Learn Piano Books
Are learn piano books a good way to learn piano? Piano books have their pros and cons, and we will discuss both to help you decide whether books would be the right way for you to learn piano.
Pros
Piano books are invaluable for learning sheet music. In order for you to learn to decipher notes, clefs, time signatures, key signatures, and all the rest of the markings on a staff, you will definitely need to use a book that explains piano notation.
Piano books are also essential for gaining theoretical knowledge. Learning music theory would make for dry reading, but some people choose to gain this knowledge to understand their favorite musical instrument far better than they did before.
Cons
Now, let's talk about learning practical skills. When it comes to mastering the actual practical skills of playing piano, words turn out to be silent. Words can help you understand the theory, but they cannot explain the music played. No matter how many times you will read about proper hand positioning and proper posture, you will not get the hang of it until you see it with your own two eyes.
The easiest way to learn piano is the visual way. Copying every move after a skillful pianist with many years of experience and preferably also some notable achievements and awards would be invaluable for gaining practical skills for playing the piano. Even though your tutor would also be giving you verbal instructions, they are secondary. Most of your new skills would be grasped by carefully watching your tutor and repeating what they did.
There are other issues with books (not the books themselves, but the courses that come solely as books). A course that comes solely as a book is missing out on numerous modern tools that are currently available for aspiring pianists. For instance, some of the most comprehensive courses today come with jam-along tracks and a virtual keyboard (plus a book and videos with materials and instructions).
Jam-along tracks are special musical tracks that you can, well, jam along to. These are typically recordings of an actual band, which have all the parts of the song playing except for the piano part. So, once you practice your piano part with the tutor on the video, you will then be able to play this song along with an actual band, which is one of the best ways to master any musical instrument.
A virtual keyboard would highlight the notes that you hear in the song played by the tutor on the DVD, which could reduce your learning to merely repeating what you see on the virtual keyboard.
All in all, learning to play piano with books alone wouldn't be the best choice. However, books do provide theoretical information that is impossible to learn merely by watching someone play. If you want to get the best of both worlds, choose a course that comes with everything, including a book, CDs, DVDs, and various helpful tools to learn and master piano.