The ‘A Dozen a Day’ series of books that contain piano exercises have been around for decades. I know this because my first piano teacher gave them to me at the age of 7! Actually they were first available in 1954 and they have been available ever since.
It’s not surprising to state that there are many piano teachers that absolutely love these books because if they weren’t any good then they would have stopped printing them and selling them years ago.
I loved them when I was a kid because they had and still have these cute little stick figures doing all sorts of exercises that somewhat match up with the piano exercises. I also genuinely enjoyed doing the piano exercises and I ended up doing the first two books of the series before I swapped piano teachers due to my first piano teacher retiring.
Even though the first book is suitable for beginners, there is actually six books in the series. The pink covered mini-book is a similar standard to the preparatory book, (which has a light blue cover). The rest of the series is suitable for increasingly more advanced piano students or piano players.
I personally think they are great for the adult learner because they are a way of improving a person’s technique, not dissimilar to playing scales. Also like scales, they are good for warming up the hands ready to play the piano.
This is really important for retirees, especially those that are prone to some stiffness in their hands. These exercises will well and truly warm up the hands by getting the hands and fingers moving and help with preventing further soreness, through not being warmed up properly.
Even though I am not at retirement age as yet, I have recently been diagnosed with arthritis and although I am not experiencing much pain in my hands, some mornings I notice that my hands and fingers are a little stiff. I never get an opportunity to play my piano in the mornings, in fact the only opportunity I have is of the evenings, when my hands have well and truly had time to warm up.
My plan for the time when I will have opportunity in the mornings to play the piano, or when my arthritis could cause pain in my hands, I plan to use these ‘A Dozen a Day’ books to get my hands and fingers moving. I can see that my physiotherapist that currently helps me with my arthritis, would agree that this would be most beneficial and a way from helping to prevent having to stop playing the piano because the arthritis is too bad.
So while many teachers will agree that these piano exercise books have been around for decades because they are just so good for a student’s technique, I think they have the added bonus of helping arthritic or stiff hands keep moving and being able to play the piano for as long as possible.