May I Recommend . . .

. . . some piano books for beginners. You can study piano on just about anything you have, even a little keyboard. All you need to start is about two and a half octaves (that's about 20 white keys and all the corresponding black keys!) which most little keyboards have. Once your kids get going, they can graduate to a better keyboard (I can recommend a few of these, also, in the $300 - $400 range) or even to a piano! ($500 or so should get you a decent used upright, but let me know before you go to look at one so I can let you know what to look out for!)

My alltime favorite book for the very young beginner (around 4 years old or younger if your child has a decent attention span) is the Music For Little Mozarts series.




Beethoven Bear, Mozart Mouse and all their composer/animal friends have music adventures in the music room while the children are away. Each lesson has a story that teaches a simple concept (like high and low, loud and soft) and some things you and your child can do at the piano. I highly recommend you get the stuffed animals that go with it because its much more fun to teach bear and mouse what to do!

This series is published by Alfred and I pretty much like all their books. They only have one mistake, in that they don't reinforce good note recognition from the beginning. You'll need to supplement with some extra work on that! You don't need that for the Music For Little Mozarts, but above that you need to make sure you have the Notespeller books.

Use this link to look at all the Alfred Piano books. I like the Prep Course for kids around 6 or 7. If they are beginning older than that, the Basic Course is good up to about 13. After that I skip right to the Adult Course. All of these books are interchangeable, so as your child grows, he or she can move to the appropriate level in the next appropriate course series.

Let me know if you want any of these books. I don't pay retail for any of them and would be happy to purchase them for you and mail them out. Let me know in the next week or two, because I have to order some for my students and I can add yours in there too.

Have fun making music!