Best easy piano songbooks for beginners

The series name on the cover tells you the notation system, and that is the entire decision. The song list is the easy part. Four Hal Leonard series sit in the beginner piano aisle — Super Easy Songbook, Big-Note, Easy Piano and Five-Finger Piano — and they are not four difficulties of the same thing. They are four different reading experiences, one of which does not teach reading at all. Buy the wrong series and the book sits unopened, which is the actual failure mode here and has nothing to do with whether you liked the songs.

Every pick states its Starter Path band, and we have not played through any of them — the method is on how we pick. Series descriptions, page counts, song counts and ISBNs come from Hal Leonard’s own product pages, cited at the bottom, and every book’s ISBN was matched against the listing we link to.

The four series, and what each one actually puts on the page

This is the part no shop and no cover explains, so here is each series in Hal Leonard’s own published terms.

Super Easy Songbook. Sixty arrangements per volume. The right hand gets a melody with the letter name printed inside every notehead, the notes are oversized, and the left hand gets basic chord diagrams rather than written notation. Hal Leonard also publishes that the volumes are laid out with no page turns. The effect is that you can play a tune on day one without being able to read music, because you are reading letters that happen to sit on a staff.

Big-Note. Real staff notation, both hands, printed oversized. No letter names. This is the tier most buyers skip straight past because it looks like a children’s book, and for a child who is actually learning to read it is the correct one — the problem a seven-year-old has is tracking small print across a stave, not comprehension.

Easy Piano. Ordinary two-hand notation at normal print size, with arrangements simplified but not reduced to a melody line. This is what a method book is preparing you for and what every future songbook will assume. “Easy Piano” is the series name worth memorizing, because it is the one that keeps working for years.

Five-Finger Piano. Real notation that never leaves one hand position, so neither hand has to shift. It is a genuine tier and it sits between Big-Note and nothing — useful for a very young student in their first weeks. We have not picked one, for a reason given at the bottom of this page.

The one question that decides which series you want

Is the player learning to read music, or learning to enjoy the piano? Those are both legitimate goals and they point at opposite books.

An adult who bought a keyboard because they always wanted to play, has no teacher and wants to sit down and produce something recognizable, is served well by letter names inside the noteheads. Telling that person to spend four months on note-reading before they are allowed a song is how keyboards end up in cupboards. Our page on how to stop a beginner quitting is built around exactly this.

A child taking lessons is the opposite case. Reading is the skill being built, the teacher is tracking it, and a book that prints the answer inside every note removes the thing they are there to practice. Reading stalls while playing advances, and the gap shows up a year later as a student who can play pieces they cannot read.

If you are buying as a gift and do not know which case applies, Big-Note for a child under about ten and Easy Piano for anyone older are the safe defaults, because both are real notation and neither can do any harm.

The picks

Hit Songs — Super Easy Songbook#ad is the pick for an adult beginner with no teacher. Hal Leonard publishes it at 128 pages in the Super Easy Songbook series, with the series format being 60 arrangements, simple right-hand melodies, letter names inside each note, basic left-hand chord diagrams and no page turns. We picked the Hit Songs volume over the Beatles, Disney or Christmas volumes because the repertoire is broad rather than tied to one artist or season, and the whole series shares the same format. Buy this if the goal is playing something recognizable this week. Skip it if the player is a child learning to read, or has a teacher — and be clear-eyed that the letter names have a ceiling you will eventually have to climb down from.

The Best Songs Ever — Big-Note Piano#ad is the pick for a young child, and the best value per song here despite having the highest sticker price: Hal Leonard publishes the 6th Edition at 242 pages with 70 all-time favorites. Real notation, both hands, printed large, no shortcuts. Broad standards repertoire rather than one film, which matters because a child’s taste changes faster than a songbook does. Buy this if the player is under about ten and their reading is the point. Skip it if they are a teenager or an adult — big-note print reads as babyish and that alone stops it being used.

First 50 Popular Songs You Should Play on the Piano#ad is the tier to aim at, and our overall pick for most readers: 208 pages, 50 songs, in the Easy Piano Songbook series, so standard two-hand notation at normal size with arrangements that still sound like the song rather than a melody with a chord box over it. Hal Leonard also lists a digital edition. Buy this if the player is a month or two into a method book, or can decode a staff slowly. Skip it if they cannot yet find middle C without counting up from the bottom — buying this in week one produces frustration rather than songs, and that is the commonest way this purchase goes wrong in the other direction.

Buy the method book first

Worth saying plainly on the page that is selling songbooks: if you only buy one book, buy a method book instead of any of these.

A songbook gives you repertoire and no instruction. It will not teach you where your hands go, what the rhythm notation means, or how to practice a passage you cannot play. A method book does all three in a deliberate order. The ideal is both — the method for the half hour you practice properly and the songbook for the ten minutes you sit down because you felt like it — and the method is the one to get first. Our best piano books for beginners covers the four that matter and which one suits an adult against a child.

What we did not list, and why

A Five-Finger Piano volume. This is a real tier and an honest omission rather than an oversight. The titles currently in stock are almost entirely licensed film repertoire, and for the one broad-repertoire volume that is in stock we could not retrieve a publisher page to confirm its series details, page count and song list. On a page whose entire argument is that you should buy by published series format, listing a book whose format we cannot confirm would contradict the argument. If a student is in their first weeks and a teacher has asked for Five-Finger specifically, that is the series name to search — it keeps both hands in one position.

Seasonal and single-artist volumes. Christmas, Disney, Beatles, hymns, classic rock and a dozen others exist in every one of these series, and if the player has a strong preference the repertoire volume is the better buy than our generalist pick. We have listed one volume per notation tier because the tier is the decision; once you know your series name, pick whichever song list the player will actually want.

“100 songs” mega-collections. Cheap per song and frequently a false economy at this level: the arrangements are often inconsistent in difficulty within one book, so a beginner hits a wall on page nine and concludes the problem is them.

Piano/Vocal/Guitar editions. The commonest mis-buy in this aisle and worth naming. They look like piano books and are arranged for a singer with piano accompaniment plus guitar chord boxes, so the piano part is harder than Easy Piano and the melody sits in the vocal line rather than the right hand. If a songbook does not say Easy Piano, Big-Note, Super Easy or Five-Finger, check carefully.

Classical collections. Deliberately out of scope here, and the one place where free sheet music is a legitimate answer: the standard beginner classical repertoire is public domain. A method book plus printed public-domain pieces covers it.