Fantastic Fingers Book 4 - Piano Technique Exercises for Intermediate Players | Perfect for Home Practice & Music Lessons

Exactly what it said it was going to be! ?After Fantastic Fingers, Book 3 I bought Fantastic Fingers, Book 4. Why, because book 3 exceeded all expectations.Now my expectations are already high, so book 4 met those high expectations.Let's backtrack a bit. There's no shortage of piano finger exercises, such as Hanon, Czerny, Bartok... Those are great. No complaints about those time tested materials. But the two Fantastic Fingers books that I bought so far are exactly what I would consider adding to the student's repertoire, if you want the student to explore in a slightly different direction.The pieces in these books are less mechanical than many of the useful materials that will train the fingers. These compositions are basically more musical. They come with descriptions of what the student should imagine or experience while playing. In other words, the whole point of music. So, there are technical skills that musicians need to master, for which we have plenty of time tested materials, and there is also the more artistic and emotional aspect that musicians also need to master, so they don't sound like automatons. This aspect of playing music is definitely something that is learned through these compositions.The compositions are fun and inspiring. They all sound exactly like their titles. Example, Russian Circus (from book 3) sounds like a Russian Circus, City Lights (from book 4) sounds like... you guessed it, city lights. And so on.Book 4 is clearly written for a higher level than book 3, which is to me expected. I did not buy books 1 and 2, but I am interested in buying them at some time to see what's in them. When kids come to the house it's a good idea to spend quality time with them, such as teaching them something on the piano. So, I suspect I'll be buying the lower level books, at some future time, for that purpose.