Hal Leonard Adult Piano Method

by Tim Topham in Repertoire on August 23, 2011. 2 Comments

If you teach teenage or adult beginners, check out this book!

I’m not usually a fan of using method books with my students as I like to pick repertoire from all over the place in order to give them as varied an introduction to music as possible. However I recently found this fantastic title at the music store and had to share it with you.

It’s the Hal Leonard Student Piano Library Adult Piano Method – Book 1 and it is a great method to consider for your beginners.

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The thing I liked most about it right from the start was that the first activities were all improvisations with fun and inspiring backing tracks.

Here’s one of my students enjoying these the other week:

Notes are introduced sequentially as in any other method book, starting on blacks, then to whites and then onto the stave and there are reminders and info boxes introducing new skills.

There aren’t any “kiddy” pictures to put your teenagers off and the layout is really professional. Oh, and there are 2 CDs included with play-alongs for just about every piece in the book!! Gold!

I haven’t yet looked at Book 2 as I’ll probably continue to source my own repertoire, but I’ll definitely be using this more in the coming weeks (and no, I don’t work for Hal Leonard!).

I’ll let you know how it goes as I work through more pieces and delve more deeply into it this year.

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About the author

Tim Topham

Tim Topham is the founder and director of TopMusic. Tim hosts the popular Integrated Music Teaching Podcast, blogs regularly at topmusic.co and speaks at local and international conferences on topics such as integrated teaching, creativity, business, marketing and entrepreneurship. Tim has been featured in American Music Teacher, The Piano Teacher Magazine, California Music Teacher and EPTA Piano Professional. Tim holds an MBA in Educational Leadership, BMus, DipEd and AMusA.

2 Comments

Bee says:

08/26/2011 at 8:28 am

Thanks for sharing the videos! I’ve been using this method with adult students for several years now and really like it. I supplement the second book with extra repertoire (usually Getting to Preliminary or Getting to Preliminary New Mix).

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Christopher Norton says:

08/23/2011 at 5:52 pm

I agree – I’ve looked at lots of methods and this is a good one. Nice range of pieces!

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