Courtes Melodies: 1 (Learn to Play Piano)

Got the whole volume really goods books.

My husband joked about learning to play the piano when he retired, so I bought him this book as a little present for the big day. I play the piano a bit and was a touch skeptical about how he would take to it and how easy it would be to learn from a book. I have eaten my words, he practices every day and the book is easy to follow, has a great method of teaching and my husband is hooked.

First and foremost, this method is not your ‘classical’ teaching method. It ignores the bass clef and instead teaches chord structures in the left hand. For me, I found this exciting and exactly what I was looking for. The idea is to teach you to play modern songs asap. The book has a good deal of narrative to explain these (somewhat novel) teaching methods. Videos are available for free online to support your progress. A couple of caveats though: 1. You’d have to be extremely dedicated to feel you can complete the book within the six weeks to the standard you’d be happy with. 2. The videos, whilst pretty much essential to your understanding, could be a lot more focussed on what the beginner needs, for example finger positioning. I found most of my time taken up with working out finger positioning because, whilst this may be second-nature for Dan, it’s probably the single most difficult skill for a newbie to grasp. Overall though, definitely worth it for those who aren’t too fussed about being trained in the ‘classical’ way.

Dan's way of helping people to understand and play piano is perfect. He is easy to understand too. He has a good knowledge of piano playing and passes this on through the book. His videos are also to the same standard. I have passed this all to my friends who spoke of learning to play too. Well done Dan.

I started with a basic level of music (I know the notes and their value and so on) but no idea of piano and i find it too dificult for what they expect from you every week. I guess with a basic level of piano it would be ideal to start with.

This book is very good, for me, personally. Although I'm not fast enough to teach myself reading music notes, I have an understanding of the techniques now, since I have been following instructions from this book. It was difficult at first - it is my first time to learn piano,and its good to teach myself because I could have wasted my money to be taught by a qualified tutor. I'm doing well.

A very good course. Everything in the book is covered in the video lessons online. Access to the lessons online cost less than the book and is great value. I will get the next book when it comes out in a few weeks.

Can you learn the piano in 6 weeks ? The short answer would have to be no. Certainly not in my experience and certainly not with this book. I am a beginner and I've only been playing for about 3 months having picked up some basics from another book along the way. I thought this one might be a good chance to improve my playing but I got totally confused and gave up on day 2. I had to read one chapter about 10 times and still didn't get it. Might be my lack of skill but then what would be the whole point. He goes on about how easy it is going to be and then suddenly you are supposed to play some chords and notes just from out of nowhere.I don't think you can get around the fact that if you want to pick up an instrument and learn it properly that you have to invest a lot of time and effort in order to become a decent player. There is no short-cut like this book would suggest. Sorry.

Though the early exercises are difficult to understand at first (and second) reading, the approach of building chords and melodies appear# to be very logical.

This book is helpful for piano learner's

I've played guitar for many years, and have been interested in learning a little about improvising music on keyboards. I'm not at all interested in learning to play traditional classical piano pieces, and have only a little interest in playing popular piano music written by other people. What I'd like to do is learn to create my own music on keyboards, and play along with other musicians at jams and song circles.With that background and for my purposes, this book by Dan Delaney has been excellent. The author teaches you, bit by bit, how to find the notes needed to construct chords, by showing you first where to find the root note, then where to find the corresponding major seventh note, and so on. The idea is that over time you learn to recognise and find the notes you need on the fly, with either hand. This lets you split chords across both hands, so you can create a full sound. The book also shows you how to play melodies with your right hand.I find this much more powerful than either of the two approaches I've seen before - either learning to sight-read chords from sheet music, or trying to memorise lots of different chord shapes. Instead you learn how to actually construct music, starting with the simplest elements, and building up from there. This lets you create something simple right away, and as you progress, you learn to create fuller and more interesting music by adding to what you already know.I've only worked through the first few lessons in the book, but already I'm excited by the fact that I'm making more interesting sounds than I used to. I'm also learning about some of the differences between guitar and keyboard, in particular, the amazing amount of control a keyboard gives you over the fine details of chord construction - you can put any note of the chord just about anywhere you like on the keyboard, something you cannot even dream of doing on a guitar.If your goal is to play classical or popular pieces note-for-note from a written score, this may not be the book for you. This book is also not a gripping read in itself - it's a bit dry and broken down into bite-sized lessons that show you what to do without a lot of extraneous words or narrative. The information you need is there, but not presented in a particularly interesting way.However, if you're like me, have an analytical bent, and want to learn to create your own music while also learning some of the music theory scaffolding on which music is built, you are likely to enjoy this book and find it very helpful.-Gnobuddy

Audio files are on the webpage of Dan Delaney!Unfortunately the other offers on that page are not accessable and Dan does not respond at all!Anybody knows what happened to Dan and pianoinstruction.com ???Weiss jemand was mit Dan Delaney passiert ist?Seit längerem ist seine Internet Seite nur teilweise zugänglich und die Registrierung ist gar nicht möglich!Schade, seine Methode ist exzellent!

Book is well done and illustrated!