by Margaret S. Brandman (Author), Don Ezard (Artist)
The Junior Primer of the Contemporary Piano Method is designed for the 5 to 12 age group. It contains all the skills required to play with both hands simultaneously on the instrument, encouraging the reading of music by intervals, shapes and patterns. Among the many features of the book are: the enjoyable written exercises and puzzles, the graphic boxes to be colored in to teach rhythm, improvisation suggestions, transposition, and catchy songs to play.
Using Margaret Brandman's simplifed interval approach, the overall objective of this book is to familiarize the young student with the intervals up to a Fifth or Jump and the note values of whole, half and quarter notes. The book also teaches direction concepts for two-handed reading and playing, i.e. Up, Down, Contrary Motion, In or Out, with most of the pieces written with identical intervals in both hands. For new users, the concepts are illustrated in Margaret Brandman's Contemporary Piano Method MP4. For the complete learning experience, both the Contemporary Theory Primer and the Contemporary Aural Course Preparatory Set (Book and Audio), should be used in conjunction with the book, for opportunities to write, listen to and reinforce the concepts of the Piano Method.