Songs Old and Songs New
Piano Theory, Technique, & Repertoire

Songs Old and Songs New is a simple & easy way to start your beginner piano students - from piano keyboard sheets, scales & chords, to over 265 pages of music!

Cover image of the piano book "Songs Old and Songs New"

Not a method book

This book is a collection of

  • Music Education resources, 
  • Beginning note-reading songs, and 
  • Piano repertoire for beginners from all over my website.

Download digital copy of "Songs Old & Songs New," a beginning theory, technique, & repertoire book, 279 pages, $12.95:

 


A COLLECTION?

Title page of the piano book "Songs Old & Songs New"

Yes - you could find all of these pages on my website, but here they are gathered in a way that is easy to access and presented in a chronological manner, at least initially.  

THIS IS NOT a method book, and so starting on page 62, the repertoire is presented alphabetically, not sequentially.  


The Table of Contents, page 1:

Table of Contents page 1 of the piano book Songs Old and Songs New


The first thing I give students

The first thing I give new students is a paper keyboard to place in their notebooks.

 For many weeks we work off this "keyboard", while labeling, practicing finding, and solidly learning the key names. 


Other keyboards:

This one is a bit larger.

And this one has key names on each key, white or black.


Beginner songs for one hand

The "Black Key" songs are an easy way for beginners to start to use their fingers, and to learn their finger numbers.  The following black key songs are part of the larger collection in Just the Black Keys.  Songs are accompanied by teacher secondos.

Hot Cross Buns, for one hand only.

Pizza, Please! is really just "Hot Cross Buns" in disguise.  The words are fun to sing.


Putting two hands together

Mary Had a Little Lamb is a necessity for beginners!


A surprisingly pretty piece


This is Grieg's famous "Morning Song."  Students, both boys and girls, love playing this, because it is simple but beautiful.


The teacher's accompaniment:

Teacher accompaniments such as this one show the actual notes students are playing in their black key songs.  There are over 25 pieces on the black keys only, with teacher accompaniments, in the book  Just the Black Keys.


Staff paper just right for beginners

A great big staff for young children

A grand staff

Treble and bass clefs


Scales and Chords

These scales help little hands learn to keep the thumbs up on the keys, and achieve that curved shape we want.

Left hand also has a sheet for scales.

Regular pentascales, with a sheet for right hand (shown), and a sheet for left hand.

It is VERY HANDY to have all these songs and worksheets located in ONE PLACE.  While I was putting the book together, I kept going to my printed folder of "Songs Old & Songs New" and stealing sheets from the packet for students' lessons!

The Table of Contents, page 2:

Table of Contents page 2 of the piano book Songs Old and Songs New

Download digital copy of "Songs Old & Songs New," a beginning theory, technique, & repertoire book, 279 pages, $12.95:

 

Reading up & down, step or skip

When your student attempts to play Wormies, you will know if they really understand the motion of notes up and down the staff!

Snakes are just like Wormies, but longer and SMALLER.

With Crickets, your student has to find the hidden "skips" - one additional skip per line!


Flashcards page 1



Flashcards, page 2



Flashcards, page 3, ledger line notes



Beginning note-reading songs


The Table of Contents, page 3:

Table of Contents page 3 of the piano book Songs Old and Songs New

Indian Dance only LOOKS hard.  For beginners, let them use this version with AlphaNotes - notes with letter names inside the note heads. 

This version is just the same, but doesn't fill EVERY note with a letter.  It is what I call a "helper" version.

And this arrangement is for the teacher, not the student - this shows you how Indian Dance would look if the left hand were added in.  I do recommend adding the left hand at week 2 or 3 of becoming acquainted with this song - it is very powerful and exciting!

The great thing about Jingle Bells is its FAMILIARITY.

Every student needs to play Mary Had a Little Lamb - it has so many uses!

The Music Alphabet has two pages:


Those were all the easiest beginner pieces of music.  Now we have a list of lots of music choices!

And here is the long list of songs - 
repertoire for progressing beginners!

The Table of Contents, page 4:

Table of Contents page 4 of the piano book Songs Old and Songs New

Remember - these are presented alphabetically instead of in order of difficulty!

The duet secondo part, for the teacher:


Many of the songs are folk tunes or nursery rhymes; some are hymns or Christmas carols.


Download digital copy of "Songs Old & Songs New," a beginning theory, technique, & repertoire book, 279 pages, $12.95:

 


The Table of Contents, page 5:

Table of Contents page 5 of the piano book Songs Old and Songs New

A few pieces are simplified melodies from classical piano or symphonic literature, such as Edvard Grieg's "Peer Gynt" Suite, Chopin's Funeral March, and Beethoven's Theme to the 5th Symphony.


The Table of Contents, page 6:

Table of Contents page 6 of the piano book Songs Old and Songs New

There are songs from America, Ireland, Germany, France, Scotland, Britain, and more...


Download digital copy of "Songs Old & Songs New," a beginning theory, technique, & repertoire book, 279 pages, $12.95:

 

The Table of Contents, page 7

Table of Contents page 7 of the piano book Songs Old and Songs New

Most of the songs have lyrics to sing - a definite plus for young kids!


And... many, many more pieces, listed in the Table of Contents!

Download digital copy of "Songs Old & Songs New," a beginning theory, technique, & repertoire book, 279 pages, $12.95:

 

The Table of Contents, page 8

Table of Contents page 8 of the piano book Songs Old and Songs New


Many of the songs have duet secondos for the teacher or another player, and most others have chord symbols above the melody like a lead sheet, to aid in making up a harmonic background, if desired.


The Table of Contents, page 9

Table of Contents page 9 of the piano book Songs Old and Songs New


Most of the songs will be familiar to many of you, but there are some original songs in the mix that have proven to be popular with my students, such as The Lake Pirates,  Indian Dance, and Monsters Everywhere.


The Table of Contents, page 10

Table of Contents page 10 of the piano book Songs Old and Songs New


At the very end of the book is a copy of the cover as a plain black-and-white page, just for coloring!  Many of your students will have fun with that.


The free coloring page of the cover of Songs Old & Songs New, a piano book for beginners

Download digital copy of "Songs Old & Songs New," a beginning theory, technique, & repertoire book, 279 pages, $12.95:

 


I told you that this is not a regular method book.  So what kind of book IS this?

How to Use the beginner's piano book "Songs Old and Songs New", page 1

Yes, many of the songs in this book will bring your student JOY!  And that is the aim of our teaching.

How to Use the beginner's piano book "Songs Old and Songs New", page 2
How to Use the beginner's piano book "Songs Old and Songs New", page 3
How to Use the beginner's piano book "Songs Old and Songs New", page 4
How to Use the beginner's piano book "Songs Old and Songs New", page 5

Download digital copy of "Songs Old & Songs New," a beginning theory, technique, & repertoire book, 279 pages, $12.95:

 

Interested in songs from the Bible for your students or church?  Check out my other website, SingTheBibleStory.com!

SingTheBibleStory.com clickable logo link

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Songs Old & Songs New

All the first-year material I give my beginner students. 

Piano keyboard sheets, scales, chords, note-reading exercises, and over 256 pages of music!

The Story of Esther - a Bible opera!

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This beautiful song book for piano & voice "Esther, For Such a Time as This",  available as a digital downloadtells the riveting story of the time when  Jews in ancient Persia faced a foe named Haman, and how a  brave young queen risked her life to save her people.

A good choice for a singing story-teller, an operatic group, a short theater production, or a class of children!

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Just the Black Keys, a piano song book for young beginners.

Just the Black Keys

This book is available as a digital download  from this site.  Visit this page to see some free examples from the book.

It is also available from Amazon as a paperback!

This is the perfect easy start for little pianists.

And when they start reading white-key notes on the staff, this is a fun easy resource to say each week, "Choose a new black-key song at home this week and figure it out to show me next lesson!"  They will be spending more time at the piano.

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About the Author

Dana Thynes

Hi, I'm Dana!  (Say that like "Anna".)  I'm the owner of Music-for-Music-Teachers.com, and a newer site, SingTheBibleStory.com.

Like some of you, I've been playing the piano since early childhood, and have added a few other instruments along the way, plus an interest in arranging and composing music.

You can find out more about me and the reason for this website at my About Me page.