The Piano Guys - Solo Piano Optional Cello

My son primarily plays cello, but also took a couple years of piano lessons. He enjoys playing the cello part. It is challenging, but not too challenging for him. The piano part is over his skill level though.I would recommend both for upper-intermediate to advanced level. This is definitely not a beginner's book.The songs are identical to the ones that The Piano Guys play in concert. They might've slightly simplified the arrangement and of course, it is missing the improvising that we enjoyed in their performance. The songs are great, and you will enjoy playing/listening to them.The Piano Guys have several YouTube videos playing the songs from this book. I would recommend searching for them and listening to them if you are curious about what the songs will sound like.

If you love the Piano Guys music you hear on Youtube, you'll love the sheet music arrangements. They stay very true to what you hear the piano guys play. Plus, I particularly found the unique side notes helpful and fun. As far as difficultly level goes, I'm an early-advanced pianist particularly skilled in sight-reading and don't find reading the music difficult at all. However, sometimes particular passages of arpeggios or fast octaves were difficult to execute. The only reason I didn't give this book five stars was the fact that a cellist is needed in order to get the most out of a few songs. Most of the songs can sound really good with just the piano, but a few feel lacking without another instrument to play the cello part. Overall though, I would highly recommend this book if you are an intermediate-advanced to advanced pianist who loves the Piano Guys.

I strongly believe that this music book is truly excellent. The music that I learned using this book was beautiful and I was frequently given compliments by my peers about how great the music sounded. A friend of mine even played the cello part along with the piano part and it sounded breathtaking, however there were a few issues in terms of learning the piano pieces. I felt that some of the chords were hard to reach and I had to take some pauses in order for my hand to reach all the notes in a given chord or phrase. I also felt that the dynamic ranges were sometimes not clear and had to substitute dynamics as necessary. Overall, I though that this book was excellent and I liked the works of music that it provided.

This book is pretty much the sheet music to what you see Jon Schmidt and Steven Sharp Nelson play on The Piano Guys youtube videos. So if you want to see the difficulty or how much cello is involved in each song, just watch the Youtube videos. I would say I am and intermediate to advanced piano player. I can sight read pretty well, and some of these songs take me a while to learn while others I can learn without too much practice, so none are easy, and they are not Rhapsody in Blue either, they range in between. I'm pretty sure the cello doesn't take too much of the melody in any of these songs either, so if you are a solo pianist, I would still recommend this book because the melody is defined in the piano part.

I am obsessed with the Piano Guys. My husband and I had their arrangement of "A Thousand Years" as our wedding march so of course, being an avid piano player, I wanted to learn this (and many of their other) song(s). Sadly, this was not really the typical piano solo book. I played through a few of the songs, but it just did not sound right without the cello. The arrangements don't really seem to be just for piano, so I was sadly disappointment. Amazon Prime has amazing customer service, however, so the return was quick and easy.

The only one of these pieces that really works as a piano solo is "All of Me," and I didn't need that one, since I've been playing it for a couple of decades from Jon Schmidt's earliest piano book. There are a few nice passages in these pieces, but nothing I would perform as a solo--you would really need the cello with you to make it sound complete and to make it sound like the Piano Guys sound on their CDs. I am a long-time Jon Schmidt fan (since the early 90s when he was really just popular in Utah) and a Piano Guys fan, but I would recommend Jon's other books if you are looking for piano solos. His Christmas one is especially fun to play, complicated enough to challenge (but not stump) an advanced, non-professional pianist like me, and has some real gems in it. This book, on the other hand, was considerably easier to play than Jon's other books, and I found it to be lacking in richness and depth. I sight-read these pieces with minimal effort--there are many pages of single-line right-hand melodies with repetitive octaves in the left hand, and that just doesn't quite do it for me.Bottom line suggestions: buy the Piano Guys CDs for listening; buy Jon Schmidt's other piano books for enjoyable playing and performance-worthy piano solos.

The songs in this book are fairly easy to learn as a person who has played piano for 9 years. They are pretty fun to play and I enjoy learning how to play the songs I have heard played by the Piano Guys. However, I do think that I am missing a very important component of the song without the cello part and it sounds a little bit incomplete (i.e. I wouldn't play them as a solo piece for an audience because you can tell there is something missing.) In other words, I don't really think the cello part should be called "optional".

Phenomenal sheet music for phenomenal pieces. Very easy-to-read scores with lots of room for writing notes. I would say the piano part is definitely tricky for some of the pieces, but nothing a (determined) intermediate pianist can't handle. The cello part is optional, but without it, the songs do feel like they're missing something. An intermediate cellist would do well on some of the pieces, but about half are rather advanced.

Brought as a present .

Really enjoyed playing these arrangements. Easy to ready well laid out. Cello part is separate from piano part, so you can play straight away.

Bought this for my wife. She was glad to get it. Would defin recommend it if you like playing the piano

The Piano Guys are great and all of Schmidt's arrangements are beautiful. Can't wait to buy more of their music.

Kultstoff, wunderbare Melodien, wunderbare Arrangements, ein reines Vergnügen!