As the name suggests, this book has been written for the absolute beginner and assumes no prior musical knowledge - just the desire to do it! The contents are suitable for piano and / or electronic keyboard. Items covered include: - Buying your first keyboard or piano; - Reading music from scratch; - Easy, effective finger exercises which require minimal reading ability; - Hundreds of clear diagrams / graphics; - Important musical symbols; - Your first tunes; - Audio links for all tunes and exercises; - Key signatures and transposition; - Pre-scale exercises; - Major and minor scales in keyboard and notation view; - Chord construction; - Chord fingering; - Arpeggios in keyboard and notation view; - Arpeggio exercises; - Playing from a Fake Book with and without auto-accompaniment; - Plus, more! After completing this book, you should have a good basic understanding of music theory as well as a good basic playing technique, paving the way for more advanced study in your chosen field - jazz, blues, pop, classical etc. Ok, but what is special about this 'Special Edition'? Compared to Editions 1 and 2 (both of which are still available) this Special Edition is both a lot more and a little less in the fact that I have only included the first three major and harmonic minor scales and arpeggios and removed the chord charts to make the paperback version more cost effective. BUT... to make this version much better I have included free links for the digital pdf versions of the items shown next: - Hanon Exercises 1 - 30 Condensed and Simplified for Beginners Easy Reading; - Scales & Arpeggios - every major / minor scale in every key, plus pentatonic / blues scales and modes in most used keys; - Chords (complete) - just about every chord that you will ever need; - Chords (short) - as above but only in keyboard view with diatonic chords; - Easy Piano Music - for two hands; - Easy Keyboard Music - for auto-accompaniment. Consequently, this edition offers far more 'bang for buck' and if you're serious about learning you would eventually need to buy these other items anyway.