A piano mystery for beginners

The ‘BAG’ Files is a fun detective mystery for young beginner pianists. Help Jack find out who stole his bag by learning the tunes and solving the theory puzzles. A great way to practice the first few notes a beginner encounters in their method book.

I love the first lessons with my young beginner pianists. They are full of enthusiasm and excitedly explore all the keys and pedals, wanting to know what everything does. It’s great fun tapping into their imagination and experimenting with high keys that sound like a mouse or growly bear and dinosaur noises at the bottom of the piano.

I have one student in particular, who has that enthusiasm in bucketloads. Leo always bursts through the door with a huge smile, is eager to tell me his joke of the week, and is curious about everything. Lessons are creative and fun and he never fails to make me smile!

Leo did struggle though, with the move from off stave reading to notation. He is fine with the right hand but when the left hand moves backwards through the alphabet from middle C, he reaches a stumbling block. C, D, E, F, G makes logical sense to him, but C, B, A, G, F is just confusing.

It was while pondering how to make this easier for Leo that I came up with The ‘BAG’ Files. I wanted a way to reinforce these left hand notes. More importantly it needed to spark his imagination so that the notes stuck solidly in his mind.

The ‘BAG’ Files is a music mystery book for budding piano detectives. There are seven tunes to learn (with optional teacher duets) which focus on notes BAG in the left hand (plus CDE in the right). Students search for clues to solve the case in both the sheet music and the puzzles – which include mazes, a dot to dot activity, a hidden picture to colour and reveal, and much more.

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Colourful cartoons alongside the piano pieces tell the story of Jack’s brand new missing school bag and introduce cheeky suspects like Amber Moon or sister Ginny. There is even a fun jazzy improvisation to explore in “Jammin’ with Jimmy” where students get to play around with notes BAG while the teacher grooves along underneath.

The ‘BAG’ Files is available worldwide on Amazon. Visit your country specific version of Amazon to find my books (search ‘Susan Leigh Piano’).