Piano for Dummies

By Blake Neely

Book Overview

At first glance, a piano may seem like an intimidating instrument that would be very difficult to learn how to play, but despite what your seventh-grade piano teacher may say, playing piano isn't brain surgery. It just takes time, practice, and patience. Piano For Dummies starts at the very beginning and walks you through everything you need to know to turn that oversized hunk of furniture into an instrument that can make beautiful music. If you don't know how to read music, this book explains in friendly, uncomplicated language all the basics of music theory and applying it to playing the piano. And if you've been playing piano for a while - or took piano lessons when you were a child but haven't played since - you can pick up some valuable tips to improve your playing or use the book as a refresher course. Here are some of the topics you'll find in Piano For Dummies: Buying a piano: Acoustic versus electronic How a piano works, and how to care for one Left- and right-hand piano techniques Examining keys, scales, melodies, harmonies, and chords Plenty of musical examples to play The history of piano musical styles Advice for piano teachers A Top Ten list of pianists you should know about Piano For Dummies also includes a glossary and a free CD, which includes audio of all of the examples in the book so that you can play along. So if you've always wanted to learn to play piano, but you don't have the time to take piano lessons, you can pick up the basics in Piano For Dummies ; you'll be tickling the ivories with ease in no time

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0764551051
• ISBN13: 9780764551055
• Release Date: September 1998
• Publisher: For Dummies
• Length: 368 Pages
• Weight: 1.38 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 7.4" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

worst book ever

not a good book, very little to learn from this

Ok for reference, not for playing

This book provides a good amount of useful information but I would absolutely not recommend using it to learn how to play. Given that this book is intended to teach you how to play, I would say this book fails to do so. The book doesn't have any practice material that is good for people who are new to the piano, and so if you pick up this book and try to practice with it you will quickly conclude that you must a few brain cells shy of a "dummy." Then you'll give up. This book makes me think that piano is too hard. I understand the concepts, but I can't play the songs. This book discourages me from even trying to touch the instrument. I then bought a different piano book which provided proper practice material and now piano is fun to learn. You can buy this book if you want, but I wouldn't recommend it at all. Unless you only want to use it for learning concepts without touching a piano, in that case the book is perfectly fine.

easy to read

This is an excellent book for teaching yourself piano. All the reviewers who slam this book for corny humor can go jump in a lake. There are plenty of serious music books that just shovel out the facts in a dry manner, so if that is what you want, fine, no reason to get uptight about a book that trys to use a more human touch. I want to also make it clear that the book does not tell jokes per say, so you dont have to read through long groaners to get to the material. The author simply interjects personal examples. Its a technique that is used in all the dummies books, if you dont like it, dont read dummies books.

A solid choice for a disciplined student

You may not like the sense of humor, the book may not cover every little nuance of proper piano technique, and yes, it has that annoying word "dummies" in its title. Agreed. However, try this on for size: I'm learning to play the piano and I can attribute that directly to this book. I found this book more accessible than three other piano books I checked out in my library; the pace and organization are just right; and there's a helpful accompanying CD that lets one measure up to "the real thing." I've had very little musical experience in my life, but thanks to this book I can play quite a few songs after only a month and a half and I'm confident that I'm on the road to being a pretty darn decent pianist. Assuredly, I expect that at some point I'll need a real human being to steer me along, but at this point there's no need to spend $30-$40 an hour to learn musical fundamentals that can easily be obtained in a book. I can confidently recommend this book.

Rekindled my interest

I took lessons as a child but had been away from the piano for over 20 years. This book gave me just what I needed to jump-start my piano playing again. It is written with a sense of humor that kept my interest--UNLIKE most books of this type which are written by musicians who take themselves far too seriously.

One heck of a helpful book!

One of my biggest dreams is to be able to play the piano. About 80% of my family can already do so, but no one ever had the time or the patience to teach me. Now I'm well on my way to fulfilling my dream with a little help with this funny and easy to understand book. I love it. I also enjoy playing along with the CD it comes with.