Find the best selection of piano method books, songbooks, theory books, recital books, piano sheet music, and more, to learn the piano and improve your skills. You need not worry in case you do not have access to a piano tutor near you. Here we have listed several bestselling piano books, for various categories of students and skill levels. You will need some of these books to get started, and some to excel at the piano.
Why Learn from Piano Books?
There are several methods available to learn to play the piano and to improve one’s skills. Using piano books is one of them.
- Most piano lesson books are nowadays accompanied by CDs (or they have audio files on their website) so that you can listen to the exercises and songs and understand how it sounds, which makes them even more useful.
- There are books available for specific themes and topics (kids, adults, intermediate players, specific techniques, genres, etc.) and they able to get the point across, which is what most piano students are really after.
You can get started with books for complete beginners (to learn the piano), and then move on to higher-grade books. you will also find excellent piano books on specific topics (playing in a specific style, runs/ riffs, chord substitutions, composing, and more) that will appeal to intermediate/advanced players
We have listed several bestsellers, that you will actually use (and keep on referring for a long time). Many students and teachers use them, so you can trust these books.
Books for Learners
Piano Books for Little Beginners (Children)
Piano Books for kids are more colorful, in terms of looks, feel and illustrations, and include popular nursery rhymes. Here are the best children’s piano books.
Teaching Little Fingers to Play: A Book for the Earliest Beginner
This is a wonderful first piano book for kids. The book is full of colorful illustrations making it easy for small kids to understand. Even parents with limited knowledge of music can teach the basics of piano playing to their kids using this book.
The songs (such as Jingle Bells, Silent Night, Joy To The World, O Come Little Children, Up On The Housetop) are arranged in the perfect order of difficulty and each song teaches something new to the student. This book includes some really easy tunes that beginners can play and get more confidence about playing the piano.
Music for Little Mozarts
Suitable for kids aged 4-5, these books impart music education through a story featuring Mozart Mouse and Beethoven Bear, and using fun games as well as coloring. This is also a nice book to impart music knowledge at a very young age.
From Alfred publishing, this book is designed for preschool age students and there are several books in this series that will help kids advance to the next level on the piano.
Piano Books for Adult Beginners (Method Books)
Piano books for adult beginners usually have more coverage of topics (compared to those meant for kids) and have popular songs (also opposed to only nursery and folk songs), and are written in a style that appeals more to adults.
Method books are all-in-one books that cover everything – basics, theory, technique, songs, and more. A piano method book takes you through various concepts step-by-step, and also provides you with music/songs to learn.
Piano for Dummies by Blake Neely – Gives you a good overview on Piano/Keyboards. It is suited more for adults than for kids. Written in a humorous way but does not contain lots of exercise/songs!
Complete Piano Player / Keyboard Player (by Kenneth Baker)
The Complete Keyboard Player Paperback (by Kenneth Baker): Good starter book if you have received a music keyboard. It teaches you to play songs where the left-hand plays fingered chords in the accompaniment section of a keybard. Eventually, you should consider buying the complete piano player which will provide you with more material for your left hand and is an excellent book for newcomers to the piano.
The Complete Piano Player (by Kenneth Baker): Easy to follow book for learning basic music theory and learning how to play piano. Exercises are effective, has several simple songs that you can learn to play using both the hands.
Alfred’s Basic Adult Piano course
Alfred’s Adult All-In-One course is a popular piano method for adult beginners. Alfred’s Basic Adult all-in-one Piano Course has a variety of musical pieces and concepts which clearly explains topics like fingering, harmonizing, using chords with both the hands, and differentiating between major and minor scales. This course starts right from the basics, includes finger exercises, chord theory, and you also learn to play in a variety of styles.
Piano For Dummies: Great Piano Book for Adult Beginners
The Dummies series of books target absolute beginners and, to some extent, also those at the intermediate level. The same applies to the piano book as well.
This book explains in friendly, uncomplicated language all the basics of music theory and applies it to playing the piano. Though its primarily a beginners book, the book does give you glimpses and few examples of how the pros play.
The advanced section has some good examples of Intros, fill-ins, endings that you can apply to various kinds of songs. It has examples that explain how you should vary your playing depending on the style (genre) of music, and more.
The only problem is that the number of advanced examples are limited, but then its not meant as a book for the advanced piano players. However, for everybody else its a great book use.
And if you’ve been playing piano for a while – or took piano lessons when you were a child but haven’t played since – you can pick up some valuable tips to improve your playing or use the book as a refresher course.
Books for Advanced Players
Books for Intermediate to Advanced Players
These books assume you to have at least beginner-level music reading ability, and you will of course need a piano to practice.
How to Play Piano Despite Years of Lessons by Ward Cannel & Fred Marx – A truly entertaining approach to learning how to play the piano, it breaks down music theory into visual concepts which are fun and easy to grasp.
The Piano Handbook: A Complete Guide for Mastering Piano by Carl Humphries – Another great book for advanced players! It contains information on all aspects of piano – history, brands, theory, styles, etc. It also gives you hundreds of songs to play.
Dan Coates Complete / Advanced Piano Solos by Dan Coates – Most satisfying Piano music book for advanced players. The songs are challenging and contain some beautiful arrangements.
Advanced Piano Solos Christmas Encyclopedia – Very good collection of solo piano Christmas music! This book is more for intermediate level players (difficulty wise) than for very advanced players.
Books to Increase Repertoire of Songs
These piano music books are great to build a repertoire of songs. You can choose piano music books for particular genre, music composer, or from 70s, 80s and so on.
You can use piano music books to learn new songs, to learn songs of particular composers, genres, time-periods, and so on. Most of these songbooks and sheet music are arranged for the piano and voice with guitar chord frames.
Find artist folios, fake books, composer collections, Broadway vocal selections, EKM (Easy Electronic Keyboard Music), organ publications, and more.
Choose from a huge catalogue of music books for piano.
- Big book of Beginners piano classics
- The library of piano classics
- The Disney collection (Easy piano series)
- A first book of Christmas songs for the beginning pianist.
Christmas songs for piano on Sheetmusicplus
How to Play the Piano Despite Years of Lessons
If you’re an intermediate player or have been learning to play the piano (or even any other musical instrument) for a couple of years or more, you’ll really glad that you found this book – How to Play the Piano Despite Years of Lessons: What Music Is and How to Make It at Home.
If you were always looking for a book that would teach you more than the basics, how to construct chords in various ways, how to use the various inversions, how to harmonize a song in a better manner (I’m assuming you’re able to do it but in a very basic manner), how to use various chord progressions, then this book is definitely going to help you.
And although the title says its for the piano, most of the theory discussed can be applied to other musical instruments as well.
Style based Books
Once you have gained some mastery over the Piano, you would also want to have a look at style based books to improve your playing further. These are some of the books which you could go through. Of course, at this stage it should be comparatively easy for you to decide if a particular book suits you or not.
- The Pop Piano Book – by Mark Harrison
- The Jazz Piano Book – by Mark Levine
- The Library of Piano Classics
Best Jazz Theory Books
Jazz is one of the most exciting styles to play for any piano player, because of the opportunity it offers for improvisation. So if you’re keen to learn to play jazz piano, here are some useful books that will teach you all the techniques you need to know.
Starts with the basic techniques and takes you through the advanced topics (basic theory, improvisation, reharmonization, how to increase repertoire, and more). Over 500 pages of text and over 750 musical examples, played by the great jazz players. This book is endorsed by the likes of Jamey Aebersold, James Moody, Dave Liebman, and other great players.
Jazz Theory Resources: Volume 1 & 2 (by Bert Ligon)
Jazz Theory Resources comes in two volumes. Volume I includes: review of basic theory, rhythm in jazz performance, basic tonal materials, triadic generalization, diatonic harmonic progressions and harmonic analysis, substitutions and turnarounds, common melodic outlines, and an overview of voicings.
Volume II includes: modes and modal frameworks, quartal harmony, other scales and colors, extended tertian structures and triadic superimposition, pentatonic applications, analysis, and expanding harmonic vocabulary. Appendices on chord/scale relationships, elaborations of static harmony, endings, composing tips and theory applications are also included.
Connecting Chords With Linear Harmony (by Bert Ligon)
Even though its a theory book, it covers several improvisation strategies for all kinds of jazz. Some musicians find the “linear” perspective more convincing than the widely applicable “vertical” chord-scale angle.
Books on Piano Exercises
The Complete Book of Scales, Chords, Arpeggios and Cadences
The Complete Book of Scales, Chords, Arpeggios and Cadences: includes all the Major, Minor (Natural, Harmonic, Melodic) & Chromatic Scales – plus some really useful additional instructions on Music Fundamentals.
- The FIRST book (#11761) accommodates the learning pace of younger students such as those in Alfred’s Basic
- Level 2. The BASIC book (#5754) is slightly more in-depth, presenting scales, chords, arpeggios, and cadence studies in all the major and minor keys.
- The COMPLETE book (#5743) features everything in the BASIC book, plus extra features like a 12-page explanation that leads to complete understanding of the fundamentals of major and minor scales, chords, arpeggios, and cadences; a clear explanation of scale degrees; and a two-page guide to fingering the scales and arpeggios
Top Carl Czerny Books: Exercises & Etudes for the Piano
When it comes to piano practice, most teachers recommend exercises by Hanon and Czerny (the Czerny school of velocity is very popular). Carl Czerny is best known for his books on piano exercises, etudes and techniques.
Carl Czerny (sometimes referred to as Karl) was an Austrian pianist, composer and teacher, best remembered today for his books of etudes for the piano. Carl was a child prodigy, and took lessons from Johann Nepomuk Hummel, Antonio Salieri and Ludwig van Beethoven. He quickly took to teaching and by the age of fifteen, was already a much sought after piano instructor (Franz Liszt was one of his students).
Czerny: The School of Velocity, Op. 299 (Complete) for the piano (Schirmer’s library of musical classics)
The School of Velocity (Carl Czerny) offers practical training in piano passage work, particularly in playing the virtuoso music of the romantic period.
If you have been using Hanon for some time, this is what you need to further improve your skills. The exercises are much longer and most of them have a nice melody to it as well, as if you’re playing a song (though its a technical book).
Students who master Opus 299 have indeed progressed a long way in the “school of velocity.” Each exercise is a complete music composition, demanding attention to dynamics and phrasing. The school of velocity are exercises that helps you develop speed, these are supposed to be played at a very fast tempo.
.Best Piano Finger Exercises Books
A piano requires muscular strength and endurance in your fingers, especially when you play on a piano with fully weighted keys. Finger exercises improve dexterity of the fingers, prevents injury and also improves your technique.
Here’s one easy piano exercise for your fingers.
Play C D E F G with the five fingers of both your hands. Go from C to G and come back. Do it a few times.
- Right hand fingers will play 1 2 3 4 5, 5 4 3 2 1 (1 is thumb and 5 is little finger)
- Left hand fingers will play 5 4 3 2 1, 1 2 3 4 5.
- Play both the hands together.
This is just one exercise, and probably the simplest of them all.
A variant of the above exercise will be to go from C to G, come back and repeat the same from the note D. Keep on moving one note to the right till you reach the C in the next octave.
This exercise itself should make you feel good (I mean your fingers).
Experienced players spend a few minutes practicing finger exercises (to warm up the fingers) before beginning their practice sessions.
Top Piano Exercise Books for Your fingers
These will improve your the flexibility, dexterity, independence of your fingers, technical proficiency, and will also help build technical proficiency.
- HANON The Virtuoso Pianist in sixty exercises For The Piano – Book 1
- HANON The Virtuoso Pianist in 60 Exercises – Book 2: Schirmer Library of Classics Volume Piano Technique
- HANON The Virtuoso Pianist in sixty exercises For The Piano – BOOK 3
- Béla Bartók’s Mikrokosmos: 153 Progressive Piano Pieces
- Mikrokosmos: Books 1 & 2
- Best Traditional Piano Etudes, Book 1 (Ed. Lynn Freeman Olson)
- Musical Fingers, Bk 1 (Frances Clark Library for Piano Students)
- Musical Fingers, Bk 2 (Frances Clark Library for Piano Students)
- Musical Fingers, Bk 3 (Frances Clark Library for Piano Students)
- Musical Fingers, Bk 4: Essential Exercises for Late-Intermediate and Early-Advanced Pianists (Frances Clark Library for Piano Students)
- Jazz Piano Technique: Exercises, Etudes & Ideas for Building Chops (John Valerio)
Books on Piano Making
Musicians have a special relationship with their instruments (such as Steinway, Baldwin) and experience rare and intangible moment of ecstasy when the instrument becomes a part of them, providing pure bliss.
Players turn to their instrument at times of great sadness, all-consuming anger, fulfilling peace and joy, and it is always there to help them express whatever they are feeling. (My mother said when I was in high school she could always tell the kind of day I had by how I practiced piano when I got home).
A piano is capable of expressing every emotion, from great passion to tender sensitivity, is sometimes large and masculine and other times gently feminine and years of playing it has taught me just how to stroke the keys get the sound that I want.
The Piano Book” and “Acoustic & Digital Piano Buyer
The Piano Book, long considered a reference bible on buying & owning a new or used piano. There’s also the book ‘Acoustic & Digital Piano Buyer’, which is a popular supplement to the piano book. These two books are the go-to reference books for experienced piano players and technicians. Its indispensable to buyers and owners of pianos, amateur and professional players alike, especially if your preference is for acoustic pianos.
The Piano Book evaluates and compares every brand and style of piano sold in the United States. There is information on piano moving and storage, inspecting individual new and used pianos, the special market for Steinways, and sales gimmicks to watch out for. An annual supplement, sold separately to The Piano Book, lists current prices for more than 2,500 new piano models.
Acoustic & Digital Piano Buyer: Supplement to The Piano Book
It provides list prices for more than 4,000 currently manufactured acoustic and digital piano brands and models, as well as advice on how to estimate actual street prices to help negotiate the lowest possible price.
Updated twice a year with the most accurate information, the manual fully covers piano manufacturers, instrument models, prices, and current trends and conditions in the piano market.
Anyone in the market for a new or used piano—including teachers, technicians, students, and aficionados—can make a more informed purchase using this definitive guide.
Piano: The Making of a Steinway Concert Grand (Book)
The Making of a Steinway Concert Grand Piano is written by a New York Times reporter James Barron. It takes a fascinating and detailed look into Steinway history, its building process (and even performance).
An acoustic grand piano is an engineering marvel that incorporates the thunder of a full-throated bass, the bright, delicate trill of the upper treble. And Steinway is definitely one of the few piano brands to have mastered this art.
Steinway pianos are still crafted largely by hand, imbuing each one with the promise and burden of its brand.
In this captivating narrative, James Barron of The New York Times tells the story of one Steinway piano, from raw lumber to finished instrument. Barron follows that brand-new piano–known by its number, K0862–on its eleven-month journey through the Steinway factory, where time-honored manufacturing methods vie with modern-day industrial efficiency.
He looks over the shoulders of men and women (some second and third-generation employees) who transform wood and steel into a concert grand. You become attached to the characters responsible for bringing forth this work of art.
This book isn’t just about the making of one piano, but of the history and evolution of the instrument and an American company of German immigrants whose legacy is not only permanent improvements that are a part of every modern piano, but a name of distinction and quality that is becoming all too rare. Barron relays the precision required to fashion the instrument’s many pieces, but also the human side of piano-making when telling the story of the many workers who are a part of the construction of the instrument. I enjoyed every part of the book, not just as a piano lover, but also as a story lover.
Some readers may find the book a bit dry, especially in the first half, where the focus is more on how the piano is made. But once the piano is ready and ready to be played, the author makes it interesting by generating suspense about what will happen to it.
‘Note by Note’: Documentary video on the making of Steinway L1037 concert grand piano
Note By Note is a magnificent documentary video on how Steinway pianos are made, and will appeal to people of all ages. This documentary video chronicles the making of a Steinway grand piano (the Steinway L1037).
Despite availability of modern techniques, Steinway still uses traditional techniques and old-world philosophy to produce instruments that accomplished musicians love to play. In this age of mass production, Steinway piano makers are a dying breed: skilled cabinet-makers, gifted tuners, thorough hand-crafters.
NOTE BY NOTE follows the creation of a Steinway concert grand, #L1037, from forest floor to concert hall. Each piano’s journey is complex, spanning 12 months, 12,000 parts, 450 craftsmen, and countless hours of fine-tuned labor.
However, its not a thorough, technical guide Instead, the video provides an overview of the several processes involved in the extremely time-consuming manufacture, adjustment, tuning and testing of the instrument. Compared to other piano manufacturers, Steinway makes fewer pianos – around 2,000 pianos per year.
The video has been filmed at key Steinway locations; the factory, Steinway’s reserved Bank, and the rooms of private auditions.
Sheet Music / Sheet Music Books for the Piano
You may not find all your favorite songs and pieces in one single book. In that case, you can buy sheet music for those particular pieces.
There is a wide collection of sheet music available.
You will find sheet music for popular classical pieces, or theme music from movies. You will also find sheet music based on some theme or genre or for some composer.
These are great for practicing and for reading music.
Interstellar Digital Sheet Music
Piano Magazines & Keyboard/Synth Magazines
Piano and keyboard magazines feature latest news, music reviews, artist interviews, master classes, lessons, and more. Each issue features sheet music, tutorials, and advice for people who love to play the piano or are planning to buy a piano.
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