How to Play the Piano Despite Years of Lessons: What Music Is and How to Make It at Home [Hardcover]

A useful book if you want to learn how to play keyboard from a "fake book" (meaning: not with a grand staff notation, but with the melody in G-staff and chord letters). But beware, there's also a lot of nonsense... It all starts with how to play a "skeleton" in 4/4 or 3/4, with the left hand playing chords, and alternating the bass in root and fifth in OCTAVES. Now this doesn't sound very pleasant, and it's also difficult to do except on an full 88-key piano. Next, the message is that you always have to play four note chords (7ths and 6ths) instead of the three note majors and minors. This is all right if you only play the old, jazzy "standards", which are the kind of songs that are considered popular music in this book (why are these old songs standard? Personally I like them, but how many people know them? Anyone under eighty humming 'Some Enchanted Evening' these days?) but those 7ths and 6ths can sound downright ugly if you play the not-at-all-jazzy pop from the sixties up to now. Furthermore, the author makes its sound like there's nothing to it: playing 10th chords? Only children can't do it! Yeah, right. Try and play any stretched-out 10th with one hand and practice all you want, if you can't do it the first time you won't be able to do it ever, except maybe in a excruciatingly slow piece (maybe C major won't daunt you, but try Eb major, for example). Furthermore this book pretends that music is for morons and that you can learn to play anything with a few weeks of practice--it generally underestimates the technical (fingering) difficulty of what is presented. This is misleading and can be discouraging, because it IS difficult (for anyone with a day job). On the other hand, a lot is learned just by reading this book. But then again, maybe you'll learn a lot more from a traditional piano teacher, representing everything that is ridiculed in this book (playing scales, learning how to use your fingers...). Playing the piano "on sight" from a fake book can be very difficult, don't kid yourself, it takes years to do it well, just like anything worthwile. Conclusion: at times very instructional and a nice addition to your music library, but definitely not the book to start out with after buying a keyboard.

I won't belabor the point that this is an excellent book. Completely readable. I checked it out from the library a few years back and didn't quite finish it - too bad, because the chord progression stuff at the end was terrific.

However, I have to say that the examples simply must be updated for this book to achieve what it sets out to achieve: teach people to make music while using examples with which they are very familiar. I am 38 years old, and I am maybe slightly familiar with 10% of the "popular" music used for illustration. What are youngsters going to think?

Another reviewer made the point that I can simply download the mp3 files and become familiar with these "standards". True, but thats hard to do on an airplane, train, bathroom, etc. Plus it may be illegal, which is a bad dependency for a book to have. This also applies to the user who said I could plunk the notes out on the keyboard: true again, but it requires having my piano in the car.

Because its a great book we are all willing to make excuses for the examples, but there really isn't an excuse - this book should be revised.

Before purchasing this book I floundered around for a few years. Learning a few pieces, slowing working on sight reading....all the while wondering how music is created, how harmony worked, how people play "by ear". This book shows gives you so many tools, and explains so simply how it all fits. I can't say enough good things about it. Even if you don't play piano but want to learn about music this is your book.

I hope the authors realize how much good they have done here. This book needs to find it's way into as many hands as possible.

If you're a complete beginner it may be a little slower going but still very much worth the investment. If you've expended mental effort trying to make sense of "music" this will be your holy grail!