beginner books for existing musicians from other instruments?

[sdadept]

I bought a piano 3 months ago and have started taking lessons.  I am thoroughly enjoying learning.  I am a fairly accomplished trumpet player so I can read treble clef.  Base clef has been a challenge but I'm learning it.

One thing that I have noted though is that learning with the standard material has been a bit odd.  I can play beginner things fairly easy that require just following notes on the treble clef.  But the beginner books skip around with exercises intended to teach rhythms (which I already know) and notation as well as how to read music.

Are there any really good beginning piano books / lessons for those musicians who can already read music?  What would anyone recommend?

btw, this is a video of me on one of the pieces I just started learning.  My timing stinks, but I'm working on that.  It sucks to know what something 'should' sound like but not being able to make it happen.  haha

&feature=youtu.be

[hfmadopter]

I've run into this with people who have not played keyboard in the past but an instrument that plays a single clef. You would be better off going ahead and learning what appears to be so simple from the beginning books because keyboard provides it's own accompaniment and single clef instruments do not . Your video demonstrates perfectly why you need that work. As you grow into more advanced music it will become more evident yet. Compounding this issue is the fact that adults always want to move beyond this, I was no exception as a young adult taking piano lessons even though I was just swapping keyboard instruments with two clef reading !  Never mind coming from a single clef instrument.

I'm teaching a trumpet player piano now, we have several months in and she has learned the bass clef pretty well. She still struggle some with rhythm but is really starting to catch on. We have some syncopation work we are currently doing and I've given her sections of Bach Preludes to do. I don't expect her to learn the pieces yet, just get started on some of the complication so it's more in her hands when we actually do work on the full pieces.

Get that foundation down good and solid now is my suggestion, it will be less of a struggle later on if you do that and more of a struggle later on if you don't.

[1piano4joe]

Hi sdadept,

I was a classically trained clarinetist. I studied privately with a teacher for over 10 years. I learned saxophone and the flute. I was, at first, a music major in college.

I highly recommend the Bastien piano basics but any good method book would suffice.

I knew all the major and minor scales before even touching the piano. Also, the circle of fifths and way more theory than I'd like to admit. I read the treble clef insanely well even better than pianists or so I thought.

I was wrong, wrong, wrong.

It's not just learning the bass clef. It's actually learning both clefs all over again since I can only play one note at a time on the clarinet that is what I learned to read exceedingly well, one note at a time. And just because I am a fluent sight reader on clarinet doesn't mean all that much really.

Let me explain why to you. There are extremely capable piano sight readers. Okay, now hand them your trumpet and ask them to play something. I can actually hear you laughing as you read this. I'm sure you got my point.

So, my self proclaimed expert reading was a figment of my imagination and ego.


The next thing I am about to say might sound really, really weird but it is all so true.

I know "how" to play the piano. I just "can't".

There were no shortcuts for me. I started at the very beginning on piano just like someone who knows nothing about music.

My fingers had to more or less learn to keep up with my brain. I was playing all the scales on piano in no time at all.

The main advantage for existing "note reading" musicians from other instruments is one of learning curve. You can devour method books in a fraction of the time. Another big advantage is how much you can do on your own with or without a teacher! Also, a decade of playing in band, dance band and marching in parades helps with timing and memorization. Most piano students play alone in their living rooms and not with 100 other musicians!

Finally, I was never able to play 2 clarinets simultaneously. To this day, I feel that my right hand is one musician and my left hand is someone else. Some pianist's here state something like they only have 1 hand with 10 fingers. Reading 2 clefs simultaneously is "normal" for them. Well it isn't for me and probably never will be.

Reading 2 clefs. How the heck do you do this? Where do you look? One then the other? Down the middle?

And then there is this "coordination thing" of each hand deciphering the notes with varying fingering for each piece and playing in sync.

Well it's late and I'm getting tired so that's all for now, Joe.

And Welcome to Pianostreet!

[bronnestam]

I can only agree with previous posters here. It may feel rather degrading to start at total beginner's level again, but do it anyway! And enjoy the fun of being a total beginner again, because it IS fun, if seen from the right perspective. It is sometimes a big relief to start from square 1 again, to be able to say: "I know absolutely nothing about this". No demands on you, no old sins and bad habits in your luggage, just a fresh start. And so you will learn: this is a C. This is a quarter note ...   

Anyone who has raised a little child knows that following the learning process from the very beginning, is the most fascinating thing. Take the chance and be that child yourself, discover the world once again with fresh eyes! You will find that you will develop as a trumpet player as well!!!

I recently started a self-study course in learning to play the electrical bass. It is great fun (except for the pain in my fingers), and I do it faithfully from the beginning as I understand that I really really need that. Yes, I know what a quarter note is!

[1piano4joe]

Hi sdadept,

I left out the polyrhythms of piano which doesn't happen on clarinets.  

However, the single most annoying thing for me is the poorest notation imaginable found in piano music. All the years of literal notation, poof!, gone forever, fuhgeddaboudit.

I find many scores to be in a secret code. Notes tied across 10 measures played at pp at lento. HELLO?, the sound died away after the second measure! This nonsense just goes on and on.

I've been meaning to write a lengthy post on this. And I definitely, definitely am going to. I have to vent this for other existing musicians from other instruments. You are not alone. I deeply, deeply feel your pain.

Sometimes I wish I never learned that #%^& clarinet!, Joe.

[mwtzzz]

For classical music no. But if your thing is pop or jazz, then yes:

Understanding and Implementing Harmony on the Piano. by M. Martinez

[unimaster]

The next thing I am about to say might sound really, really weird but it is all so true.

I know "how" to play the piano. I just "can't".

That doesn't sound weird at all—at least not to someone who's experienced (and is experiencing) the same thing.

I sometimes think I could teach certain elements of piano technique . . . and yet I wouldn't have a prayer of demonstrating them properly. I can write the notes out on the page, keeping in mind the most efficient fingering and limitations of range; just please don't ask me to play it.

I suppose we just have to accept that if you're a beginner in one phase or another of piano learning, then you are, for all intents and purposes, a beginner, period. You can't advance until you have all the tools and techniques in place.

[quantum]

Universities have piano courses teaching this very topic: for music majors wishing to learn piano as a secondary instrument.  Try looking at your local university's course outline and recommended reading list.  It will give you a starting point for which books may be suitable to you.

[waywardmonk]

Universities have piano courses teaching this very topic: for music majors wishing to learn piano as a secondary instrument.  Try looking at your local university's course outline and recommended reading list.  It will give you a starting point for which books may be suitable to you.

This seems like very good advice to me. My local university uses these books for their piano classes for music majors:

Journey Through the Classics - Hal Leonard
The Complete Book of Scales, Chords, Arpeggios & Cadences - Willard Palmer

I have also been proficient in another instrument with lots of theory. I'm getting a keyboard this holiday and I think I will try these books out. Thanks!

[eldergeek]

I found myself in a very similar situation, but moving from a classical guitar / lute situation.

Exactly the same problems with having to read 2 clefs simultaneously, which has taken some getting used to, as has the problem of having to get used to 2 hands playing on the same keyboard and not co-operating the way they do with guitar music.

My solution was to find a teacher who was happy to follow the learning path that I had come up with. and the results have been great so far:

I wanted to learn by working through the Bartok-Reshovsky piano method and Bartok's Mikrokosmos books. They seem to concentrate most on the stuff that I need to get the hang of, and which are most different from my previous music-playing. Things such as quiet playing with one hand and louder with the other, and staccato versus legato.

The result has been enormous fun and I feel I am making more rapid progress than by following other methods, due mainly to the fact that Bartok seems to concentrate on exactly the sort of things I need most. I must say that I have been incredibly lucky to find a teacher prepared to go along with my ideas! His response has been very positive, although he admits that the approach would probably not work with his younger students.

As other people have said, don't be put off by going through exercises which seem to be well below your musical understanding - it really can be fun with the right mental attitude, and the progress can be very rapid.

Good luck!

[thalbergmad]

I say, we have a lute player amongst us. I would have thought the piano was easy in comparison.

Thal

[eldergeek]

I could never claim to be a lutenist; just a classical guitarist who also happens to own a lute which he finds more difficult to learn than the piano is turning out to be.

Having said that, the main problem with the lute (in my experience) is less to do with playing it, but more to do with keeping the beastly thing in tune.

[chopincat]

Bastien's Easy Piano Classics is a nice book of mostly unarranged easy piano solos from all four eras. It doesn't have any of the method book-type stuff.
https://www.amazon.com/Easy-Piano-Classics-James-Bastien/dp/0849750423

[chopinlover01]

I bought a piano 3 months ago and have started taking lessons.  I am thoroughly enjoying learning.  I am a fairly accomplished trumpet player so I can read treble clef.  Base clef has been a challenge but I'm learning it.

One thing that I have noted though is that learning with the standard material has been a bit odd.  I can play beginner things fairly easy that require just following notes on the treble clef.  But the beginner books skip around with exercises intended to teach rhythms (which I already know) and notation as well as how to read music.

Are there any really good beginning piano books / lessons for those musicians who can already read music?  What would anyone recommend?

btw, this is a video of me on one of the pieces I just started learning.  My timing stinks, but I'm working on that.  It sucks to know what something 'should' sound like but not being able to make it happen.  haha

&feature=youtu.be

Get a rhythm reading book if you're struggling to read rhythms/timing. Keep reading through Bach- two part inventions.
Method books are before you can play "real" repertoire, which it looks like you can.
Ask your teacher for help, and try to find things that interconnect between the two instruments.