Humphries' "Piano Handbook"

[goalevan]

anybody have experience with this book, or Larry Steelman's "Music Reading for the Keyboard: The Complete Method." how are they?

[bernhard]

I don't know Humphries.

Steelman's is all right, but nothing to be very excited about. As with most sight-reading books, it does not tell you very much and consists mostly of several pieces/passages in progressive order of difficulty. It will no tdo any harm, but why not get one of the several anthologies of piano music and sight read through those instead?

As I mentioned a number of times, the really good book on sight-reading (the best I've seen so far) is Howard Richman's "Super sightreading secrets" (Soundwise)

Best wishes,
Bernhard.

[bernhard]

By the way, Stellman's book is pop oriented. All the examples are from R&B, Jazz, Rock and so on.

[goalevan]

yeah I have richman, and I'm just waiting for my digital piano that I ordered to arrive. guess richman is all I need, but he does encourage you to count out the rhythm as you play some beginner pieces making sure to keep on perfect rhythm before you advance to the next part of his book.

[joeltr888]

I have the Humphries book and it's really quite nice. He covers just about everything one can cover in an intro book... it's perfect for beginning adults I'd say, because he goes straight for the good material instead of playing around with kid's tunes like the Alfred's I have. Some of the material is a little thin but that's no problem in a book with this much info. The spiral/hardback binding is also extremely convenient.