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Hi There,

My niece is interested in learning to play piano. I play and can help her, but she's looking to get a book to get started on her own at home. Obviously lessons would be best but her parents can't afford them right now.

My wife is doing great with the Alfred Adult Beginner's series, but I'm not sure if there is something better for teens? My niece is 15.

Can anyone recommend a book series?

Thanks,
Jamie

I treat beginners at this age much like adult beginners, so I use adult method books most of the time.

Does she have any musical background? If she can do basic reading, I recommend Frances Clark's Keyboard Musician for the Adult Beginner. It's a no-frills book, but has an excellent forward to the student on how to practice. This book contains sightreading exercises, technical exercises, and exercises in harmonizing and transposing. I find this to be the most complete method.

I'd still recommend a separate theory book to work alongside this. I used Keith Snell's Fundamentals of Piano Theory.

Another decent method for adults is Hal Leonard's Adult Method. This may be a bit more appealing visually and comes with CDs to play along with, but is not as deep as the Clark book. But still a good method, IMO. I prefer it to Alfred.

Lastly, I also use Accelerated Piano Adventures once in a while, but I only use this is certain circumstances. The problem is that even though it's accelerated, it's still not usually "fast enough" for later beginners. Also, I feel that since it's accelerated, it's not as deep as it should be.

Thanks for the info.

She started with violin and switched to viola. From what she says, the school did a horrible job teaching her. They would write in the letters of the notes on the sheet music, and never taught her how to properly sight read. For most of the music in band, she's had to write the letters in her self or memorize. When I played trombone in school, the teachers were great and started from scratch and I was able to learn properly.

Her school seems to neglect string instruments. They stuck the violins and violas in with the regular band and they can't hear themselves play.

She's dropping viola and wants to switch to piano (not in school, just for herself).

Then I think she'd do well with the Frances Clark book. It is less focused on individual note reading and more focused on intervals, but of course the individual note reading shouldn't be neglected: it's just this book assumes you can read the individual notes.

So she would simply supplement with the music theory book and music theory websites that drill note reading like musictheory.net and teoria.com.

OK, great. Thanks for the info!