioned before, this is a traditional teaching method which includes learning to read music. The Treble and Bass clef are first shown on page 3, together with the symbols for music beats.

A whole page is dedicated to learning your first note – middle C – with small one line pieces on both the Treble and Bass clef. This sounds daunting to the beginner, but get’s you familiar with music manuscript very quickly. This format is then continued building your knowledge of notes on both the left and right hand, including small pieces to play.

The short pieces can be exercises, original pieces from Pauline Hall or traditional tunes. All the time. the illustrations continue. Books that I learned Trumpet while at School many years ago were dull black and white transcripts. It’s a challenge to get Kids to look at books these days with the competition of multimedia, but these books give it a good shot.

Other things you will learn.

The book continues with the development of music reading including

• Time signatures,
• Accents,
• Rests,
• Ties and
• Playing with Legato and Staccato.

Again, this sounds daunting to the beginner, but each is introduced in an informal manner. Flats and Sharps are introduced roughly halfway through the book

The book also includes music theory with

• different time signatures,
• introducing different keys
• chords
• Intervals and
• Scales.

Pieces then tend to get longer and more challenging as the book progresses through the halfway stage.

I find the pace of the book a good challenge and a student should take a measured approach not attempting difficult pieces before mastering the basics.

PDF samples from the book can be found here.

Audio samples for the book can be found here.

About the author

Pauline Hall taught privately and in schools after graduating from the Royal Academy of Music in London. She lived in the North of England and saw a need for tuition books aimed at youngsters that would make learning fun. Her first book Tunes for Ten fingers was a result of compiled tunes she wrote for her pupils in their notebooks. The Piano Time series tuition books and accompanying music books developed from this.

Conclusion.