Customer Reviews

John W. Schaum Piano Course: Pre-A : The Green Book

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

My wife and I purchased this book for our nine year old daughter so she could learn how to play our family piano. We thought we would try a book and let her go at her own pace to see if she enjoyed it. First of all, the kid loves the book. She's stuck with it and loves to show off her new chops. It's been about three months and she playes everything in the book without a problem. Recently, she's started doing it from memory. We're ready for the next volume to see where it goes, but obviously this book does exactly what it says it will do and she's had a great time doing it. It's light hearted, fun, encourages practice and teaches what it's supposed to. Nuff said!

I purchased this book for a student who was new to the piano and just beginning lessons. She is a month into it now and is excelling, which I believe can be attributed to the excellent style of this book. It eases beginning students into first knowing the proper hand position, then learning note names, and finally learning to read music on the staff. I especially appreciated that the first few "songs" in the book were repetitive finger exercises, yet still helped the student feel as if she was playing music right away. I will be happy to continue using this series.

You can follow right along with the books and it is easy to understand.

Don't expect to learn over night. It has to sink in little by little.

Just keep practicing as much as you can while enjoying it.

You can do one or two lessons a day and repeat as much as the old lessons as you want to do. You will be amazed how you improve. What was hard becomes easy.

I have used this book for about 5 yrs now and I love it. It is set up the way I like to teach. The child starts playing the piano the first lesson. The discount on buying 3 and getting 1 free was great and the delivery was good. Thank you!

This old favorite course is the best in my opinion. I use it for all my beginning piano students because it is the one I was taught as a child, so I'm most familiar with it. Kids today are different than they were when I was young, so it takes quite a lot of explaining and patience with them, but I think this beginner book does very well in attempting to teach the young student how to begin to read notes.

This is just how I remembered this series when I used it many years ago when taking lessons. It arrived quickly and in perfect shape too. It offers a great progression from initial finger positioning, letter names and then introduces the notes on the staff. I was looking for this in a series and glad to find it. I also like the technical information that it gives the student and I was happy to see the fun, kid-friendly song selection. That makes it fun for the child to play! I can't wait to start teaching my child!

We got an electronic key board last Christmas and got this book to teach at home...it's Fantastic! Easy to use. Have fun!

I used the Schaum method as a kid when I learned to play piano. I didn't know they were still in print until a serendipitous moment of discovery a few months back.

I've been preparing to teach piano, so it was great to discover these books are still available.

Highly recommended approach. Very logical, progressive and clearly explained.

This (and A Dozen a Day by Edna Mae Burnam) was the first piano book I learned to play piano from at age 9 in 1989. It's the book that I continue to use with my students today. I will also be starting this book with my own daughter, now age 3. It's a great book because it starts with the middle c position and remains in that position for a long time before switching positions. It also starts teaching the student how to read notes right away. If the teacher or student NEEDS to, you can write the letter answers below the note. Other books START with just writing the letter names, or finger positions. Then those beginner books TOO quickly jump to other hand positions before the student is ready. The ONLY thing I don't love about this book is that there aren't too many songs that the student will recognize except for about 4. Also, I have seen other piano books with better graphics.

This book is a great tool for young students just getting started with learning piano. It walks you through the very basics of how a piano works, the letters for the keys, the numbers for your fingers, etc. It is visually appealing, which is a benefit for kids. There are even notes to the teacher to help guide learning throughout the book. It starts with simple number melodies and then begins to introduce music notation.

The only area where the book is lacking is practicing rhythmic notation by itself. Many students have difficutly when it comes to playing rhythms..and especially keeping a steady beat. It is certainly easy enough to suppliment the book with my own materials, but it would be nice to have it all in one book.