50 Essential Pieces for Violinists: A Beginner's Guide to Playing the Violin

Mato: Nice songs, but not for beginners, I’ll need a lot of practice before playing any of these. Will be good for the next couple of years.

France on Nov 22, 2023

Clarence LimClarence Lim: Nice music book, especially for intermediate advance levels harpist

United States on Aug 09, 2023

MR S N PAGE: This book has quite a varied selection of pieces I got my friends to pick a couple of pieces for me to play as they wanted something more upbeat! You can build up a nice repotoire of pieces to play.

United Kingdom on Aug 06, 2023

JOHN THOMPSON: Great violin book , just learning to play . Play the banjo and guitar . Great book for beginner violin JOHN

United States on Jul 25, 2023

Cheryl Tapia: Not a good choice for beginners. Would have been better with the lyrics. Book was in great shape for a used one.

United States on Jun 30, 2023

Gerogirl: I’m a middle aged beginner. This is a bit challenging for me.

United States on Apr 06, 2023

foxy: As a complete beginner I am finding this tricky. It's not laid out like a beginners book with string and finger notations, just the basic tune.
The selection of tunes is okay.

United Kingdom on Mar 16, 2023

K. D.: I think these arrangements are lovely, and the styles of music are diverse. However they are definitely NOT the first 50 songs you should play on a harp. I agree with the prior review that this book is poorly titled. These are at least intermediate level. I've been a harp hobbyist, playing multiple times a week for several years and I find most of these songs a little challenging, albeit in a good way. But I would have been highly discouraged if I had bought this book as a complete beginner, and I didn't buy it for several months despite it being in my recommendations because I thought they would be beginner arrangements. They also do work better on a pedal harp than lever harp as most would require a number of lever changes.

United States on May 18, 2021

Michael P.: Ich bin sehr zufrieden mit diesem Notenbuch, es beinhaltet einfache Stücke, die aber doch über "Kinderlieder" hinausgehen. Die Schrift ist groß genug, man kann es problemlos auf einen Notenständer stellen und davon ablesen. Sehr anfängerfreundlich!

Germany on Mar 03, 2021

Dr. Tim Parker: One of the problems people learning the violin face is the lack of music that is simple for newcomers, isn't some obscure scale-based exercise, and reflects songs or tunes the student knows. When you know the tune, it's a lot easy to get the timing and notes right. This is a book of 50 tunes and songs many students will know, written mostly for simple fingering and bowing technique. They are simple: there's not much of a challenge for fingering or sight reading here, and those who have started to learn the violin should be able to play some of these songs reasonably well with just a little practice.

One of the problems with books like this, though, is they don't really tax the player much: there's no progressive difficulty here, really. So, someone can pick any of the songs and do a pretty good single-note-by-note reading of the work, and while practice will make the song sound better, there's no pushing the player to get into more complex bowing or fingering. But, that's probably beyond the author's intent. For the cost, this is a good book for a beginner to buy and use, so it achieves its goal.

Canada on Jul 04, 2020