When you are shopping around for new or familiar arrangments of music to play you will come upon music notated in different styles. Different people have different styles they are comfortable playing. Much of this is depending on how they were trained. But not all of it.

Those trained in the classical way, or playing note by note what is on the page in front of them are probably most comfortable with hymnals and piano vocal/songbooks. If they were trained to play in a church setting they have learned the evangelistic method of playing from a hymnal on a piano or organ.

Hymnals: Hymnals are written for singers and therefore the notes are in four-part harmony. Meaning the part for each singer is written out. If you play from a hymnal a good skill to have is to be able to pick out the chords that are fully notated in the music.

Piano/Vocal: Piano/VocalSongbooks: In this style of printed music there are three music staves (staffs) andt he bottom two are for you to play while the top one is for the singer. The notation in these bookscan be a bit confusing for the beginning pianist as you are torn between 3 staves.

Those that maybe learned later in life or have learned to play chord piano may be more comfortable with Fake Books and even chord leadsheets. They like to improvise on the basic sound of a song and can add chord progressions and contemporary chords to get the sound they are looking for. Interestingly enough if you notated out into full sheet music what a person who plays by chords is playing it looks like an advanced difficult piece of sheet music. At least mine does.

Fake Books: Fakebooks are by far the easiest and Praise the Lord!, there is one for Gospel music and a HymnFake book too! These books just contain the chord symbols above one finger melody. They provide a wonderful starting point if you like to improvise. I mostly play from Fake books. Once you end up with your own style of playing the piano you might like them too.