Big Book of Beginner's Piano Classics: 83 Favorite Pieces in Easy Piano Arrangements (Book & Downloadable MP3)

I taught myself to play piano using beginner books, and I was looking for a challenge to help me move into a more intermediate level. I also wanted to learn some basic classical pieces, so I tried this book. It was exactly what I hoped for. It has a wide variety of pieces from many famous composers. Each piece has been transcribed for beginners, so the difficult parts are easier, but you still feel that you're playing a good version of the song (for example, a song might use 8th notes instead of 16th notes, or keys with less sharps and flats). This book was the perfect step for me in moving toward being intermediate, because the songs challenged me but did not make me feel like giving up. I looked forward to practicing, and I definitely recommend this book!

This book is an excellent choice to use along with a beginner 1 level piano student. They have have a selection of actual songs they can play and it will encourage them to continue their piano learning and to practice. The book has excellent selections for the beginner student. It's good to use a book such as this with your beginner student to encourage them with music other than the somewhat simple songs given in their study materials. I highly recommend this book to be used with other piano study materials. I like this book a lot.

I am an adult (late 30's) and had piano lessons when I was a kid. I was never a virtuoso, but could play Moonlight Sonata, or Fur Elise up until it gets hard. After many years of not having a piano in my life I finally do again, and am terribly, terribly out of practice. This book is perfect for me. It's grown-up music, simplified to a point where I look at the music and think, "I'll need to practice a little while to be able to play that perfectly, but I can totally get there." Which is exactly what I want in a book of sheet music designed for learning. I see some debate (of sorts) in the reviews as to whether this is a "beginning" book or not. I would say yes, it is a beginning level book, but towards the advanced end of "beginning." It is a book for practicing skills you already have learned or are learning elsewhere, rather than a teaching book. I'm only a little way into it, but so far it has chords in both hands, melodies moving from clef to clef, cross-over fingering, and timing as complex as triplet eighth notes but not much more complicated than that. Many but not all pieces have fingering suggestions. From what I've tried so far, most pieces seem to be 1-3 pages long, most often 2 or 3 pages. I've seen up to 4 flats or sharps. My one complaint is the way the book is organized. It's simply alphabetical by composer. Very easy for them to put together, I'm sure, but it could have been better organized to better help the learner. A rough order of easy to difficult would have been useful, or grouped for some sort of lesson, e.g. unusual time signatures or challenging keys. I think either of those methods of organization would make the book more useful--it's obviously aimed at learners so why not help them out a bit more and steer them toward pieces that will help them with whatever it is they'd like to learn, or whatever part of the difficulty spectrum is the best level of challenge. With the organization as it is, I'm just kind of working through alphabetically, practicing the ones that look interesting and doable for as long as I feel like it, and moving on. When I've gotten a look at everything in it I'll probably choose a few to focus on and actually practice until I can play them well. If they were organized by difficulty level, it would be much easier to hone in on the best ones for me to practice.

You get sheet music and can download audio files so you get a lot of stuff to learn for the money with this book. I just finished level one of the Faber Accelerated Piano Adventures for the Older Beginner method books and started playing the first tune in this book this weekend. I think you probably want to be near the end of method book 1 in whatever series you are using before you try this book. The right hand part was easy enough and so was the left hand part. The trick is going to be playing them well both at the same time! I'm thinking a wek of work and I'll be ready to move on to song #2. I'll stop back later to edit if my view changes but after flipping through the book and learning the first piece it looks like this book is a good fit for me and may be a good fit for someone who has finished book one of a method book series. As my lessons continue these pieces will hopefully be easier and easier to learn but right now they are doable with a little work. The book does not look "easy" to me but it is not "too hard" either. Hopefully by the end of this book I'l be breezing my way through these song but right now they are going to take some time to get them right.

This is EXCACTLY the book for a BEGINNER to improve skills and expand your repertoire. I've been using a teacher and Alfred's level 1 book for a month and a half (a little over halfway through with that book) and decided I needed more variety and a little bit of a challenge. These pieces are highly recognizable and fun to learn. They have a quick intro of the song history, suggestions on how to play it, and fingering numbers for those "tricky" notes. As a beginner I love how you can hear your progress when you learn and play these simple and short snippets from these famous songs. Each song is usually only 1-3 pages, just right for the beginner who wants variety. This is also a large enough volume to provide plenty of sight reading practice. ton of pieces to practice sight reading. I wish it came in a spiral bound, but as most sheet music you just need to fold the book a bit or find some sort of weight.

This is one of the best piano books out there for beginners. Everything is easy to read, play and memorize! Plus, there is a big variety of songs to choose from and do first (The pieces that I chose to play were Symphony no.5, Allegro, Hopak, Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy), and then do the things that are harder from the book. It's also easier to understand how you need to play the music, as it gives you tips and recommendations how to do it (Like in Eugene Onegin Waltz: "Be careful not to rush down trickier passages. Practice them slowly and bring them up to speed little by little. ") Overall, five and a half stars for this!

This is great for early piano learners. The simplified arrangements are good and the downloadable mp3 files are very helpful. The only drawback is the cover shows "Lay Flat Sewn Binding," and it is not. In fact, you would be hard-pressed to keep the book open without using binder clips. I plan to take the book to Office Depot and have them cut off the spine and put it in a comb binding.

Excellent. I am a piano teacher, performer, and publisher of my own teaching method. So, I'm pretty picky about this kind of thing. But these guys crushed it. PERFECTLY ARRANGED for young students to get a taste of the classics without having to slog through 10 page original versions. Great job guys. This will be my go to.

J'ai joué pendant quelques années quand j'étais petite et je viens de redémarrer le piano, 20 ans plus tard. J'ai trouvé des morceaux très motivants dans ce livre, qui donnent envie d'étudier, même seule.

Great book with easy versions of classic melodies.

This is most definately NOT for beginners. Most of the pieces are technically very challenging, requiring at least an intermediate skill level. Even my teacher has trouble with many of these...

This book was my choice mainly due to all the positive reviews. I don't regret my choice at all, on the contrary. I have recommended this beginner's book to some of my friends who considered learning to play the piano. The teaching method is easy to follow, clear and consistent and progress is almost guaranteed (if one practices accordingly). One year ago I was an absolute beginner! And although progress is slow (I am now 60) I enjoy playing and I have the incentive to continue. This book also helps in understanding basic music theory. Particularly helpful is the practical binding, large print and understandable texts. The only downside is the missing CD. This purchase on the amazon website obviously didn't include the CD. This means I cannot hear the "proper" way tunes aught to be played, or the correct tempi of the pieces. Other than this, though, I do not regret having purchased this book.

I've been playing for around a month and have found this book to be excellent. A problem with a lot of tutorial books for beginners is the tunes you learn are often things like 'Old MacDonald', which may be OK for children but as an adult it's pretty uninspiring. This book has very playable versions of classic piano pieces that you'll actually want to learn. They are clearly set out and all show suggested fingering, which I find particularly helpful as a beginner. Of course they are significantly simplified, but still easily recognisable, and a lot more satisfying to play than nursery rhymes! The pieces are also available in mp3 on the Dover website, and for me these are an object lesson to other publishers - it's not some stylised backing track or a version that sounds like it's being played on a stylophone, it's just someone accurately playing the piece, on a piano, so you know exactly what it should sound like. The only slight negative is it's not spiral bound, but that's not enough to deduct a star from what is an excellent book.