‘Ministeps to Music’ is one of those piano courses that have been around for decades. Actually it was first published in 1959 and it has been around ever since. The series of books have not changed much at all over the decades and some would argue that it looks like an old fashioned piano course book, as if it were a negative. I don’t think it matters what the book actually looks like, for me it’s the content that is the only thing that matters.
I know that this piano course is aimed at children but if you didn’t care about learning from a child’s piano book (and none of my adult piano students have ever been bothered by it) then this piano course is really impressive.
I think that the ‘Ministeps to Music’ piano course is impressive because it allows the piano student to learn which notes to play and what that looks like in written notation all at the same time. These books are sequential, taking the student step by step and introducing only one new note or concept at a time.
Even though it is designed for children learning to play the piano, I think its useful for all ages, especially the piano student that doesn’t have a great deal of confidence. In the first book, it takes half the book for a student to learn five notes. While some people might think that is too slow, it is for some people! For others though who don’t have a lot of confidence and needs to take things slowly, this is the perfect piano course for them.
While I have not used this piano course much over the years, this particular piano course is my preferred piano course for the really young students and for the ones that really want to play the piano but they are really not sure they can actually learn. This piano series builds skills as it builds confidence and some piano students really need a lot of confidence building.
Overall I think that the series of piano books called ‘Ministeps to Music’ is a well thought out, well planned, sound course of instruction. The only supposed down sides are that it does not look modern and that it is very much designed with kids in mind.