Education Publications,
Sheet Music to Develop Your Musicianship
With many teachers turning to online lessons, teaching key musicianship skills effectively can sometimes be a challenge, particularly if your student does not own their own guides and methods for practice. The following books will hopefully not only provide teachers with recommendations for their students, but also provide the tools for musicians of all abilities to improve their general musicianship skills and become a well-rounded musician. You can find a selection of some of the best publications and series below to master those aural, sight-reading and theory skills.
Piano & Keyboard
Joining the Dots offers musicians lots of material to help build confidence and skill in sight-reading. The series brings together a range of activities to help students improve their sense of keyboard geography, helping them to read new music more quickly and easily.
Browse the entire series for piano, violin, guitar, and solo vocal
Available Format: Sheet Music
Musicianship for beginners and beyond! Listening, internalisation, and musical understanding are encouraged from the very earliest stages in this colourful, attractive, and comprehensive series. Full of progressive and engaging activities that develop a secure and wide-ranging foundation, Off We Go! starts piano students on the path to being truly ready to play.
Ready to Play: Moving Up! (Book Two) available here.
Available Format: Sheet Music
Piano Star Theory is an activity book for young players in the early stages of learning the piano. Packed full of engaging exercises and games, it can be used alongside any beginner piano tutor to help develop a student's understanding of musical notation.
Available Format: Sheet Music
FunKey! is a series of piano tutor books of short pieces, designed to develop students’ sight-reading skills and awareness of key, using fun material which supports the sight-reading requirements of the ABRSM examination board. The pieces are in a variety of styles, notably rock, swing and Latin, increasing in difficulty from Level 1 to 5. Each book comes with an accompanying CD.
Available Format: Sheet Music/2CD
How To Blitz! Sight Reading (Book 1) presents five sight reading concepts and a test in each of its ten levels alongside brilliant exam hints, key stickers and self rating systems. Suitable for ABRSM and Trinity College London Piano Grades 1 and 2, by the end of level ten students will be well on the way to 'blitzing' the sight reading section of their piano exam, but most importantly they'll be having lots of fun along the way!
Browse the entire range of How to Blitz! Sight Reading here
Available Format: Sheet Music
Graded Keyboard Musicianship provides graded and integrated exercises for developing five core skills at the keyboard: figured bass, score-reading, transposition, harmonization, and improvisation. Organized into two books, it develops these skills from an elementary level, providing support for practical and theoretical music exams, and for teaching harmony. Book 1 assumes keyboard ability of Grade 1 ABRSM standard and covers up to Grade 5, while Book 2 covers Grades 6 to 8.
Available Format: Sheet Music
The Getting Started series are step-by-step guides introducing key skills to the beginner musician. In turn they enable teachers to cover all aspects of music in a time-limited lesson. Getting Started with Keyboard Musicianship is an enjoyable and practical introduction to basic keyboard harmony that teaches young musicians the fundamentals that will aid their musical progression. Designed to be used alongside instrumental/singing lessons, this book is packed with activities to do at home as part of practice time.
Getting started with Aural, and Getting Started with Theory also available.
Available Format: Sheet Music
The Piano Teacher's Resource Kit is the ultimate teaching tool! Inside you will find over eighty fun and challenging activities and resources spanning five carefully organized levels of difficulty to meet the needs of your students, from beginning to advanced. The reproducible pages include valuable resources including worksheets on note-spelling, rhythm, chords, key signatures, Sudoku games, crossword puzzles, practice charts and more! All pages are perforated for ease of copying. Teachers will appreciate the wide variety of activities and well-graded worksheets that can be used over and over again.
Available Format: Sheet Music
Create an enhanced learning experience for beginning students of any age with these 128 musical flash cards! The 4″ x 3″ cards cover note names, basic musical terms and symbols, time signatures, key signatures, and rhythm patterns. They are suitable for use with any method! Cards come perforated and are easy to tear apart.
Available Format: Flashcards
Instrumental
This book contains all the scales and arpeggios required for ABRSM's Saxophone exams at Grades 6-8.
Browse the entire range of ABRSM Scales for a wide variety of instruments and levels here
Available Format: Sheet Music
This volume contains valuable practice material for candidates preparing for ABRSM Cello exams (Grade 1-5). Key features include specimen tests written in attractive and approachable styles, representative of the technical level expected in the exam.
Browse the entire range of ABRSM Sightreading for a wide variety of instruments and levels here
Available Format: Sheet Music
Violin Star Theory is an activity book for young players in the early stages of learning the violin. Packed full of engaging exercises and games, it can be used alongside any beginner violin tutor to help develop a student's understanding of musical notation.
Available Format: Sheet Music
This book offers a wealth of approachable & attractive sight reading pieces which are carefully graded to match Trinity's requirements: invaluable practice material for trumpeters & vital preparation for Trinity College London examinations.
Browse the entire range of Sound at Sight for a wide variety of instruments here
Available Format: Sheet Music
Improve your sight-reading! Guitar Grades 4-5 is designed to help classical guitarists overcome sight reading problems, especially in the context of graded exams. Step by step you build up a complete picture of each piece, firstly through rhythmic and melodic exercises related to specific technical issues, then by studying prepared pieces with associated questions, and finally 'going solo' with a series of meticulously graded sight-reading pieces. Written to support the ABRSM's sight-reading requirements.
Browse the entire Improve your.. series for a variety of instruments here
Available Format: Sheet Music
The Disney Music Activity Book is a fun introduction to music through songs, games, puzzles, and other music activities. Featuring 26 well-loved, classic Disney tunes, this book can be used by beginning pianists, keyboard players, guitarists, vocalists, and other C-instrument players. Beginners will love learning the basics as introduced by their favourite Disney characters!
Available Format: Sheet Music
Here’s a great new idea that’s bound to make daily practice more enjoyable for young children learning any instrument. There are fun daily colouring exercises to encourage practice, space to record favourite pieces and how practice has gone and a handy music theory and pupil’s notes section at the back.
Available Format: Sheet Music
Vocal & Choral
This step-by-step method includes fun songs with lyrics, dynamics, and accompaniment, along with prepatory exercises to help singers grasp concepts quickly while singing real music from day one. The sequential approach focuses on the keys of C, F, and G major, basic rhythms, and simple intervals in the tonic, dominant, and subdominant chords.
Teacher edition also available.
Available Format: Sheet Music
This method introduces rhythms and intervals sequentially, and systematically incorporates elements of music such as key signatures and changing time signatures with regular reviews. This creative step by step approach gives singers the skills needed to sight-sing by themselves, away from a piano or other singers. The Teachers Edition contains all material found in the Vocal Edition, plus detailed instructions for each lesson.
Available Format: Sheet Music
A carefully-structured and comprehensive programme of twenty chapters, each of which includes material for developing skills in the voice, theory, sight-reading and performance to develop all the skills required of a choral musician. The Teacher’s books incorporate the exact page layout and contents of the pupils’ book together with helpful teaching suggestions and tips for that particular page.
Teacher Edition, and Books 2 -3 also available here.
Available Format: Sheet Music
Internationally acclaimed jazz vocalist, pianist, and educator Nancy Marano offers a unique voice and piano system designed to develop the ear and basic skills of any singer who wishes to become a complete musician. Specific weekly lessons are assigned. Vocalists play and sing each exercise. Previous piano skills are not required. Beginning at a remedial level, and increasing in difficulty, studies include scales, intervals, pitch, rhythms, chords and blues.
Available Format: Sheet Music/CD
Aural Training
Aural Training in Practice offers valuable support to teachers preparing students for ABRSM Practical exams. The three volumes, covering Grades 1-3, Grades 4 & 5 and Grades 6-8, provide information on what each test involves and what the examiner is looking for, teaching hints and strategies, warm-up material, ideas for integrating aural into lessons, as well as many practice exercises.
Browse the entire range of Aural Training in Practice here
Available Format: Sheet Music/CD
Aural tests are an integral part of all ABRSM Practical graded music exams. The Specimen Aural Tests provide teachers and students with many practice examples of the tests to use as part of a music lesson or when preparing for an exam.
Browse the entire range of Specimen Aural Tests here
Available Format: Sheet Music/CD
The seventy accompanied melodies in this book provide useful starting material for pupils who find sight singing difficult at first. All are taken from the established vocal repertoire. For grade examinations in singing, accurate and fluent sight reading is even more important, as it is a section in its own right as well as being part of the aural tests.
Browse the entire range of Aural Time here
Available Format: Sheet Music
Aural Book 1: Specimen Aural Tests for Trinity College London exams from 2017 contains all the requirements for initial to Grade 5. Includes information about the test pieces, what the examiner will do, what each question is for, what candidates will be asked to do, hints for candidates, information for teachers, a wide range of sample tests, an answer booklet with 'check yourself' sample answers, and two CDs of practice examples.
Browse the entire range of Trinity Aural exam publications here
Available Format: Sheet Music/2CD
Theory
Joel Rothman's Teaching Rhythm is a virtual encyclopedia of clear and easy-to-read rhythms in quarter and eighth time. This book is suitable for beginner to intermediate level players.
Available Format: Sheet Music
The indispensable guide to theory from the Associated Board and Eric Taylor. Covers all topics required for Grade 5, with plenty of practise examples and simple, precise explanations.
Available Format: Theory & Aural
This material has been prepared to offer guidance for ABRSM Practical Musicianship exams. Music teachers will find it a useful basis on which to plan a scheme of study in this important aspect of music learning. Each book contains a wide range of specimen tests, practice exercises and general advice.
Available Format: Sheet Music
The music teacher's handbook is essential reading for all instrumental and vocal tutors - packed with practical answers to the real issues faced day-to-day. Experts in different areas have presented their inspirational solutions to the many challenges of teaching.
Available Format: Book
Alfred's Essentials of Music Theory is designed for students of any age, whether listeners or performers, who want to have a better understanding of the language of music. In this all-in-one theory course, you will learn the essentials of music through concise lessons, practice your music reading and writing skills in the exercises, and test your knowledge with a review that completes each unit.
Browse the entire range of Alfred's Essentials of Music Theory here
Available Format: Theory & Aural
All-In-One to Grade 5 is a concise, yet fully comprehensive, step-by step explanation of music theory from beginner to Grade 5 for both Associated Board and Trinity College London students. ABRSM students will need no further material however Trinity students require the short (26 page) Trinity Supplement booklet to use alongside this book.
Browse the entire range of All-In-One Music Theory here
Available Format: Sheet Music
This book explores the main elements of tonal harmony. Students using this book will acquire a secure knowledge of the basics of harmonic practice. Singing, playing and completing the exercises, and studying the music examples, will provide essential experience of the 'tools of the trade'. More than 280 music examples illustrate the author's clear and direct exposition of the history and practice of harmony while the student will be able to work through over 190 exercises.
Available Format: Sheet Music
Jazz Theory Handbook is a complete guide to all the essential topics of jazz theory, suitable for all treble instruments. With a clear, concise, realistic and practical approach, this book will help you to understand how contemporary jazz players think, and to apply theory concepts in your own playing. Subjects are introduced progressively, with each new one based on those introduced before. Audio download available online.
Available Format: Book
Ellena Taylor - Sheet Music and Books Manager
