Selected and reviewed by ANDREW EALES
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Grade exams getting you down?
Who are you going to call?… GRADEBUSTERS!!
Gradebusters is a cheekily-titled series from Hal Leonard, which launched in 2019 with Grade 1 books for piano, violin, cello, flute, clarinet, trumpet, alto and tenor sax.
The series now encompasses five solo piano books, respectively for Grades 1 to 5, each delivering “15 awesome solos”, and together serving up a rich feast of 75 universally popular and neatly arranged songs that piano players everywhere will be keen to play.
The Resource
Across the whole of the Gradebusters series, production and editorial standards are high:
- The books are robust, with a glossy card cover, quality white pages within, and staple binding.
- Helpful fingering is included throughout to support independent learning.
- Demonstration recordings of all the pieces can be streamed or downloaded using the unique code found inside each book. These are recorded by Christopher Hussey, who is also responsible for the excellent arrangements.
- Recordings can also be played using Hal Leonard’s superb PLAYBACK+ audio player, which allows you to slow down tracks without changing their pitch, set loop points, change keys, and more. This is an impressive practice tool, and the audio quality is outstanding.
- Each piece is prefaced by a short text jogging the player’s memory of the original song, noting the points of interest or possible difficulty, and inspiring musical imagination in their interpretation.
For each book, I will list the 15 pieces included and consider the quality of the arrangements, before finally summing up the series with some closing thoughts.
While the lists below are alphabetical, within each book the pieces steadily progress in difficulty, meaning they can be explored in a logical and sequential way, selecting preferred songs from the start to finish.
Gradebusters Grade 1
- A Whole New World (Aladdin)
- Arrival of the Queen of Sheba (Handel)
- Beauty and the Beast (Beauty and the Beast)
- Canon in D (Pachelbel)
- Clair de Lune (Debussy)
- Dancing Queen (ABBA)
- Do-re-mi (The Sound of Music)
- Let it be (The Beatles)
- Let it go (Frozen)
- Mamma Mia (ABBA)
- Raiders March (Raiders of the Lost Ark)
- The Snow Prelude No.3 (Ludovico Einaudi)
- Touch the Sky (Brave)
- Viva La Vida (Coldplay)
- Your Song (Elton John)
This is an obviously tempting list, packed with memorable and well-known tunes, and benefitting from the ability to draw from Hal Leonard’s unrivalled catalogue of contemporary music. While some of the later pieces in the book are at the upper end of typical Grade 1 piano difficulty, none are outside the expected boundaries.
Condensing well-loved songs into solo piano arrangements suitable for an elementary player is a tricky business. Hussey displays a rare gift for being able to do so without losing the essence of the song.
Potentially tricky vocal-line rhythms are notated with both simplicity and authenticity, thanks in part to a careful song selection (which is piano-specific; the books for other instruments offer different titles). And while lyrics aren’t presented, those who know them will easily find themselves singing along.
Each hand is limited to playing a single line or, occasionally, simple two/three-note chords, and plenty of fingering is included throughout to facilitate and support independent learning. The suggestions seem consistently to support good pedagogy.
Gradebusters Grade 2
- A Million Dreams (from The Greatest Showman)
- Bridge Over Troubled Water (Simon & Garfunkel)
- Circle of Life (from The Lion King)
- Greensleeves (Traditional)
- Havana (Camila Cabello)
- How Far I’ll Go (from Moana)
- Into the Unknown (from Frozen 2)
- Moon River (from Breakfast at Tiffany’s)
- Shotgun (George Ezra)
- Someone Like You (Adele)
- Star Wars (Main Theme) (John Williams)
- The Bare Necessities (from The Jungle Book)
- Thinking Out Loud (Ed Sheeran)
- Windmills of Your Mind (Michel Legrand)
- You’ve Got a Friend in Me (from Toy Story)
Once again, Hal Leonard have delivered a winning list of songs here, with enough classics to interest older learners alongside fresh contemporary titles that will appeal to youngsters.
Gradebusters Grade 2 appeared in 2021, and is proving a favourite with students I teach. There’s no weakest link, and every one of the arrangements is totally spot on, combining the same excellent qualities found in the Grade 1 book.
Gradebusters Grade 3
- Bad Habits (Ed Sheeran)
- Break Free (Ariana Grande)
- California Dreamin’ (The Mamas & the Papas)
- Candle in the Wind (Elton John)
- Defying Gravity (from Wicked)
- Don’t Know Why (Norah Jones)
- Down by the Salley Gardens (Traditional Folk Song)
- Easy On Me (Adele)
- Hallelujah (Leonard Cohen)
- Ocean Eyes (Billie Eilish)
- (Sittin’ On) The Dock of the Bay (Otis Redding)
- A Thousand Years (Christina Perry)
- Three Little Birds (Bob Marley)
- Wings (Little Mix)
- Yellow Submarine (The Beatles)
A recent addition to the series, the Gradebusters Grade 3 collection includes another irresistible selection of songs. Revealing my own favourites would of course age me, so I will politely decline! But this is another superb collection that will add a lot of joy to the piano journey of many an intermediate player.
Condensing well-loved songs into solo piano arrangements suitable for early intermediate players remains a tricky business. Hussey displays his continuing gift for being able to do so without losing the essence of the song, while steadily adding appropriate challenge.
Gradebusters Grade 4
- All I Want For Christmas Is You (Mariah Carey)
- As It Was (Harry Styles)
- Autumn Leaves (Joseph Kosma)
- Blinding Lights (The Weeknd)
- I Wanna Be Like You (from The Jungle Book)
- Naughty (from Matilda the Musical)
- On My Own (from Les Misérables)
- Part of Your World (from The Little Mermaid)
- Señorita (Camila Cabello and Shawn Mendes)
- Surface Pressure (from Encanto)
- Sweet Caroline (Neil Diamond)
- This Is Halloween (from The Nightmare Before Christmas)
- Wellerman (Nathan Evans)
- When She Loved Me (from Toy Story 2)
- Yesterday (The Beatles)
As expected, the arrangements here progressively add further challenge. Most benefit from legato pedalling and include rhythmic syncopation. Latin, swing rhythms, and even twos-against-threes also appear.
There will be some who would prefer to see the inclusion of chord symbols, encouraging players at this level develop harmonic awareness and a more holistic approach to playing by ear, from the notation, and using their growing understanding of progressions.
But these are more than competent as fully transcribed arrangements that capture the musical essence of the source materials. And indeed, they have their own pedagogic value, with plentiful detail in the notation to build on and support the player’s internal knowledge of each song.
I should point out, however, that even at this stage not all songs are in the same keys in which they were most famously recorded and sung, and lyrics aren’t included.
Gradebusters Grade 5
- Almost There (from The Princess and the Frog)
- City of Stars (from La La Land)
- For Good (from Wicked)
- Here, There And Everywhere (The Beatles)
- I Say A Little Prayer (Aretha Franklin)
- Love Yourself (Justin Bieber)
- Memory (from Cats)
- Over the Rainbow (from The Wizard of Oz)
- Pure Imagination (from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory)
- Speechless (from Aladdin the Movie)
- Suspicious Minds (Elvis Presley)
- This Is Me (from The Greatest Showman)
- Trip a Little Light Fantastic (from Mary Poppins Returns)
- What A Wonderful World (Louis Armstrong)
- You Will Be Found (from Dear Evan Hansen)
Here, Christopher Hussey further excels himself, delivering accomplished arrangements that would comfortably pass for professional performance versions, while remaining accessible for late intermediate players.
In many cases these are evergreen classic songs, available in countless other arrangements, but playing through the book I was impressed with the subtle improvements these fresh versions offer.
Most importantly, I believe that Grade 5 pianists following a notation-based approach will have an absolute blast playing these songs. Given the context of the publication, they really are superbly crafted and undoubtedly inspiring.
Closing Thoughts
Simply put, Gradebusters offers a hugely inviting and immediate mix of famous songs… this is top stuff! Here is a series that will appeal to all ages, delivering pianistically conceived arrangements that are ready to play, either as an enjoyable departure from the grades, or as standalone songbooks.
Classical players enjoying The Joy of Graded Piano series for their core solo repertoire can confidently look to the Gradebusters series for its complementary collections of showtune, jazz and pop song arrangements. The two series are a perfect match.
Gradebusters may prove an eye-opener for some: playing an instrument can be fun, engaging and immensely rewarding without any need for an examiner’s approval! So if you are ready to “bust” out and embrace the biggest hits that players are itching to try, who are you going to call again..?
You got it. GRADEBUSTERS!
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