Keep Students Practicing with These Exciting New Upgrades for Alfred’s Basic Piano Library

From its inception, Alfred’s Basic Piano Library was created to be flexible and customizable. We understand that no two piano students have exactly the same needs. Alfred’s Basic Piano Library was built with a vast selection of correlated supplementary books to help teachers design a curriculum to meet the needs of each of their students individually.

We are building on that legacy and helping teachers create an even better customized experience for each student with these new additions to the MakeMusic Studio Library.

Alfred’s Basic Piano Library Level 1A - Studio Edition

Alfred’s Basic Piano Library Lesson Book 1A just got even better!

All New Backing Tracks
Currently exclusive to MakeMusic Studio, the backing tracks for each piece have been completely modernized. Gone are the retro 80s MIDI tracks. These new accompaniments are fully orchestrated to help students with musical interpretation and rhythmic stability.

Speed Things Up or Slow Things Down
In MakeMusic Studio, you can adjust the tempo of any piece with minimal sound-quality interference. Give students a tempo range for home practice, starting slow and gradually working their way up.

Loop Tricky Sections
Teach students to isolate challenging parts of their music with the looping tool. When you introduce hands-together playing in “Rockets,” loop measures 3 & 4 and have students practice just that part over and over. You can even set the tempo to gradually increase on each repetition!

Extra Practice Built Right In
Certain Foundations exercises, performance pieces, and popular songs have been integrated into the sequence to make it easy for you to know when to use them.

Practice C Position Notes with Super Mario Bros. after “A Happy Song.”

Play the Minecraft theme after “Play a Fourth.”

Foundations: Alfred’s Basic Piano Library Edition

Getting students to practice their warm-up and technical exercises can be a chore, but with Foundations, they’re going to be the highlight of your student’s practice session.

With each exercise, students get to practice new notes, intervals, articulations, and other foundational skills alongside the actual music from popular movies and video games.

Work on two-note slurs to the music of Beetlejuice.

Practice legato vs. staccato articulations alongside “Cantina Band.”

Foundations gets students excited to do their technical work.

Alfred’s Basic Piano Library, Current Hits

Very little motivates piano students to practice as effectively as music they know. They want to learn to play their favorite songs, to show them off for their friends, to make music that is familiar. 

It can be difficult to find satisfying popular music that is accessible for beginning students, but Alfred’s Basic Piano Library Current Hits was created with today’s students in mind. The printed book contains 8 favorite popular songs expertly arranged by piano teachers with students in mind.

Inside the MakeMusic Studio Library, you can access 8 additional songs that are not in the book, as well as orchestrated backing tracks for each piece and MakeMusic’s interactive practice tools.

Contents include:

• "From the Start" (Laufey)
• "You Belong with Me" (Taylor Swift)
• "Steve’s Lava Chicken" (from A Minecraft Movie)
• And more!

Sample Lesson Plan

So what does all of this look like in practice?

Here’s how you can use MakeMusic Studio with a student who is learning about the interval of a 4th on page 44 of Alfred’s Basic Piano Library, Lesson Book 1A

• Share “Play a Fourth” with them and have them start at 72bpm and work their way up to the recommended tempo of 144bpm.
• Assign ABPL Foundations 4ths - “Welcome Christmas” as their warm up for the week.
• Introduce ABPL Current Hits: “Count on Me.” Help students locate the 4ths.

The philosophy behind Alfred’s Basic Piano Library has always been to provide resources for piano teachers and students that make it easy for anyone to succeed at learning to play the piano. By adding these new tools to your toolbox, there are now even more ways to create a custom experience to keep each student engaged, practicing, and progressing.

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