A First Book Of Blues: 16 Arrangements for the Beginning Pianist

This is a good primer for blues beginners to explore the genre. I especially like the annotations for each piece. They enhance the appreciation of the music a lot.

Veramente godibile! Ottimo per me, che sto muovendo i primi passi.

The first copy of the book had some missing and some repeated pages but Amazon replaced this promptly. I'm very happy with this book. As a self-teaching beginner pianist and blues fan, these tunes are at the right level for me and (in some cases) are familiar (St James Infirmary, St Louis Blues) so it's a good start for playing the blues. I know there's much further to go but this is a very positive and encouraging start and I'm finding it very useful and enjoyable.I would recommend it to the beginner pianist and blues fan.

There is a problem with many Classics / Blues / Jazz for beginners type books. They are often based on melodies that simply weren't designed for piano beginners. Your right hand therefore has to jump around a lot, no nice 5-finger pieces. Added to that, the author of this book often makes the left hand incredibly simple. The overall result is arrangments that are not for a beginning pianist and also sound pretty grotty. If I hadn't started to write fingerings in it, I would have sent it back. Have a look at the Bill Boyd "Jazz Starters" series, easy to play, sound good and available at true elementary and late elementary levels.

Sencillo, como yo esperaba.Envio perfecto.

I'm a beginning to intermediate piano student and I thought this book was a good introduction to the blues. The individual songs, traditional basic blues material, were kept intentionally simple and are only 1-2 pgs in length. Good material to practice the syncopation and phrasing of blues, at a beginner level.