If you teach teenage or adult beginners, check out this book!

I’m not usually a fan of using method books with my students as I like to pick repertoire from all over the place in order to give them as varied an introduction to music as possible. However I recently found this fantastic title at the music store and had to share it with you.

It’s the Hal Leonard Student Piano Library Adult Piano Method – Book 1 and it is a great method to consider for your beginners.

The thing I liked most about it right from the start was that the first activities were all improvisations with fun and inspiring backing tracks.

Here’s one of my students enjoying these the other week:

Notes are introduced sequentially as in any other method book, starting on blacks, then to whites and then onto the stave and there are reminders and info boxes introducing new skills.

There aren’t any “kiddy” pictures to put your teenagers off and the layout is really professional. Oh, and there are 2 CDs included with play-alongs for just about every piece in the book!! Gold!

I haven’t yet looked at Book 2 as I’ll probably continue to source my own repertoire, but I’ll definitely be using this more in the coming weeks (and no, I don’t work for Hal Leonard!).

I’ll let you know how it goes as I work through more pieces and delve more deeply into it this year.