Educational Resources
Selected and Reviewed by Andrew Eales
Over the last couple of years, Hal Leonard have been expanding their hugely popular First 50 series of bumper songbooks for easy piano to include some interesting educational titles that fill a particular niche. The first of these titles that I reviewed was Alistair Watson’s First 50 Chords, about which I wrote,
“I have no doubt that this book will find significant popularity, and deservedly so. I am sent plenty of educational material to evaluate; this particular book is a real “keeper”, and one which I anticipate making plenty of use of in the years to come.”
That said, I also mentioned a few caveats, questioning whether the publication offered sufficient material to help players effectively realise lead sheets in practice::
“Learning to vamp using the given chord patterns is likely to be the key that unlocks real enjoyment of the material, but many learners particularly struggle at this point”
Few things sound as unpleasant on the piano as bashing out root-position triads at the lower end of the keyboard. So for pianists who want to play from chord notation or create vamp accompaniments, learning stylistically appropriate left-hand patterns is an essential skill to prioritise, but one for which there are too few methods or manuals.
Happily, Watson’s latest book in the series, First 50 Left-Hand Patterns is a brilliant sequel to his previous outing, and aims to address this point…
Continue reading First 50 Left-Hand Patterns