Too much to read. I've just skipped to the end where essentially you're comparing to modes of study. You seem competent (I'm not truely convinced by your story but nevertheless ) However a teacher is always a good option, it will make your learning efficient. The books you are comparing are quite different... One promises to be an all in one, and the other is accelerated for older beginners, of course they are going to vary majorly in content. The Faber ones to me, come across as "piano for dummies" style where it seems to aim to make everything look easier.What I would say is just breeze through those books, almost like in a revision style to make sure there's no fundamentals you're missing but don't sit with them for too long. If you're looking at the theory of music, there are much better books, consider Edward Aldwell - Harmony and Voice leading or Stefan Kostka Tonal Harmony (you can find these both online and the Tonal Harmony also comes with a workbook - it's a monster theory book)If you are looking for more comprehensive piano study courses, let me know and I'll fire some more at you. The sort of books you tend to find easily on Amazon are not for advanced learners, but people who want learning the piano to be made easy for them.
Glad to hear. Definitely the more comprehensive books can seem a little difficult to chew at times, but you are getting a lot of information which is key. As mentioned use the easier books as revisions or easy explanations of things you are unsure on. As always advised is to get a piano teacher if this is within your capabilities. There are some very flexible offering 1 per month or bi-weekly lessons to suit your budget and just make sure you stay on the right tracks for progression. For someone starting from scratch here's one thing I find that can fool some people - SITUATIONYou find a piece you love, it's a little difficult, but you power through it, you can play it quite well after a couple of months, you check online and behold it's a grade 6 piece! In 4 months you can consider yourself grade 6? Surely not... EXACTLY. the answer is no There are many technical aspects of a piece that make it the grade it is, please do not get bulked down with where you are, just take your time, progress logically and patiently and try and broaden your skills as much as possible. I.E I wouldn't go through the whole SGCSP complete grade 10 and go right now i'm ready for that Chopin Ballade... Unfortunately piano isn't that linear.Learning a piano piece is almost like writing an essay, you take lots and lots of different research from different sources, improvise a little, add your own flare to it and put it all together. if you just researched from one source, you could find not only are you missing a lot of information, it could also be very incorrect.