What's the purpose of lesson books?

[lordnishka]

I know its to teach you about dynamics and stuff, but what are the purpose of the songs? Do you just play and master a song after a week and just forget about it and go to a new one? I realized how odd that sounds just now.

And you don't necessarily have to master a piano song before moving on to the next one, right? My old piano teacher usually just switched to the next page after a week, regardless of whether I did poorly or not. Am I wrong to be confused about the purpose of lesson books? Thank you for answering.

[gore234]

To get people use to playing piano and reading sheet music.  Some players have trouble playing chords and notes because they haven't played before.  Some players have never read sheet music.  You don't just start out playing difficult classical pieces.

[hfmadopter]

Pretty much you move on to the next page when you get what the lesson was about on the current page. And you will never be going back to these little songs in the method book. Perfecting isn't really in the cards either, save that for when you get into pieces of music where you will then be using the techniques you learned from the lesson/method books. Most people starting from scratch will be taught by a teacher using one form or another of these books though. It just brings everything into light within the pages rather than scraping a bunch of information together to teach from. It can work well for self taught individuals as well.

 It's not bad to have been taught at least from the first level book and maybe the second and then move on to theory and real music. There are books of Works, book of Etudes etc. to then work from as well. Some of the conservatories offer their books for sale, I worked for a long time with my teacher from the New England conservatory books, which featured real pieces in an order they pieced together. About in my fourth year we stared working on individually bought sheets of works from Mozart, Brahms etc. Then we also had an intermediate level book of popular songs and show tunes.

[gregh]

Each section isn't just a simplified song; there should be something in there for you to practice. One song introduces the chords of F major, another has you practice using different fingers on the same key to reposition your hand, then you learn syncopation and practice different timing with each hand, and so on.

I practice a song until I think I have the skill that is developed with it. I don't try to master it before I move on, just be able to play it well enough. I wouldn't spend a whole week on just one. But I go back to previous songs often--I just like some of them--and find that they continue to improve, and the technique that the song exercises also improves. As I improve on the earlier songs, the new ones seem to come easier, too.

[kevin69]

I practice a song until I think I have the skill that is developed with it. I don't try to master it before I move on, just be able to play it well enough. I wouldn't spend a whole week on just one.

I usually work on two pieces at a time, and it usually takes me a couple of weeks to get pieces up to a level where i am happy with them enough to move one. Sometimes i keep at a piece that i like for a bit longer.

Moving on to a new piece regardless of how you play the current one sounds a bit pointless.
i don't see much value in just being able to say you got to the end of a book, if you can't actually play the pieces well.

[outin]

Moving on to a new piece regardless of how you play the current one sounds a bit pointless.
i don't see much value in just being able to say you got to the end of a book, if you can't actually play the pieces well.

With a teacher the aim is often to gain some basic skills that could later be used to play more interesting music, it's not really necessary to play the all the pieces well. You move on after the piece has done what it was supposed to do. "Getting to the end of the book" should not be relevant at all, but I guess that is related to the idea of "finishing grades". Some people need that to keep them motivated.

It is true that one should also practice the skill of learning pieces to performance level, but that could be done with pieces selected for their musical or personal value instead. Especially for adults it is often more motivating to pick some music that really interests you to perfect instead of using a lot of time on every little piece in a method book.

But of course if you really like the pieces in the book and want to be able to play them for others, you'll be happy to spend more time on them 

[hfmadopter]

I usually work on two pieces at a time, and it usually takes me a couple of weeks to get pieces up to a level where i am happy with them enough to move one. Sometimes i keep at a piece that i like for a bit longer.

Moving on to a new piece regardless of how you play the current one sounds a bit pointless.
i don't see much value in just being able to say you got to the end of a book, if you can't actually play the pieces well.

Above I stated that you will never be going back to these songs in the method books. It's hard in a single message to get out all information that one wants convey, we would end up writing books of data here to convey all meanings. My thought and my process was once we moved away from method books we never went back, except now I use them myself to teach people from them. That is not to say that while still within the confines of a given book, one won't revisit the earlier pieces.

And you are correct, rushing through the book to get to the end of the book makes no sense, you should "get the message" of each lesson in there. But indeed, getting the lesson and perfecting the songs are two different things. You need to perfect the lesson, the songs are pretty goofy usually but if you want to hang around perfecting them that's all well and good ! Why not learn what needs to be learned so that you can move on to real pieces of music with emotion and value to them musically vs getting a lesson ? Some of the upper grade books do improve in that department and certainly the conservatory books did that I mentioned above, as they worked with real classical music.

And books of Etudes are another matter, because really Etudes are lessons too, just are beautiful music vs goofy.

[gregh]

I don't think I'd say that it's pointless to try to perfect some of the songs in the lesson book, to bring them up to performance level. The old adage is that you fight the way you train. When you hit "real" music you'll be practicing it the same way you've been practicing all along.

[hfmadopter]

I don't think I'd say that it's pointless to try to perfect some of the songs in the lesson book, to bring them up to performance level. The old adage is that you fight the way you train. When you hit "real" music you'll be practicing it the same way you've been practicing all along.

True, I just wouldn't linger around over a glitch here or there in that music but would once working on repertoire. I mean linger on Row Your Boat, come on ! And I'm speaking of the lower grade books here, mostly level 1 and part of level 2 books. Level 2 in Alfred's books you at least get Fare Well To Thee or Battle Hymn Of The Republic. Mid and upper level two starts to get more interesting as does level 3 in most courses. In my case I never got to three, my teacher moved on to conservatory lessons and then sheet music or books of repertoire after that. I'm speaking about 3- 4 years in now, not at the first grade level. Really in the first grade book the point wasn't to play to perfection but get the lessons.

The Spinning Song, Schumann's, The Wild Horesman from Albums for the Young, ya we worked those up and I performed them in front of people.. I wasn't performing Row Your Boat, who would.

[gregh]

True, I just wouldn't linger around over a glitch here or there in that music but would once working on repertoire. I mean linger on Row Your Boat, come on ! And I'm speaking of the lower grade books here, mostly level 1 and part of level 2 books. Level 2 in Alfred's books you at least get Fare Well To Thee or

Yes, I can agree with that. I suppose I had more in mind the effort to play musically rather than getting Row Your Boat to a performance standard. It's just hard to be artistic if you still have to tell your fingers what to do.

[kevin69]

I wasn't really thinking of 'perfecting' anything, more about playing reasonably fluently, with some dynamics and pedalling, at a reasonably even tempo. When the OP said he moved on even when playing pieces 'poorly' i had in mind something well below this level.

I find that if i concentrate on one aspect of a piece, often everything else (tempo, dynamics, and pedaling) can go out the window. So for me at least, learning a new bit of technique involves some learning in isolation, following by integrating that skill with the others so that i'm doing everything at the same time.

Does anyone return to method books later on for sight reading practice?
I had thought that practising sight reading would mainly involve having a large volume of pieces to practise with, and that method books would be good for this.

[outin]

Does anyone return to method books later on for sight reading practice?
I had thought that practising sight reading would mainly involve having a large volume of pieces to practise with, and that method books would be good for this.

Yes, I have used them for that. These are books I have not really studied before or studied before my 30-year hiatus. My present teacher wasn't into method books at all...

[hfmadopter]

Does anyone return to method books later on for sight reading practice?
I had thought that practising sight reading would mainly involve having a large volume of pieces to practise with, and that method books would be good for this.

No I use New Age and Pop pieces for that and they work up really nice. Also if you are a Gold member here at PS you can go back to some level 2 or 3 repertoire and sight read those, I've done that as well. But if you have the books and can stand the pieces in them then sure it will work for that purpose just as well.

Out of New Age and pop I get pieces I can actually play for people after the work is done on them, I enjoy that and so do the listeners. I play older pop ( I am 63 after all), some hymns too but recognizable pieces that people would know. Same with Christmas music, it may be new age or my own revised chord work in those, loosely following the written score. It's rare I play it as written with Christmas music. But the score is a good starting point. Guess I couldn't record it without breaking copyright, not that I'm going to ! I'm having fun with my music this time around.