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Songbook Review: Louis Landon's Easy Piano
Louis Landon
Cover image of the songbook Louis Landon's Easy Piano by Louis Landon
Louis Landon's Easy Piano
Louis Landon
2019 / Landon Creative
32 pages / 10 songs
Review by Kathy Parsons
Louis Landon’s Easy Piano songbook is a collection of ten simplified piano solos from nine of Landon’s many albums and range from his 2005 solo piano debut, unwind, to his 2019 Solo Piano Space Traveler. An extremely accomplished pianist, many of Landon’s note-for-note sheet music transcriptions are too difficult for most pianists, so he has had a lot of requests for simplified arrangements - and here they are! Landon stripped these pieces down to their essence so that the melodies are intact, but rhythms are much easier and the left hand parts are either basic chords or broken chords played in eighth notes. The key signatures are also very basic - C, F or G major and their relative minors. The right hand parts are almost all single notes (there are a few intervals and a few simple chords, but not many), so there are no reaches of more than an octave - actually there are only a few reaches at all!

The subtitle of the book is “Simplified Sheet Music for Beginners,” which is slightly misleading because beginners don’t read well and rarely venture beyond the octaves above and below middle C. These arrangements are geared more for intermediate players who are reading notes well and have a basic grasp of timing. Pedaling suggestions, dynamics and metronome settings are all included, and the scores are beautifully engraved and easy to read. So, if you are a fan of Louis Landon’s music and/or are looking for some beautiful but not-too-difficult piano solos, here you go! The songbook is available in hard copy and PDF download from www.LouisLandon.com and the paperback book is also available on Amazon.

The titles, keys they are in and the number of pages are:

Beautiful Day - Key of F (1 flat) - 2 1/2 pages
Hand in Hand - Key of F (1 flat) - 3 1/2 pages
Home is Where the Heart Is - Key of G (1 sharp) - 2 1/2 pages
Learning to Fly - Key of A minor (0 sharps or flats) - 3 1/2 pages
Passing Sadness - Key of D minor (1 flat) - 2 1/2 pages
Peaceful - Key of G (1 sharp) - 2 1/2 pages
Precious One - Key of G (1 sharp) - 3 pages
Sands of Time - Key of C (0 sharps or flats) - 3 pages
Seattle Morning - Key of C (0 sharps or flats) - 3 1/2 pages
Skye’s Song - Key of F (1 flat) - 2 pages
October 22, 2019