A Dozen A Day Book Five: Intermediate Paperback – January 1, 2005

I am looking forward to using this book. I went through the series Book 1-4 during my study of piano. I am glad to have this final book to use with my students.

I received this book today and I was very surprised to find out that except for the cover which reads Book Five, the contents are identical to Book Four (which we already own). Very disappointing!

I have been using 'A Dozen a Day' book 3 for a few weeks now as pre-practice exercises, as I've just taken up piano playing again. I'm probably grade 1-2 level piano playing, but did do Grade 5 theory years ago. As I'm almost ready to move up to more difficult exercises I bought Book 5, having read elsewhere that Book 4 is at the same level as Book 3, with exercises supposedly very similar rather than introducing new challenges. I've tried out a number of the exercises in Book 5 and it seems to be a good progression from Book 3, not too steep a learning curve, particularly as the exercises in all the books can be transposed into different keys for added variety and increased difficulty.If only I had these books years ago when I started to learn piano - I had regular lessons for a year with a piano teacher when I was 12. I thought my hands were not quite the right shape for piano playing as my hands seemed to struggle, even though I diligently practiced my scales and arpeggios. Now doing these exercises, within minutes my hands pick up the technique, progress is remarkable and immediately apparent, and I continue to improve as I do them - I find that what I couldn't do years ago I can now do with ease. So it is nothing to do with my hand shape, but all about doing the right type of exercises. Exercises are short and varied, fun to do, and build up stretch, finger independence, speed, relaxation, precision and control. They are varied enough so fingers seem to relax as you move from one exercise to the next, and it feels as if they've had a nice work out, rather than a gruelling slog! They also introduce chord progressions, keys, scales, arpeggios etc in a very natural way, so that you find you have learned to do them without consciously learning to do them.Highly recommended.

I purchased this book as I believed that it was a progression from Book 4. How wrong I was. It is exactly the same, note for note. There should be a warning on the cover that there is no new material in the book and people would not waste their money. At ~£7 it is almost twice as expensive as the 'Book 4'. Hopefully I will be able to return it to Amazon for a refund.

Unbelievable. As this has exactly the same content as book four only the cost of this item is much dearer - swizzle!

JUST RIGHT

good

Good valeu and quick delivery

Value for money.

Cette méthode présente des exercices vraiment intéressants pour développer la rapidité, l' agilité et l' efficacité des doigts au piano.Il y a toutes sortes d'entraînement,très variés, qui permettent une nette amélioration de la technique. Les explications sont en anglais, mais celui-ci est vraiment simple à comprendre. Néanmoins, je pense qu'il est nécessaire d'avoir déjà une certaine expérience si l'on veut commencer par le cinquième livre:les précédents sont plus accessibles aux débutants.