Top positive review
5.0 out of 5 starsGreat For any Billy Joel Fan
Reviewed in the United States on July 7, 2014
This book is great as long as you keep your expectations in order. Other reviewers have criticized it for lacking note-for-note accuracy and lack of ability to use it in bands/with singing, however it really shouldn't be used that way. I for one cannot sing for a damn, and so having the melody lines including makes it way more enjoyable for me as a solo pianist. I actually have the Billy Joel Note-for-Note, and without someone to accompany it's incredibly boring to just go through chord progressions in a lot of the songs. What I do now, is use the keyboard transcription book in conjunction with Billy Joel Complete, and play the intro from the first and the rest from the latter for the songs that need it.
My criticisms:
-There are some intros missing from songs, but if you really want them it's easy enough to fix with with the keyboard transcriptions or even sheetmusic from the internet.
-Some of the notation is a little unclear and in one or two songs there with misplaced accidentals.
-The page flipping for overly complicated codas gets pretty annoying, and I'd honestly rather just have the book be bigger. Each time I go to a new song I have a treasure hunt for the sign so I can circle it. I wish they had emphasized the signs in some way, because almost every song has d.s. al coda, and if you just want to play through a few for friends sightreading it's a buzzkill to have to stop in the middle to search.
-It isn't really complete. Like another reviewer said, it's missing Fantasies and Delusions, River of Dreams, and extras from Greatest Hits albums. However I can totally understand their omission, and while Fantasies and Delusions is great I actually prefer buying it separately as it doesn't really fit with his music presented here and it suited to playing in different occasions.
