Simon & Garfunkel Piano Solo Piano Book: 15 Greatest Songs

This book contains fifteen songs by Simon & Garfunkel, arranged for piano solo. There are no lyrics or chord symbols and, while "piano solo" makes it pretty clear that this is for, well, piano solo, many similarly-titled books do contain lyrics. The lyrics are helpful for navigating the music -- if you know the song -- even if they are not intended to be sung. Chord symbols help with an understanding of the harmony. So, whilst I think it is unfair to slate the book for not having these features, it wouldn't do any harm to include them.At first glance the arrangements look mostly straightforward to play, although the transcriber has made the common mistake of being over-literal. For example, many songs have written-out hold-over and hold-under notes -- that is, notes which anticipate the downbeat. Holding over and holding under notes is a matter of performance, and the amount by which a vocalist will do it varies from bar to bar. Writing out hold-over and hold-under notes, whilst giving an idea of how the melody line is usually interpreted, leads to a very cluttered musical line with ties all over the place, and it doesn't really guide the performance very much. Many transcribers of popular music do this, and they really shouldn't.Oddly, all other performance features are left to the player's discretion -- there are no marked dynamics, no tempo changes, and no distinct pedal marks. There's also no marked fingering, which would be perfectly understandable in a general-purpose piano/guitar/vocal presentation, but lazy in a piano solo book. Perhaps it's understandable that there is no marked fingering because, as written, some passages are finger-breakers. Still, I guess it keeps the costs down.The book also follows the original keys of the songs and, in a book for piano solo, there's really no need to do this. On a guitar, if you want to play in the key of F# major, for example -- because the pitch happens to suit your voice -- you just stick your capo on the 2nd fret and play in the much more manageable key of E major. Sight-reading a piece in F# major on piano is a wholly different proposition. So we have the bizarre situation of a piece that, were it presented in the key of F major, would be perfectly within reach of a novice pianist of ~grade 3 standard; but writing it out with six sharps makes it a sight-reading challenge for all but the most experienced. And -- and this is my point -- it doesn't sound any better for this key choice, and the fingering isn't any easier.In the end, these facts make playing many of the songs in this book unrewarding, even the ones that lend themselves to the piano (and some don't, really). As a general rule, we ought to expect things that are harder to play to sound better than things that are easier to play: there's no point making something difficult just for the hell of it. But the songs in this book don't sound all that fantastic when played, so they don't really reward the effort. It's not that they are especially difficult to play, but they are more difficult than the results justify.There are a couple of exceptions: "Bridge over Troubled Water" is nicely done, in that it sounds pretty OK without being a nightmare to sight-read. "America" is OK. "Homeward Bound" and "The Boxer" don't sound all that wonderful, but they are at least easy to play, if you don't mind the key choices. The rest are, well, meh. I'm sure there are better arrangements of Simon & Garfunkel songs around.

Perfect Sale

Love this piano book. I am very rusty at playing but am able to play these pieces. I love Simon and Garfunkel and it's fun playing their songs. Would recommend this book.

Sehr gute Titelzusammenstellung, insbesondere im Vergleich zu anderen Notensammlungen.Leider sind die Titel ohne Songtexte (!!!), was eine große Enttäuschung war.Trotzdem die - vergleichbar - beste Simon&Garfunkel-Notensammlung.Spielniveau: einfach

Wish it had more songs. Arrangements are intermediate which is nice.

some arrangements are great - others so-so - enjoyable playing experience