Piano Lessons - Pauline Hall: Piano Time, or something else?

[roisin]

What piano tutor do your children use?
DS2 started with Me and My Piano 1&2 (Fanny Waterman - Faber), which was superb: great, fun pieces - he loved it and made rapid progress.

Unfortunately Faber don't do a sequel to this series. So then he moved on to OUP's Piano Time 2, and I have to say I loathe it! The pieces are quite tricky, but also fairly boring, and very 'exercise-like'.

(He does have "Dozen a Day", which he loves; and also "UpGrade" - repertoire pieces, which he plays just for fun. And his teacher has just asked us to get the AB Grade 1 pieces - so he has plenty to work on. But I just wondered what good tutor books there are out there for this stage?)

Up-Grade is great, isn't it? Good fun - which is what they need at this stage. He's only been learning for 6 months, and has made amazing progress, so I don't want him to be turned off at this point.

One great thing is it has inspired me, and I've been playing loads too

I can't stand piano time - Hal Leonard Book 4 & 5 would be good for this level, but some of the material would have been covered in the Faber book.

But I would do the AB pieces, maybe get Little Peppers by Elissa Milne and generally enjoy playing real music.

I do feel slightly guilty as I worked for OUP music before having kids! In my defence I didn't work on Piano Time

I'll have a look at the Hal Leonard next time I'm in town. Thanks threebob.