Review of 'Chord Piano is Fun' by T K Goforth.

I realised some years ago that many piano students are discouraged by having to concentrate only on classical repertoire, while being unable to play even relatively simple popular songs, jazz standards or music from the shows.   I was brought up with a very traditional, classical approach to piano and piano repertoire which has been an amazing thing by itself but relatively recently I discovered jazz piano and chords and wondered why noone had ever told me about these things.  I've seen some amazing results introducing piano chords to some of my pupils. Suddenly they have found a new enthusiam for their piano studies, by being able to play songs they like, both hands together, without a great amount of effort.   While I was introducing piano chords to my students I was very much explaining it all to them in the best way I could think of at the time without any particular method or sequence of learning.   I would select songs from fake books, trying to pick the easiest ones first without too many difficult chords while always wishing I had a book that explained in simple terms how to form the chords while providing some introductory simple melodies to go with them.   The beginner's method book, 'Chord Piano is Fun' by the American jazz musician and teacher T K Goforth may well have been just the book I was looking for.   Her aim is to enable students to understand how music is put together by chords so that they can play from chord symbols, enabling them to learn popular songs with left hand harmony very quickly.    Her book uses the three scales and keys of C, G and F majors as well as their relative minors. She shows simply and efficiently how to form the scales and triads and use them with simple songs such as 'pop goes the weasel' and 'twinkle, twinkle'.  After a methodical learning process through chord families, inversions, slash chords and 7th chords, she finishes with an introduction to the blues and some further resources to enable students to develop further their newly acquired skills. 
  What I find fascinating is that I, myself didn't know many of these basic musical ideas after 20 years of piano lessons and a professional classical career.    This book would I think, based on my efforts to teach chords to adults who already have some proficiency in piano playing, be useful for children and adults, beginners and more advanced students who would like to learn the very valuable and enjoyable skill of reading chord symbols.  
     Some more traditionally minded piano teachers might wonder whether learning to play from chord symbols in the left hand rather than how to read from the stave will retard the progress of students with regards to classical piano.  I suggest that enabling people to play music they like as soon as possible, can only help to prevent the lamentable numbers of people who, having started piano, never achieve what they would consider to be a level of success they can enjoy.  
I should add that I haven't tried this book out on a musical guinea-pig yet but intend to so. I'll start with my partner at  www.themusictutorslondon.co.uk , Laura who is a basic keyboard player with no ability to read chord symbols.   I shall post again about how she gets on.