Craft Of Piano Playing - Second Edition

Hi Alan, I recently learned about your approach to the piano, and am interested in buying the book and DVD and exploring. I noticed on your site that a second edition of the book is in the works. Any idea when that might be out and available? best, Kresper

Is there a new estimated date?

I have a contract dispute with my publisher which has bogged things right down. If we finally sign tomorrow we'll still need another month or two for reading and correcting the proofs and then finally printing. Pray for sometime in March! AFF

I will start praying then. Good luck with the publisher I didn't but the book back in June (when I bought the DVD) because I wanted to wait for the 2nd edition. I really liked the DVD and I know there is a lot in the book that the DVD doesn't cover, so I am eager to get it.

Believe me I too am eager to see it out in print! As it stands, All the sub-chapters of the DVD that do not have a number in parentheses after the title derive from material in this new book - put it on your list as well! Sorry for the little bit of advertising, I just couldn't help myself... AFF

It has been another 3 months. Unfortunately, the promise of a new edition has a tendency to discourage interested parties from buying the old edition. Any news? Lawrence

I have again been in touch with my editor at Scarecrow Press. They are now looking at an Autumn 2010 release date. The problem now is a letter of permission to use copyrighted material from Feldenkrais's Awareness Through Movement. Unbelievably, they cannot even BEGIN to correct the proofs until those permission letters are received, because that is their procedure. They seem to be doing everything possible to delay the publication date! Will keep you posted on further developments! AFF

How different from the first copy is this 2nd edition - are you using the same text/material with some alterations? If so for those of us that paid out for the first book probably wouldn't want 2 books that are virtually the same and have to pay for another with some slight alterations. Thanks

Good question! My publisher told me that officially a 2nd edition can only be considered as such if there is 1/3 or more new material. I don't think this 2nd edition has quite that much - I didn't measure but I think it's a little less than 1/4 - but we're releasing it as a second edition anyway. My initial reason for wanting this was my insistence that we improve the reproductions of Sonya's drawings - my editor said, as long as we're going to re-typeset, why not make a 2nd Edition, and so I started looking over the text and found that I could indeed make significant improvements to it. The new material consists mainly of two completely new chapters plus various added paragraphs in other chapters, some of them indicating a significant shift in my point of view (vis a vis the thumb, for instance). But also I went through the whole text and pared it down, shaving a 13-word sentence down to 11, or making a 5-sentence paragraph into a 3-sentence paragraph. In the 1st edition I tried really hard to make it conversational rather than a dry, boring text on piano technique, and at times I think I got a little TOO flowery... So hopefully it reads better now. The final big change is to the front material - three tables of contents instead of one (brief, standard and detailed), plus a completely reorganized list of applications (now listed by topic) that also has references to the relevant DVD chapter. I wanted to make it as easy as possible to navigate around all this material. If you are happy with your present book you should probably stick with it and invest in the second book instead. But if you tended to get bogged down in the first edition you might find it easier going in this new version. AFF

Thanks for your reply. I do already have the second book and have found it more enlightening - actually i have read more of the second than the first. I like the conversational style so I wouldn't let anyone try to get you to change that too much in my opinion. Our brains take more in when we become involved in a conversation/task and not talked at as I see in some academic books which I switch off to! One question - why did you opt for an artist rather than zoomed in photographic/photoshop type examples. In the second book I found some of the perspective on the hand positions a little confusing at first. When a hand is shown in 3 positions at the same time as shown in the 3 interlocking arch chapter, it might be better to either do more of the shading/highlighting or even in different colour pencil for the hand positions so that they are instantly more obvious. I got it in the end but I had to really look if you know what I mean. Just a suggestion though. Thanks