"My First Boogie Book"

I’ve been a piano teacher for upwards of thirty years and, yes, I have my favorite methods books that I could probably teach from with my eyes closed by now.  However, I’m always on the lookout for fun books that revive my students’ interest, with no writing pages or explanations that remind them of schoolwork – just delightful music they actually want to be able to play well and maybe with some pictures to tickle their fancy.

Recalling my own journey in learning how to play piano, my thought is: the sooner the better!  My First Boogie Book is a fun supplemental piano book for beginners.  It can be introduced as soon as the student has learned the notes from F to G on each side of middle C, aka “middle C position”.  It won’t matter if the method book you are using hasn’t yet broached the subject of sharps and flats, or the difference between slurs and ties.  I have found that new information is even easier to assimilate while learning an interesting piece of music, especially with a drawing of smiling kids on the adjacent page!

To further their musicianship, I always encourage my students to sing the song as they are learning it.  (Younger ones are more willing!)  The eleven songs in My First Boogie Book are composed in the classic 12-bar blues style, and all have lyrics.  “Come On Out” is an invitation to go outside and play while the sun shines.  “Tom Cat” marvels at feline climbing abilities.  “Talkin’ on the Telephone” and “Shake a Boogie Woogie” are whimsical rhyming ditties, while “In My Dreams” stirs the imagination with its assigning of human qualities to a house.  (“…And when I sneeze, the leaves fly out of all my gutters!”) 

To help the beginning student grasp the concept of 8th-notes, two consecutive songs have the very same notes but with all the rhythmic values halved, so that the quarter notes from the first version become 8th-notes in the second.  The title and lyrics are slightly different, so sometimes the students don’t even realize they have just learned this tune in a different format!  How soon do you tell them?  The decision is yours!

After encountering 8th-notes, students have the chance to learn how to “swing” them with “Bouncy Baby Boogie,” assisted by the bouncy lyrics and the visual aid of seeing dotted 8th-notes with a 16th–note partner.  A later song has only the instruction to “swing the 8th-notes” without the visual reminder of the dot.  The first lesson feeds easily to the second, and demonstrates that the same musical concept can be portrayed in a variety of styles.

When I put My First Boogie Book together, it was with the intention of using it during lessons as I found time, or as the student progressed in the other books.  But what I found in most cases was that I could take the student at a faster pace than what the method books were teaching, even when we lingered on one of the boogies for two or three lessons.  Several of my students choose the boogie book to play from first at lessons, and parents have told me that their kids like to just sit and play through the entire book.  Now that’s an endorsement! 

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