Sergei Rachmaninoff School of Musicianship and Technique: A Guide for Keyboard Performers

Unfortunately, not written by the great Rachmaninoff. This is just another book of exercises, using the great composer's name to capitalize on.Dr. S.

I was scared of the title at first. Ordered it to see what it was all about though and quickly worked it into my exercises routine. Love the non-crowed format of book and the exercises are short which is great for younger students or when first learning. (Of course, anyone can run them 4 octaves easily) The common tone approach is fantastic and really helps in understanding harmony and building chords. I have given a copy to two of my teenage students and they are truly liking the exercises. It' amazing. I only wish the book was spiral-bound!Not only are these exercises wonderful for learning all chords and arpeggios, they even make understanding modes easier. I will be using this book for myself and for my students from now on.

This book presents a very interesting approach to organizing scale and arpeggio practice. Rather than systematically working through major and minor scales in all keys via cycle-of-fifths patterns, Dr. Adams expands a simple chord exercise by Rachmaninoff into a formula that covers a lot more harmonic territory in the same amount of time. This exercise engages one's ears and fingers in new ways, incorporating a sort of modal/harmonic approach to scale practice. Once you've memorized the basic harmonic pattern, it becomes easy to translate into other types of technical exercises that pianists practice: scales in thirds and sixths, varied scale sequences and broken chord shapes.Unfortunately, Adams does not exhaust these possibilities in the text, nor does he provide other examples of harmonic formulae that could provide additional variety to the technical routine. The essential premise of the book is detailed in only a few pages, leaving the remainder of the text to simply print transpositions of the basic chord, scale and arpeggio patterns in every key. A deeper investigation into the "common-tone" technique of chord progression/modulation, and the systems of harmonic formulae developed by Villoing and Safonoff, would have provided a much more complete insight into the training and education of Rachmaninoff as a pianist and composer.As it stands, this little volume is an excellent reference for developing musicians. It provides a very musical way to practice the essential types of triads and seventh chords, while connecting the harmonic idea with scale and arpeggio practice. It's unfortunate that some of its more unique ideas weren't developed further. Understand that it's a technical exercise book, and take its presumptuous title with a big spoonful of salt

This is a good study for keyboardists starting out that need to learn chords, scales and arpeggios in a way that relates them all together. With a bit of thought and knowledge the material could be extended to include modes and other chords that relate to each other in similar ways.

The title is very misleading. Instead of a book with Rachmaninov's musical techniques, this is a book that quotes a few sentences from the Maestro and then presents a rather incomplete series of practice exercises based on the techniques of the primarily Russian school of musical thought. I would have liked if the author would have at least presented the entirety of Rachmaninov's short essay/article, which this book claims to be based on. Again, literally, the book only has a few quotes fro the Maestro. The rest of the book is what the author presents as exercises. This book really has nothing or very, very little to do with Rachmaninoff. If you have lots of money to waste on countless books then, fine, buy it, but if you don't then be warned that this is not the book that the title suggests. It is not to say that the exercises or not helpful, or even necessary, for indeed, knowing chords, major and minor are necessary. It is that you do not need this book to tell you that as your piano teacher already has attempted to instill the importance of knowing your scales and arpeggios. The author can't even finish the book, he expects you to write your own exercises to complete the chords and advanced chords. I won't say that this book is worthless, because the importance of the study and knowledge of chords are never worthless, but I will say that you don't need this book to tell you that. If the author includes the entirety of the short article/essay/interview by Rachmaninoff and also completes all the exercises that he tells you to do, then the book will begin to garner a higher star rating. Now, it is not part of the education that the author says for the reader to finish the exercises, it is because this book reeks of self publishing and therefore it seems more cost effective to limit the number of pages for this thin exercise book. If the price of the book were the cost of a cup of Starbucks then, yes it is worth it, but at this price for this information, look else where.

I was truly disappointed to find pages of major/minor scales, arpeggios and runs. Only a few pages of technic were challenging to me as a life-long pianist and piano teacher. I would not buy this again.

Good book, though I was looking for more "dialogue" from Mr. Rachmaninoff himself discussing his actual views and approaches to technique!! Just a little disappointed!!

Kind of a money grab, just pages and pages of transpositions of one exercise Rachmaninoff once mentioned offhand in an article once. Vaguely interesting, but has about as much information as a 5-minute YouTube video.

The analysis of patterns for exercising Rachmaninov-style scales and chords is nice warm-up for pianists.

A very useful book that changed the way I practice my scales and arpeggios.

I was very disappointed about this book as soon as I looked inside. From the title, I was expecting to learn how to create sound like Rachmaninoff.. This book just shows chords, scales and arpeggios. In fact, even "Hanon" includes more quality and quantity. Rachmaninoff would get very mad at this book using his name. Terrible news.