Reviews
"If you've ever been flipping channels and stumbled across the weekly television series The Piano Guy on PBS, you know who Bradley Sowash and Scott Houston are: two pianists with the simple message that playing piano should be fun. With Sowash and Houston's Play Piano in a Flash! The Next Step burgeoning musicians can learn how to interpret chord symbols and position them on the piano, play left-hand self-accompaniment patterns and generate spontaneous right-hand melodies. It helps that The Next Step is full of huge diagrams documenting recognizable songs like “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star” because, as the back of the book states, sometimes pianists get “bored with classical music” and just yearn to “play something jazzy.” Here's the book to show you how to do it." - Jazz Times 2006/2007 Jazz Education Guide

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"...showing how to begin improvising, how to make skeletal arrangements, and how to construct a complete, original arrangement make this a great resource for everybody who wants to put their own feelings into the music they play."  - David Ferris at Piano World.com

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Almost flawless., March 2, 2007
Reviewer: P. Oski (Canada) - This book is an excellent primer for the advanced-beginner pianist who wants to leave sheet music behind, or for the by-ear or lead-sheet player who has attempted at least a couple of songs using the "right-hand melody, left-hand chords" arrangement presented in many methods, including of course, "The Piano Guy's" (Scott Houston), "Play Piano in a Flash" series. Scott Houston and Bradley Sowash propose to take the reader to...well, the next step beyond the barebones arrangement described above and to introduce him/her to more sophisticated harmonies and options for creating bass lines and thus fuller, more satisfying arrangements of lead sheet melodies.

They have succeeded.

Using a songlist of the usual suspects including "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star", "When the Saints Go Marching In" and "She'll be Coming 'Round the Mountain", Sowash and Houston guide us, in a casual, conversational style through some elementary ideas of chord construction, including inversions, minor and dominant 7th chords and then they explore some options available for LH parts. The authors then gently introduce some exercises demonstrating construction of simple bass lines, melodic ornamentations, improvisation and then move into slightly more complex re-harmonizations and a brief introduction to chord substitutions and more complex LH patterns like pseudo-stride.

Overall, the presentation is practical, friendly and emphasizes exploration by the reader (who is admonished not just to read, but to play, play, play through all the examples).

My only quibble with the presentation (and it is a small one) is the lack of a discussion on practicing the chords and their inversions for each lead sheet before trying to create arrangements, which may result in less experienced beginners becoming frustrated and attributing their difficulties to the method. More experienced players will be able to run through the exercises quite rapidly, and will gain confidence in the steps required to go from melody line to fuller arrangment.

All in all, this book offers a user-friendly, technically accessible and surprisingly comprehensive foundation for lead-sheet and by-ear pianists to start creating full-sounding arrangements on their own. In fact, by extending the ideas in this book by yourself with regular practice, you will be able to go quite far as your technical skills improve. You should be able to read simple music in both clefs and be able to play very basic arrangements hands together to benefit from "The Next Step".

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A learning tool
Reviewer:  - This book gives the basics of improvisation when playing from a fake book. It is a good tool for a continuation of the learning process. The use of a varied base line, improvisation within a chord and the pentatonic scale are worthwhile skills. - Richard K. (Ironton, MN)