My daughter has almost finished working through Tunes for Ten Fingers and her teacher is wondering about whether I should get the second book. We are in France and her teacher had never seen Tunes for Ten Fingers before. She thinks it is very good for young beginners, and has ordered herself a copy! However, before asking me to buy the second volume, what she wanted to know is does More Tunes have mainly pieces for either right or left hand or does it have pieces with the two hands alternating and does it introduce the two hands together?

If it doesn't, she thinks it will probably be too easy for my daughter (who has also been playing things out of an ancient First Solo Book by Diller and Quaile which used to belong to me) and will suggest I buy one of the French books that she usually uses with her pupils.

More Tunes introduces two hands alternating right away. Tunes for one hand at a time are interspersed, but are usually connected with the introduction or practice of a particular technical point, eg legato and staccato. There are some tunes which include both hands playing together, but they are very few in the first half of the book - about half a dozen in the book as a whole. I find some children whizz through fairly quickly - but still find it's a good standby at this level. It does stay in middle C position for the first half - I tend to move on to new notes sooner, and use some of the first half of the book for revision later, or when a child needs an "easy week" now and then .

(ed) Me and My Piano bk 2 moves on more quickly, but it really is too quick for some, and it's not nearly such an attractive book - children seem to like the look of MTTF.

I've only used More Tunes for 10 fingers once because a styudent needed (and still needs) to move at a slow pace. With others I've moved straight on to Pino Time1 after the first book.

Interesting - I'd never thought of moving straight on to Piano Time 1 from TTF.......... what kind of age do you do that or is it more how the pupil has coped with TTF? I generally move onto MTTF after TTF as I use TTF with 6/7 year olds.

Probably more ability based than age but about 8.
It's partly to do with the amount of overlap at the start of PT1..... that's quite a bit even from TTF.

My daughter age 6 is about to move onto Tunes for Ten Fingers 2. It looks a little harder than 1. Her teacher wants to take it slowly to make sure she is solid on the basics.
Bev.

It does overlap - but I find the material in More TTF is much more interesting and better presented than the first few pages of PT 1. I would actually rather use More-TTF and then dive into Oxford PT 1 at about page 18 , keeping the early pages for in-lesson sight-reading.