Customer Reviews

The Complete Piano Player Style Book (Complete Piano Player Series)

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Baker wrote a series of books on piano styles. I purchased this one because I'd read others he'd written, and I was just as pleased with this one as I was with the rest.
I have mostly played classical piano (which must be played as written), but lately I've been trying to branch out to more modern music (post-Ragtime, which can be modified from the original and improvisation is encouraged). It's hard to change styles, however Baker's books provide a good framework, giving different styles of left hand accompanyments (such as boogie woogie, rock, block chords, arpeggios, samba beat, etc.) and how to use them. Each style usually takes up about two pages (although there are exceptions), with about 1/2 a page describing the style and the other 1 1/2 pages giving a song which illustrates that style.
I suggest that you at least be able to read basic notes and sheet music, including left hand notes, however he presents the subject matter clearly and the examples he gives are very good and the songs are mostly from the 20th century, including big band, Beatles, etc., and are fun to play, and make the player sound good due to the way they are presented.
For a more advanced player, the book is also good because it gives you a foundation and shows you where you can adapt the style to other songs and also gives you ideas on improvisation.
I highly recommend this book and other books by Baker in the series. Some of his other books are more geared towards the beginning piano player and show how to play very simple songs, however this book does require some knowledge of sheet music in order to be effective.

This is a really nice collection of music from, or used in, the movies. There are songs from all eras. The arrangements are solid and challenging for the occasional pianist, but beautiful when mastered. A nice feature is the ring-type binding which allows sheets to lie flat even thought there are 440 pages in the book. I am well pleased with this purchase and look forward to mastering many new pieces.