Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Adult Beginners Forum After Alfred's Level 1 - Am I ready for a repertoire book?

I am just finishing up Alfred's Adult All-in-One Level 1. I really don't like the alfred book, I find it boring. Either too easy or not interesting enough to motivate me to get it right. So I got "Greatest Hits" level 1 and I find it uninteresting as well. For example a few songs just have the melody split across left & right hands just to make it difficult. But it doesn't sound very interesting.

So I started learning some songs I like but the problem is I can't read the music fast enough so I memorize it and in the end I'm just memorizing which keys to push and when, and not really advancing in my piano skills.

I already bought Alfred's level 2 (adult all-in-one). Do you think I am ready to start a repertoire book? From what I read Keith Snell & Succeeding with the Masters are good as well as the Celebration Perspectives Series. I think that would be more fun for me. I'd still like to do the alfred's level 2 since I bought it, maybe do 1/2 Alfred's & 1/2 repetoire. Am I on the right track? I'm self-taught. Played sax for years in high school.



I know many will recommend a teacher but for now I prefer to learn on my own (for one I'm living in France and they teach a bit different here).

Thanks

In my personal opinion, it's too soon. But I would try to find a teacher or just go right into book 2.

I don't understand this. Knowing which keys to hit and when IS playing the piano! So I don't understand how you are not advancing your piano skills by playing the piano.

That's just the start and the tip of the iceberg. Playing the piano involves a lot more than that.

The problem is I'm not learning to read the music. I can only play the songs that I've nearly memorized. My weakness is bass clef since I never had to use that with the saxophone.

To combat this I've been looking at the music as I play even if I have it memorized, so that I can start getting used to recognizing the notes for left hand and recognizing the chords together. One of the songs I learned is Edelweiss which is very complicated (for me at least). I started with the simple version in Alfred's Greatest Hits Level 1. But when I googled for examples I stumbled upon the real version and it was so beautiful the Alfred's version just wasn't going to cut it!

Anyway.. I'm confident I can learn new pieces that are difficult, it's just tedious & time-consuming trying to memorize it etc. I think sticking to songs at my level, even if they're not as satisfying or interesting, would help my development so that I could learn to read the music and be able to play more songs (I can't memorize everything, it's a real handicap).

Nobody can remember every piece they play, that's impossible. But your sight reading and note recognition will get better with time and practice. You need more time.

To answer your original question, I certainly think that you can move to a "early intermediate" level book following successful completion of Alfred's level 1. Some of the Easier Bach/Petzold pieces in the Anna Magdalena Bach notebook are doable at this level as are many of the pieces in the classics to moderns series, level "easy." Be careful with purchasing just any "easy" level book though as many of the pieces aren't as easy as you might imagine (often intermediate is called "easy"). Also, Burgmuller Op. 100 pieces are right for you at about this point too.
With respect to reading, why not pick up some Czerny pieces to build technique. In addition to perfecting your technique, these pieces improve your reading. I suppose, IMHO, the best way to improve your reading is to play many many many pieces. For satisfaction, you could have a more difficult piece you find quite nice to work on and at the same time you are "plowing through" some easier ones. This is my teacher's advice, anyway.
Best of luck.

Im currently playing Alfreds all in one book. I too am finding it very boring. There are some decent tunes but generally it is very dull. I find it helps with note reading as i have improved a lot since i bought it.

I am in a similar situation. My teacher and I looked at grades 1-4 in both Celebration and Canadian Conservatory. We found the best fits were grades 2 and 3 with 2 being within a comfort zone and 3 being just outside it.

The problem was both grades were far outside my theory level and will need some catch up. To improve sight reading we decided on the 4 Star books which are put out by the same organization as the Celebration Perspective Series.

Bach and Burgmuller after just Alfred 1?

No.

Not quite yet.

I would suggest getting both the Prep level and Level 1 of the Keith Snell repertoire series. Use the Prep Level as 'throw away' pieces, that is to say, work on a few at a time (maybe one from each book) just for a week and get whatever you can from them in that time. They're all almost 5-finger patterns (save for a couple of songs), most are quite nice, and they will be within your grasp. Now, this doesn't mean just sight-read it a bunch of times like most people do with method book songs, but really practice them for a week.

Then, use the Level 1 as your main repertoire. Choose the ones you really like, polish those, and then use the rest as 'super throw-away pieces,' which means you'll spend more than just a week on them, but not necessarily bringing them up to performance level.

Bach and Burgmuller begin in Level 2, and those are the 'harder pieces' at those levels. Czerny isn't a bad idea, either, if you like that type of thing. Snell put selections into the series, but you can always just buy or print the entire opuses from multiple sources.

I would recommend keeping up with Alfred's. The good thing about a method book is that it is more progressive and also includes a lot of information you should be learning, whereas a repertoire series wouldn't usually contain that.

If you want to hold off for a bit, finish more of Alfred's 2, I would recommend the intermediate series 'First Impressions':

http://www.intermediatepiano.com/intermediatepianopedagogy/Mlous_books.html

This series will just have the one book with a few selections. It does move a little slower than the Snell series, but it has some excellent repertoire and also comes with study guides for each song, as well as theory books. I think it's a great series for self-teachers.

Good luck!

II

Sorry, I didn't mean to misdirect someone to literature that was too hard.

II is more experienced than I, so I would go with the suggestions mentioned in that post to be certain, however.....directly following my completion of Alfred's all-in-one, I began playing pieces from Essential Piano Repertoire level 2 (Petzold Minuet in G major is in that collection as is Musette in D, Minuet in G minor, and Aria in F). I did so comfortably and with the guidance of a teacher.

They are nice collections, complete with CD recording. On sheetmusicplus.com you can even take a peak at a few pages of music. Perhaps you could better estimate which level you should play by looking there first.

Good luck with choosing some music you find rewarding to play.
PS- I hated the music in Alfred's level 1 too.

I enjoyed a lot of the music in book 1. Book 2 is another story...

Yes, Joe, I have heard far more complaints about the music in book 2 relative to 1.
I guess I can appreciate how either could be found a wee bit boring though.

Sorry, didn't mean to make it come off as rude!

To play Bach and Burgmuller well would take a lot more effort for some than others. Even the simple Minuets. At a couple of college courses around here, Alfred Level one is taken to about page 110-120 in one semester, and the Minuet in G is played as the final of the next semester course. Just as a reference point.

The Essential series are WONDERFUL! The only problem is, you need to practically buy all of them and also have a teacher who is very familiar with them so they can guide you through the pieces. They aren't gradual or even grouped logically. They just have everything you can think of, though, which can be a wonderful (and cost-effective) thing.

Other repertoire series are usually more graded, which is why teachers usually use them. Some more examples:

Keith Snell's Piano Repertoire
Dietzer's First Impressions
Bastien's Piano Literature
Faber's Developing Artist
RCM's Celebration Perspectives

There's quite a few around, and they all do vary within, but not quite as much as the Essential series.

Again, stick with Alfred's (don't polish, but kind of just read through so you can see the pieces, develop a bit of sight-reading, and gain the techniques/theory from all the pages throughout) but focus on the piano repertoire.

Hi II....
I didn't think your comments were the least bit rude. I have appreciated your contributions (have benefited directly from them) and recognize you as being far more knowledgeable than I am (I have only been playing for a bit over a year, so I should probably not give such advice, but I simply shared what I had done, for better or worse).
And you make a very nice point, to play the pieces WELL you might need a bit more experience than level 1.

Not sure it is a good advise to all the beginners but here's my 2 cents from my own experience. If anyone here has different opinion, please listen to them and not me. I am not a teacher.

There are sight reading books if you are keen on developing sightreading skills (see the link below). Of course, the best way to develop sightreading skill is to read lots of different kind of music. But many adults tend not to have so much time. IMHO, these books are excellent. I have Level 4 through 8. When I came back to Piano after 20 years of not playing, I used to do this everyday in addition to the pieces I am working on. Each page contains 2-line excerpts from known/unknown pieces. It will ask you to fill out the key signature, time, dinamics, patterns etc. Sometimes it even asks you to clap the hands with the rhythm before you start. It's quite fun. You can start very slow but your goal is to keep up with the notes, rhythm and expressions to the best of your ability. From the first day, it may not work perfectly but in time you will get there. Just remember to start extremely slow and do not spend more than 5 minutes (If your practice, it's not sight reading). If you just finished Level 1 then I recommend starting form the Level 1. I heard it's always best to start it 1 or 2 grade below your current level.

http://www.amazon.com/Alfreds-Basic-Adult-Piano-Course/dp/0739009796

Hello. I hope this won't be too OT.

I am currently learning to play piano without a teacher and I am learning pieces from the book Piano pieces for children. Mostly I don't find them interesting to play and I find that the jump from grade 1 to 2 is quite a big one and is giving me motivation problems. II has recommended a few graded piano literature books and I have found out that I can get my hands on Faber's Piano literature Developing artist books. However, I can not find any reviews or inside looks into this books, so I would appreciate if anyone can give any information on them. Are they useful for a self taught piano player. Do pieces progress nicely or do they have some strange jumps in skill level required to play them? I am in the same boat as the OP, I have been about a year and find my current sheet music source boring (which could be dealt with if they didn't get a bit hard now as well :)).

I appreciate all your comments

@TheMostImprovedDog: That is an excellent suggestion! However, even while incredibly beneficial, those workbooks would just not be enough. There is not enough at that level to work on to bring up sight-reading and technique.

Remember, you can practice those sight-reading books all the way from the beginning to the end, but if you haven't worked on enough pieces along the way, you won't ever have the technique to do it well anyway.

And don't forget, Alfred Level 1 is not the same thing as an examination's level/grade 1.

I took an eight week group piano course at a community college using Alfred's. After that I got a teacher. I showed up at the first lesson with my Alfred's 1, she looked at it and tossed it to the side. We started immediately with the Anna Magdalena Notebook, some Kirnberger, and The Burgmuller Op. 100.

It was slow at first, took months working on The Minuet in G 114, but she was stressing playing musically, and it has paid off. You'll learn more from a teacher than you can imagine.

Good luck.