There is certainly no shortage of beginner piano books on the market today. However because there are so many that one can buy in music store or online, which is the right choice for you?
Well the first thing you should look for when choosing a beginner piano book, is not only basics of how to read music or understand music scales, but also how to physically play the piano itself. However teaching students how to physically play the piano is probably the most difficult hurdle that a beginner piano book has to deal with.
The problem isn’t so much with the author’s ability to play or teach piano, but more of a problem with the medium itself. There are only so many things that one can say through just words, especially when teaching a student how to play a musical instrument, such as the piano.
As the saying goes, a picture is worth a thousand words. So there are many books that may have pictures on how to hold your hands or how to play the piano, but even this is not really a good approach to the problem. So to be fully honest, a beginner piano book should most likely be the last product you should be looking for when looking for a way to learn the piano.
If I had the choice to choose an instructor over a beginner piano book, it would certainly be the instructor. There is just no substitute to seeing someone play the piano correctly and walking you through the many problems that arises while a beginning student starts to learn to play the piano. Without some way to see the correct way and correct your bad habits, it is inevitable that you will learn to play the piano in such an incorrect way that you may not progress past the beginning stages of playing the instrument.
However, if your reason for looking for a beginning piano book is the price, you may want to look into piano lesson software. There are just so many benefits to choosing a piano lesson software over a beginner piano book, that it would take ages to just write them all out. However I will list a few.
A beginner piano book doesn’t have video so that you can actually watch what the instructor or author is actually telling you what you should be doing or playing, however piano lesson software allows you to see the instructors hands and how he is playing what you should be practicing.
Another thing that piano lesson software allows you to have is interactivity! With something such as piano lesson software, you can have the software check your playing on a keyboard plugged into the computer to check your playing for mistakes. A book has no interactivity at all, thus you could be playing something the wrong way many times without even noticing. This is a horrible way to learn and actually ingrains bad habits into your playing from the beginning.
Overall a beginning piano book is probably the worst choice to learn the piano and should be avoided at all costs. You are far better off with piano lesson software or a real personal piano instructor. If price is a factor, piano lesson software sometimes costs even less than a beginning piano book. So just avoid the books if you can.