The Complete Piano Player: Books 1,2,3,4, and 5

by Kenneth Baker

(Music Sales America). All five books of The Complete Piano Player series are published in this single volume at a substantial savings over the price of the five individual books. Complete with keyboard chart.

Genres: Music, Reference

232 pages, Paperback

First published December 1, 1984

Reviews

[Mr. Senan Murph · Rating 5 out of 5]

The book provides lots of songs, which are carefully graded, to build up your skills over a couple of months. There is enough here to make you into a competent piano player who can read and play sheet music.

[Kat Crichton-Seager.Com · Rating 5 out of 5]

After many years of not quite learning to read music properly, this is the series of books that finally worked. Kenneth Baker takes you through a continuum of perfectly paced incrementally more complex pieces of music; each piece pushing your music theory and finger dexterity forward in gentle steps.

I have several of the individual books, but purchased the omnibus to fill in the gaps. I'd recommend the individual books over the omnibus edition, only because the omnibus is in a smaller format which is harder to read and doesn't stay open easily on the piano's music desk!

[Sue Dounim · Rating 4 out of 5]

This has been published in at least 2 different editions with different cover art. This is the 5 basic books in this series bound as one. This is convenient but there's a quirk: the page numbering starts from 1 for each book. However the tables of contents for each book are all collected at the beginning of the omnibus edition which makes navigation easier. The book is perfect bound but over quite a few years is still holding up fine. You might need something to hold the book open when you're at the beginning and end.

I'm an adult student; I had personal lessons over my life so I understand the basics of theory and learning the piano. This books is a great review of the basics, which each lesson incrementally adding to what came before in a logical and natural way. It may seem trivial, but the music is clearly engraved with plenty of space. (I mention this since I have a different piano book where the book designed decided a featherweight, tiny font was the right one to use in both the text and engraving.)

Anyway, back to Baker's book: There are about 20 pieces in each of the 5 "Books". Obviously none of them are going to be newer than about 1985. So it helps if you are an oldster and can remember some of the tunes. But they are pretty much all classics so it shouldn't be hard to locate them. Lots of Beatles, show tunes and old standards like Fascination, Strangers in the Night, a smattering of classics.

There are probably newer books just as good, and maybe with some newer tunes in it but this does the trick for me.