Customer Reviews

Piano Lessons Book 2: Hal Leonard Student Piano Library

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

 

 

This is Book 3 of a five book series on piano for kids. This is a great book and my daughter is getting into it right now, having completed the two Usborne books and Book 2 of the Hal Leonard series. (The Usborne books are a great beginning for any child and actually land them about in the middle of the Hal Leonard Book 2 when they are completed.) The Hal Leonard piano instruction program is full of good tunes and bright colours, very user-friendly and child-friendly. The back cover of each book lists many excellent complementary volumes which can be obtained. (They don't list their classical music solos volumes though, I'm not sure why, but these are also a good buy. Entitled Classical Themes they follow the instruction books level by level up to and including level 5.) Book 3 is an excellent advanced beginners program and the entire series is a good investment. A local piano teacher informed me that the Hal Leonard series teaches her kids the notes and the music better than any other teaching method out there. Highly recommended!

This is Book 2 of a five book series that will bring your child to the equivalent of the Grade 4 level of the Royal Conservatory of Music. It is non-threatening and comprehensive and will give your daughter or son a solid foundation in the piano. Brightly illustrated, it will never bore. This series is enhanced by a large number of supplementary volumes from Hal Leonard, including books on piano theory and classical music solos. This series can't be beat and as a parent whose child is using this set of books, having begun with the two excellent Usborne ones, I give the Hal Leonard program the highest rating. Warmly recommended.

My ten-year old daughter played through the Hal Leonard Student Piano Library - Piano Lessons Book 2 and found the songs within her sight-reading ability. My husband is a piano teacher and said he didn't consider Book 1 worth buying. Years ago he bought the book & floppy disk sets for Books 2 and 3 and 4. He didn't intend them for skill development. Still, as fun songs, busy work, and a pleasant ego boost, they worked for our daughter. Most beginner books use dinky songs which sound stupid to a ten-year old. These Hal Leonard floppy disks provided musical accompaniment preceded by a metronome beat. Our daughter could tell when to join in and could adjust the tempo since we have a Roland digital piano with that capability. I don't see how a CD in a normal CD player can make that adjustment. Playing the disk turned each song into a four-hand piece, the disk playing a recording of the two-hand accompaniment and my daughter playing the other two hands. All of the notes can be seen in the book, which means I could play the accompaniment with her while sharing the piano bench. The accompaniment added playful, creative harmony and satisfying complexity to each song, so our daughter didn't feel that she was playing anything dinky, even though her part, by itself, honestly WAS dinky. She voluntarily spent well over an hour each time she opened the book and clearly enjoyed her easy success. I liked the songs too and congratulate the composers/arrangers/authors Kreader, Kern and Keveren. It took my daughter a couple of fumbles through each song to get all the notes. In a few days she was done with Book 2 and perfectly willing to move on to Book 3. Thanks to this book and disk, she discovered she could practice a couple of hours in a row. How many ten-year old children know that about themselves? The main downside is one of the floppy disks malfunctioned and won't play the accompaniment. We tested the disk in another machine, to see if it might be our Roland HP 2900G digital piano at fault. It is the disk that fritzed.