John Thompson's Modern Course for the Piano - 3rd grade
Category: Books,Arts & Photography,Music
John Thompson's Modern Course for the Piano - 3rd grade Details
(Willis). The Modern Course series provides a clear and complete foundation in the study of the piano that enables the student to think and feel musically. It may be preceded by the Teaching Little Fingers to Play series. Based on the fundamentals of interpretation: form, mood and style. Carries on without interruption the musicianship developed in Grade 2.
Reviews
I am 67 years old, and have spent a few years learning to play the piano. Learning comes slow to those of us who have so many old habits that now prove obstacles to new learning & must be revised to accommodate this learning.I teased my wonderfully patient teacher by chiding her for promoting me from kindergarten to third grade after only six years of study & practice. She appropriately told me I was rapidly progressing into piano.The book is very well presented and explains things like style, mood, interpretation, and form. The selections are all fun after appropriate practice and some helpful additional instruction. (One would likely be lost with this book not knowing a host of other technical details about printed music.)Unfortunately the author only mentions the more technique-oriented and/or technical challenges one faces at this time in one's study. His mention is only a paragraph aimed at selling another of his books on that topic. It is a mystery only booksellers can answer why he needed another book to contain his subject and mine instead of putting it all into one collection. A glimpse at the back cover illustrates the depths of this challenge: the author there offers another seven "third grade" music books.The book is also "modern" in the quaintly academic sense that it contains music from what the academics call the modern centuries (C16-C20); according to their preferred doctrines we now live in the "post modern" era which began sometime in the late 19th or early 20th centuries, the precise moment of its birth as yet unsettled.That is not necessarily wrong; we all need orientation from the past. But it is important also to not get lost in the past.
