Pop/Rock Piano Classics: 19 Note-for-Note Piano Transcriptions Paperback – January 1, 2009

As there are few books of pop/rock piano transcriptions out there, I was happy to see this new one from Cherry Lane. This book focuses mostly on piano-driven songs, so all the arrangements are very playable on the piano.The pros: - Great transcriptions of most songs, especially "Dixie Chicken", "Ordinary People", "Summer, Highland Falls", and "Roll Away the Stone". - Reasonable variety of stylesCons:- Some of the song choices are odd. With only 19 songs, why choose two by Journey, two by Little Feat, and two from Paul Simon? It seems there are plenty of other bands and artists the publishers could have selected from. Only a couple of contemporary singers are represented, and some very influential pianists are omitted - Ben Folds, Tori Amos, Steely Dan, Chuck Leavell, and older styles like Little Richard. I also wish a few more challenging songs had been chosen; many are too simple ('Open Arms', 'November Rain', 'On Saturday Afternoons')- A few songs have only partial transcriptions. For example, 'Bridge over troubled water' has the first verse accurately transcribed, but the second and third verses are omitted. 'Minute by Minute', 'The Way it is' and 'Oh, Atlanta' are missing some fills and are somewhat simplified.- In most cases, other keyboard parts have been left out. The exceptions are 'Faithfully' and 'Tiny Dancer'This book is worth purchasing though the overall quality of transcriptions is not quite as high as other books I've seen.

Love the correctness; would really have loved a melody line for ALL songs, for the piano player to play.

One of my new favorite books.