Customer Reviews

150 of the Most Beautiful Songs Ever (Easy Piano (Hal Leonard))

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Though advertised as easy piano I would estimate many people would need a couple of years of lessons and practice to feel really comfortable playing most of the selections exactly as they are written. The book is a hodgepodge of songs many from the 50's and 60's and some from even earlier in the twentieth century. The strength of the book is the full lyrics that are included for many of these old standards. And as others have said for such a large book it is remarkably easy to keep open on the piano stand.

This book covers nearly all styles of music from the past 100 years or so. Also great for beginning pianists who want to play by popular chord symbols or by site-reading simple accompaniament.

I have used this book for most of my voice students at one time or another, and I find that the options never end! This collection is a fabulous collection of popular songs from all genres of English music. Included are folk, jazz, blues, country, rock, pop, R&B, musicals and more.

I still don't know nearly half the songs in this book, and I have been using it for some time. My students go through the book, choose a song they know and like, and I am able to learn another beautiful song while I teach them!

This book is strongly recommended for anyone wanting to be a well-rounded musician of popular music. If you ever anticipate playing for weddings or other events, this book provides a plethera of options. If you just want to learn some great music, this is a fabulous option!

I only enjoy playing about 5 of the "150" songs in this book, including Moon River, Close To You and a few other well known songs. There are way too many songs from old American musicals, most of which I either don't know or don't find particularly "beautiful". Also, the songs are so over-simplified that the joy of being able to perform a complete song on the piano / keyboard is completely taken away, since to really make these songs sound complete, you'd need guitar accompaniment or something else to fill them out. The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face is included but is one of those that is too over-simplified and just doesn't sound as good as it could do.
The music is definitely "Easy" but in making the music this easy, a lot has been lost. I should have returned this book.
I would recommend it to the older generation, or people who reeeeally love American musicals and those who are real beginners on the piano and can only cope with playing one note at a time with each hand.

I love this collection. It has so many songs in it that I like to play that aren't in any of my other songbooks. I love that even though it's big and fat and NOT spiral bound, its pages nonetheless lie flat wherever you open them to; that its sturdy cover and its binding hold up under frequent use, that they didn't skimp on the quality of the paper and printing. And that you can get it here for under twenty bucks.

But what exactly, you may wonder, does Hal Leonard mean by "easy" piano? Well, I'd say it means that if you can read and play standard sheet music, you can probably play anything here. Which I guess I'd put at around Grade 3 competence level and beyond.

It's really too, too bad the seller isn't offering one of Amazon's "inside looks" here like they did on the Amazon product page for an earlier version of this book, so you could check out the contents list and see what you'd be getting. Maybe I can help a little with that. I'm not going to rattle off all 150 titles, but here are 50 of them, which should give you a pretty good idea whether this is your kind of songbook:

Always on My Mind, And I Love Her, Bewitched, By the Time I Get to Phoenix, Candle in the Wind, Can't Help Lovin' Dat Man, Climb Every Mountain, Daddy's Little Girl, A Dream Is a Wish Your Heart Makes, Fields of Gold, Fly Me to the Moon, From a Distance, Georgia on My Mind, I Have Dreamed, I Just Called to Say I Love You, I Left My Heart in San Francisco, I Will Wait for You, I'll Be Seeing You, If You Go Away, Imagination, I'll Have to Say I Love You in a Song, In My Room, In the Wee Small Hours of the Morning, I've Grown Accustomed to Her Face, The Last Waltz, Let it Be Me, Look to the Rainbow, Memory from Cats, Moon River, My Funny Valentine, Oh What a Beautiful Mornin,' The Rainbow Connection, Release Me, She, Some Day My Prince Will Come, Some Enchanted Evening, Somewhere My Love, Somewhere Out There, Stardust, Tears in Heaven, Tenderly, Tennesee Waltz, Till There Was You, A Time for Us, True Love, Try to Remember, What a Wonderful World, What Kind of Fool Am I?, When You Wish Upon a Star, Yesterday, You Light Up My Life,

Great songs, good arrangements ... but why can't we have spiral bindings?!?!? I'm a pianist. I need books that stay open and lie flat.

When I saw "Easy Piano," I was thinking of the fake books with the notes being printed with the note letter name on them. I think (now) that these are called "E-Z Books." It would always help to have ALL music books available on the website to SHOW the inside pages. I need to only buy the ones with larger print for one example and the above would have prevented me from seeing what is termed "Easy Piano." Amazon should make sure this is possible. Thanks.

I like easy songs to play for my own enjoyment. This book is perfect for me. I took piano lessons as a child but only play occasionally. So, I don't want anything I have to work at. I can play them all with ease and elaborate with chording if I want to. The best thing is that the songs are easy listening type and identifiable by the over 50 club!

I found the book hard to read. My sight is fine but I think they tried to fit too much into the book. The music is fine but I found I only knew about 10 of them and honestly was not interested in the rest. It is also listed as "easy piano". I was able to site read some but this would be considered more of an intermediate level book.

I've been playing piano for about 18 years off and on, and this seems to be at just the right difficulty level for me-intermediate. I love jazz and show tunes, so I love this book. But I'm also only 25 years old, and can relate to the newer songs just as well. The arrangements are beautifully done, and I love to be able to sing along with the accompaniment. 150 gives such a broad selection of choices that there are a lot of songs in there I've never played, and gives me some fresh music to work on. Love it!

This is probably a good book for beginners. I am an intermediate pianist and I found the pieces too easy. Good for singing along, though.