Good piano related books

EB5AGV

Which books would you recommend to learn to play the piano?. And to maintain / adjust / fix it?. Or anything else piano related?

I will start with two books:

The Complete Pianist, by Penelope Roskell. You can spend years absorbing knowledge from it. For any playing level
Piano servicing, tuning and rebuilding, by Arthur A. Reblitz. All and every aspect of the innards of our beloved pianos

MacMacMac

The Reblitz book is the bible of that industry. It taught me that piano repair and maintenance are best left to qualified technicians.

vagfilm

MacMacMac The Reblitz book is the bible of that industry. It taught me that piano repair and maintenance are best left to qualified technicians.

Not so fast… Cybergene swears for it (it is a bible, after all…) and used it for DIY successful regulation. I have it… It's a beautiful and daunting reference book.

QuasiUnaFantasia

I have been through quite a few books, and most of them did not fit me very well. Additionally, it seems to be the favourite pastime for piano book authors to pour ridicule and venom over their fellow piano book authors, which I find disgraceful.

But the books of Murray MaLachlan seem to work well for me, and I have been able to patch a number of holes in my knowledge about piano playing from the first two of his books. (I actually started with the second, and now I am going through the first).

My feeling is that a book that works well for one person may not do so for the next.

Del Vento

I have all the books mentioned in this thread 👓️ and plenty more 😁

Note that the OP spoke about books to "learn play the piano". So the Reblitz and Igrec books do not qualify. They do not say almost anything about how to play the piano. However they are highly recommended for anybody who wants to know how the piano works. If you want just one, I recommend the Mario Igrec book. He learned on the Reblitz book, so in a way it includes it 😆 and you need both only if you are a very specialized piano technician who wants to see how people do things (slightly) differently and/or if you are a hoarder as I am. If you already have the Reblitz or if price is an issue, having only that is fine too. However Mario is a (fantastic) pianist, so he has sprinkled the book with some pianistic gems which are prized if you play rather than (just) regulate the instrument. FWIW he is also the CEO of a Software Engineering firm he founded (not sure if you want to take that as "you can't make a living with pianos" or with "he's so good that he had plenty of spare time to fill").

Back to the topic of the OP, after having read, and followed a gazillion of books (I can post a list here, but do we really care?) I am now 100% convinced that (spoiler alert 😀)

You cannot learn to play the piano from books. REALLY!! You need a good teacher

How do I know? I've done it myself and I've seen it in practice with me, my daughter and a couple of friends [1]. The most important word in the spoiler above is GOOD. If your teacher is not good, than a book could be even better. And note that good teacher does not necessarily mean good player

QuasiUnaFantasia Additionally, it seems to be the favourite pastime for piano book authors to pour ridicule and venom over their fellow piano book authors, which I find disgraceful.

I had the exact same experience and found it disgraceful too. In fact I also had the opportunity to speak with one of such authors and they felt offended when I said that what they were suggesting I read was similar in another book and that he could read that to check if it was really so or I was misunderstanding and possibly he could further improve his suggestions which I thought were very good.

But if one can "read behind it" and most important see below the apparent differences and find the underlying similarities in my opinion one will get a deeper understanding of the field. That said, I reiterate the spoiler above and add that learning to play pianos from books is like being a distinct marques who would not ever touch a saw and despise dust and especially sawdust, but knows all the intricacies of woodworking because he studied them.

[1]: not a representative sample I know. But at least I could say that is the most likely result given sample size

CyberGene

vagfilm Cybergene swears for it

Maybe because it's the only piano book I have 🤣

I am pretty convinced this is the BEST piano book there is:

I wanted to purchase it, however it was way too expensive for my needs, taking in mind the only available one was on the Amazon UK and the delivery was almost the price of the book which in turn was too expensive... Not sure why. However judging by the sample pages that can be found on the official website the content is absolutely mind-blowing which is not surprising taking in mind the author is kind of a polymath, besides the book is written in the recent years.

http://www.pianosinsideout.com

Sample pages: http://www.pianosinsideout.com/action.pdf

vagfilm

Not familiar with the Roskell book. Will check it out. On a different note, the essay books by Alfred Brendel are an entertaining read (pianist's A-Z, and Brendel on Music). I think there are 2 more, but I don't have them.

nhanzero

I use The Piano Handbook

spanishbuddha

nhanzero " I enjoy the Piano Handbook, it's a nice book, with good overview and introduction to piano playing, but the pace is too fast for a beginner to learn from. Even so it's a keeper on my bookshelf.

Monoch

Not a piano book specifically, but a very good and comprehensive (despite the title) book on music theory that is also relevant to piano playing:

nhanzero

spanishbuddha It's a very steep book in term of progressing, I have to use it as a broad guide to piano playing with pianocareeracademy, and they complement each other very well.

magicpiano

I wonder if it does exist a complete piano learning book where you are presented with theory followed by a series of (possibly nicely musical) excercises of increasing level that prepare you for learning an important piece. For example:

exercise A1 - exercise A2 - … - exercise An.
Ok, now you are ready for: "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star - Easy version"

exercise B1 - exercise B2 - … - exercise Bn.
Ok, now you are ready for: "Etude Op. 25, No.6 (Chopin)" 😲

and so on…

spanishbuddha

magicpiano I think there are available several quite good sets or series of books which provide a method, either for self study or study with a teacher, to get started with piano and take you quite a way, Faber, Alfred, etc. The difficulty I find is the path or method once you have chosen to work on a genre, say classical, pop, jazz, boogie, rock, blues, etc; there are again plenty of books but less progressively methodical. There's also quite a lot of online courses, but it's difficult to browse before you buy, and plenty of YouTube tutorials which can be quite piecemeal. In the same way, where I am, most teachers seem to be 'classical', and don't teach chord or ear methods, or jazz, boogie, rock, etc.

Deleted

magicpiano I wonder if it does exist a complete piano learning book where you are presented with theory followed by a series of (possibly nicely musical) excercises of increasing level that prepare you for learning an important piece. For example:

exercise A1 - exercise A2 - … - exercise An.
Ok, now you are ready for: "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star - Easy version"

exercise B1 - exercise B2 - … - exercise Bn.
Ok, now you are ready for: "Etude Op. 25, No.6 (Chopin)" 😲

and so on…

It's like publishing a book with printed instructions on how to get to the Golden Gate bridge in SF, CA. You turn to the first page and it reads: "1. At the next intersection turn right! ..." Then you realize, it doesn't make any sense. People use Google Maps to get places, because the "How do I get there?" depends on "Where are you currently at?". And everyone here is at a different place both geographically and at the piano and needs completely different instructions to get to Chopin op 25,6. Google Maps also uses GPS to check if you followed the instructions correctly and provides you with new ones if you made a mistake. And you will make mistakes on your path... and without help end up somewhere else.

EB5AGV

Del Vento Note that the OP spoke about books to "learn play the piano".

Nope!. I literally said both types and the Reblitz was one of my two recommended books 👍🏻

Of course, playing is a topic more interesting for most of us. But I also like to know how my piano works and even fix small things, as I did last year

Frédéric L

There is the Fundamentals of Piano Practice by C. C. Chang which can be downloaded freely. There are a bunch of translations (including one of mine).

vagfilm

Frédéric L The CC Chang book is highly recommended, but I briefly browsed it and it looked to be heavily focused on high level performance (training from the begining to be at competition level, or best of the best, instead of enjoying to be good players). Was that an unfair assessment of the book? I am not implying that to be a bad thing, but it is a focused approach.

QuasiUnaFantasia

There is some good stuff in Chang's book IMHO. But the guy is so full of himself, so absolutely overflowing with praise for himself and his own miraculous insights that allegedly have only ever been attained by him, that you constantly sit there with a feeling that he might actually make for a decent human being, if only somebody would slap some common sense into him and get him out of his narcisistic delusion.

Now, if he, and Nassim Nicholas Taleb could only meet for a one-on-one debate … That would be for the world championship in Mindless Self-congratulation. 😁

Del Vento

QuasiUnaFantasia There is some good stuff in Chang's book IMHO. But the guy is so full of himself, so absolutely overflowing with praise for himself and his own miraculous insights that allegedly have only ever been attained by him, that you constantly sit there with a feeling that he might actually make for a decent human being, if only somebody would slap some common sense into him and get him out of his narcisistic delusion.

I totally agree. So, let me rephrase it as follow: if you have a really thick skin, and you are the kind of person who would dig into manure without gloves because there might be a diamond inside to find, go for it. Otherwise, pass it out.

vagfilm I agree with the principle of better piece categorization (for learning purposes). But instead of classifying according to "precedents" (which piece A you need before piece B), I would like to have better ranking of each piece according to its characteristics. But I am really not sure if that is feasible or even really necessary.

There is not a sequential increase in difficulty in pieces. It's multi-dimensional. There is a large number of skills to be mastered, and one could be hugely competent in one but not another other. Some are technical, some are musical, and there probably are different categories. For example, large jumps is a technical difficulty, octaves to double the melody are another (often used in conjunction with the large jumps), multiple-voice counterpoint is a totally different one. A pianist (especially self-taught) could play complicated 4-voice counterpoint well and fail to do jumps and/or octaves. Or viceversa. Only a GREAT teacher can assess holistically students, and work on the weaknesses to bring them to an all-rounded situation.

magicpiano

@Deleted my idea was that if, for example, you are at "Für Elise" level (that IMHO is not easy at all for a beginner, especially in its second part), you can start from there rather than starting from zero. In this way the book could be used at different skill levels. And it would be very nice if for each famous piece, the book would tell us something about the author, the piece, etc… I'm for concrete things, but I don't mind a bit of backstory. 😉

Deleted

magicpiano @Joe my idea was that if, for example, you are at "Für Elise" level (that IMHO is not easy at all for a beginner, especially in its second part), you can start from there rather than starting from zero.

Beginner pieces are not easy for a beginner - struggling with literally everything is what marks a beginner. However "Für Elise" is not a beginner piece, it's unattainable for a beginner.

Single pieces are not "levels". If an examination board defines levels, they require a certain repertoire beside other abilities (reading sheet music, ear training) to pass that level - a single memorized piece is not sufficient. Also passing a certain exam doesn't tell anything about what a certain student needs to advance further.

QuasiUnaFantasia

It would be really neat if there were a repository of hierarchical information of the type: if you want to play this, then you must first have learned that, these, and those. This repository should give the prerequisites for every work ever written.

This is the way courses were organised at my old university, and that made it really easy to steer as fast as possible towards particular goals.

vagfilm

QuasiUnaFantasia if you want to play this, then you must first have learned that, these, and those.

Even I, being mostly self taught, believes this to be an impossibly useful tool. Good "next piece" choice is AN ART for teachers or whatever form of well experienced advisors, because the struggles and necessities of two beginners are not alike. Some have problems with finger independence and dexterity (not my case), some with hand independence (my case), other with rhythm (not my case), others with polyphony (my case, because of hand independence); on technique some get pedalling right from the start, other get legato right, others get rotation, others get arm weight…

If you listen carefully to pieces and can identify your struggles, you know which piece to choose next and work on a particular component. If you do not know (and even if you do… ) an external advice from someone who knows at which point you are, is an invaluable advice, because every new piece can be used for several purposes: the important thing is not the piece, but it's purpose to you… "I chose this piece because I need more legato training" and do not focus so much on your current sloppy pedalling, or vice versa…