Product Details

• Actors: Scott Houston
• Format: Color, DVD, NTSC
• Language: English
• Region: Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only. Read more about DVD formats.)
  
• Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Rated: NR (Not Rated)
• Studio: Houston Enterprises
• DVD Release Date: June 1, 2009
• Run Time: 150 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• ASIN: B002DZG888
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #222,315 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)

Editorial Reviews

This terrific instructional series was designed to do one thing extremely well - teach you to play great songs! Each includes approx. 2-1/2 hours of direct video instruction, plus lead sheets! Starting from an absolute beginner's point of view, and contin

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Better than 6 Private Lessons, December 23, 2010

By 

Elisa 20 - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Piano Guy 1-on-1 Series Girl from Ipanema (DVD)

I really love Scott Houston's method. His shows on PBS and "Piano Man" books are eye-openers for anyone who thinks "playing piano" means "drills and metronomes and scales and hours and hours of boring practice".

That is not the "Piano Man" method. Scott Houston uses "lead sheets" like a lot of professional piano players (not concert pianists) do. He shows people how to play the melody and then use chords and bass notes to create your own accompaniment as you play.

The difference in these two methods? (1) You can start to sound good pretty fast; (2) you get to play songs you like right away; (3) It's fun!

The PBS "fundraiser pledge shows", however, are too basic for anyone who has some basic piano background (reads and plays a simple treble clef, knows how to find and figure chords, etc.) His book, "The Next Step" is a good...next step...but you can't really learn to play piano from a book alone. And apparently, Houston has a real show on PBS as well, with regular guests, but I've never been able to find it on my PBS schedule (although you can catch parts of it on various DVDs.)

The answer is this wonderful 1-on-1 series. Each dvd has 1 song and Scott goes through it, step by step, in a clear and interesting way, demonstrating EVERYTHING with wonderful explanations. It's impossible not to learn this way, I think, and it's wonderful to have a DVD to show all the fingerings and his comments and, best of all, to be able to take it at EXACTLY your own pace.

In fact, I like this series so much that I'm giving it "5 stars" in spite of one little flaw: (1) the lead sheets were very difficult to find (impossible on my Mac and in the PC I had to go to the Control Panel and look around a bit. They weren't obvious--and the website was useless. No way to find them there that I could see, despite promises they were there. (I imagine you could email him for them, but...still.) Eventually, I opened the file on the desktop--couldn't play the DVD, but could find lead sheets under "Audio".

Anyway, this is such a great dvd...such a wonderful and unique way to have a private teacher and -really- learn how to play some great music well (I'm sounding pretty good--and had some welcome challenge with the Latin rhythm and for only $30 when one piano lesson in my area is $50), that I just can't give this dvd less than 5 stars.

ETA: The more I use this DVD, the more I appreciate it. After the section on voicings (the heart and soul of this approach, I think), I tried out a very cool feature--2 tracks that you can play along with (one with piano, one with rhythm only). It's fun, challenging, and helpful (this song is FAST. It sounds so much better this tempo than what I would have played it at). As a teacher myself, I really appreciate Scott's skill as a teacher. Watching his hands on the keys while he explains everything so clearly is much more helpful to me than any piano teacher I ever had.

If you like this philosophy of playing piano, these 1-to-1 songs on dvd are really fun and should improve your piano playing as you learn the song.