John Thompson’s Easiest Piano Course | Part 1 & CD

John Thompson’s Easiest Piano Course  is designed to present the easiest possible approach to piano playing, complete with an amusing family of characters and illustrations to help emphasise the information being taught.  Each book of the course contains its own writing exercises, sight reading drills, review work and later, technical studies. Accompaniments for teacher or parent are supplied with most of the examples. 
 

Part One is devoted to developing fluency in reading by note, the biggest hurdle for most young children. The range is purposely limited. Only five notes up and five notes down from middle C are presented, and time values do not go beyond crotchets. 

The accompanying CD is a wonderful tool for enhancing this method with midi-orchestrated backing tracks. Each track is split to enable the student to hear both piano part and accompaniment if the balance is centred, the accompaniment without piano if the balance is to the left, and the piano part alone if the balance is to the right. There are also two tempos for each song, allowing slower practice while it's needed.