In this article, I’d like to talk about a piano for all piano lessons. It’s a series of eBooks that can be downloaded or sent to you on DVD. Each eBook has audio and video lessons built right in. The goal is to help you feel comfortable playing the piano and become good at it. This review will try to answer the most obvious question: Can you learn to play the piano from an eBook course that costs less than $100?
In fact, the digital version of Piano for All only costs $40, which is sometimes less than the price of a single lesson from a skilled teacher. In this case, the person who wrote this program, Robin Hall, is your teacher, but it’s a lot cheaper and you can use it whenever you want.
I’ll start this review by giving a brief overview of the program and pointing out some interesting things I’ve noticed about it. Then I’ll talk about the things it does well and the things I think it could do better.
At the end of this review, I’ll decide if this is a good replacement for a real teacher or if it’s more of a supplement. I’ll also tell you what I thought about the course.
Piano for Everyone:
As someone who teaches piano, I’m always interested in new programs that help students get better by using new methods. This program focuses a lot on blues, pop, jazz, and rock songs by famous musicians from decades ago. These songs are used to teach the student how to learn so that they can play “normal” music instead of boring children’s songs.
This set of books has ten books:
- Party Time, Play by Ear, or Rhythm Piano
- Blues and Rock and Roll
- Magic chords
- More Complex Chords
- Ballad Style
- Jazz Piano Made Easy
- Fake Stride and Advanced Blues
- Making the Old Songs New
- Learn faster
- Resources
Each of these books is about learning the piano in a different way. For example, book 3, “Chord Magic,” doesn’t have anything to do with melodies. Instead, it shows you how to comp every major and minor triad (there are 24 of them) and how to make inversions.
As you learn new chords, the book gives you both audio and written versions of songs so you can play along. Each book has a set of audio files that you can play by clicking on them. This lets you play along with the teacher. This is a very clever way to help people who tend to learn better by listening.
Book 3 covers all the chords that go beyond the easy keys like C, F, and G. It includes all of them, and you can easily add them to your vocabulary by listening and playing along.
At the end of the book, the “cycle of fifths” is explained. I would call it a “circle of fifths,” but that’s neither here nor there. It’s the same thing, but it goes in the opposite direction in this book, which is a little confusing to me.
As you finish each book in the series, you move on to the next one. One of the best things about having all of these lessons in books is that you can go back to them at any time and at your own pace. You also won’t forget things as quickly because you can go over them every day instead of just once a week with a teacher.
The last book is a collection of resources and extras. It has helpful information on how to choose the best MIDI keyboard, among other things. This is a great little extra, and you should read it.
