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The Real Book

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61 pointsbrudgers39 comments

> These books gave the musician enough basic information – melody, chord symbols, structure, lyrics – to "fake" his way thorough the tune, that is, to perform a credible version of tune that he might not be familiar, and for which he lacked a full score. Hence these collections became known as "fake books".

That's super interesting. I had never heard that explanation for the term. It's very much plausible, but I always thought they were called "fake books" because they were knowingly created and distributed without the legal rights to the songs. I've never really heard musicians convey the notion that the performances from fake books are "fake performances" or that you're "faking your way through it." I would have expected that jazz musicians who do have the rights to songs would still use a very similar form of lead sheet, especially given the improvisational nature of most jazz. I doubt many people would gig with full transcriptions—those tend to only be used for intense study of notable performances.

I thought the idea is just that the lead sheets themselves are counterfeit, as in "a fake Rolex."

I always understood it in the context of "fake your way through", but I think it's versus the alternative of knowing the song - and thus, not requiring music. If you need to use a lead sheet, then the best you can do is fake already knowing it.

I guess I always just assumed that the term "fake book" was to distinguish between lead sheets and full scores (which you could buy from the legal publishers). If the word "fake" referred to needing the music written down at all, then it seems like the full scores from legal publishers would be just as "fake" in that sense. That would also explain why they called the legal one "The Real Book," which doesn't make sense if "fake" was supposed to refer to the reliance on written music.

That's a fair point, but "The Real Book" was always referred to as a 'fake book' by every Jazz musician I ever met, though. I honestly don't think licensing has anything to do with the term.

For decades a legal version was available called "The New Real Book", but "The Real Book" was the name of the original*, unauthorized fakebook - preferred by every jazz musician I met - until the latest edition when the rights were finally secured by a major publishing house with edition 6.

*I used the term 'original', but to my knowledge fakebooks were around since the 20's or before. "The Real Book" was already a play on that back in the 70's. And typically none of them were authorized.

EDIT: Sorry for haphazardly continuing to update this but I was trying to dig up more. Here's the link I was trying to find[0] With previous discussion here on HN[1]. It states, 'They called them “fake books” because they helped musicians fake their way through unfamiliar songs.' However, it's certainly not the only possible explanation.

[0] https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/the-real-book/

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26737142

Maybe they started out as illegal copies, but I've seen numerous that are obviously easy to sue into oblivion if they were unlicensed.

I think "fake it till you make it" is the proper understanding; similar to guitar tabs.

Wikipedia has "It became so popular that the books was eventually "legitimized" by publisher Hal Leonard, and re-released in a series of editions and transpositions for various instruments" so maybe it was both, kinda.

People were certainly using the illegal books until fairly recently, and I still see a lot of them around. They're easy to spot, as the manuscript style is fairly unique. And the mistakes. ;-)

Myself, I gave up on fake books more than 20 years ago, because I thought that they weren't helping my playing any more. They are a crutch. Do you really need to read Blue Bossa?

According to legend, the publishers decided to stop going after the illegal fake books, preferring to get their royalties from performance licenses. It's hard to sue a bunch of penniless musicians into oblivion.

> That's a fair point, but "The Real Book" was always referred to as a 'fake book' by every Jazz musician I ever met, though.

Yeah, that’s because the definition of “fake book” is “lead sheet,” regardless of licensing. My theory is about the etymology of the term, not the definition.

I wouldn't be surprised if the connotation of being unlicensed had something to do with it, but growing up (and studying jazz with many accomplished musicians) I always heard the etymology that it has always referred to faking one's way through - which is the supported etymology in the linked article, as well. Personally I believe that words typically have multiple concurrent etymologies which all have some validity, and that's probably the case here IMHO, so, again, I think you make a fair point.

Since we're getting into technicalities, a "lead sheet" is not exactly synonymous with "fake book". A fakebook encapsulates a particular sort of standard repertoire, it is a curated assemblage of standards as much as it is sheet music. As such it's almost impossible for a fakebook of the most general sort to be fully licensed. (And when Hal Leonard came out with the legal Edition 6, many musicians rebelled and stuck to the pirated older editions because they covered the genres more comprehensively).

I thought that - the "real thing" is not to have proper score or full sheet music for a song. The "real thing" for a jazz standard is that you'd learn it from listening to it, and you'd play by ear and learn it all. That's how you keep it real. With the fake book you get the changes (chords) and melody written out and don't have to do the work of learning to play from the recording.

In truth, the vast majority of jazz musicians are semi-pro or hobbyist, meaning they show up to a $50 gig with some sort of stand and their book or iPad, and then read from the chart while they perform. Sometimes from a set list, other times from saying, "hmm, how about autumn leaves next?" "Okay" (shuffle shuffle tap) "all right, count us in"

Don’t professional gigging jazz players also use lead sheets, assuming the gigs consist of a large repertoire of standards (as opposed to a fixed set list like you might see on a concert tour)?

They usually (or often) have them, but often the most common tunes in the first few Real Book volumes (and other standards) have been memorized so they never actually pull them out. When I used to sit in with some guys from the local university, they'd usually play everything from memory and only pull out the fakebook for newbies/guys like me who didn't know the songs they were playing [so we could 'fake' our way through].

A lot of those guys would pride themselves on having played along with the recordings dozens or hundreds of times (and often with computer transposition) so they could play the tunes with their eyes shut, in any key and at any tempo.

I have a collection of real/fakebooks. I studied guitar enough to learn about charts and you can indeed perform from just the chart, though you might not replicate the original performance. Of course, in jazz, improvisation is expected anyway, so as long as you have the changes, the key(s), the meter, and a simple melody line, a band can sound fine. Here for example is John Coltrane's "Giant Steps" https://imgur.com/g633n8b

I think it’s the first time I see ma/mi as an indicator of major/minor chord. Why there’s so many standards for that?

I recently found an open music theory book (I think I found it from the r/musictheory subreddit). I haven't read it yet but it talks about this.

https://viva.pressbooks.pub/openmusictheory/front-matter/int...

Under the Accessibility section:

> We use some less-standard terminology to help readers who use screen readers; in particular, we never use a capital/lowercase letter M to distinguish major and minor qualities, and instead use the abbreviations “ma” and “mi.” Hopefully this nomenclature will become more common over time.

Fakebooks also improve classical playing. Learning how to read a lead sheet format forces a musician to internalize core music theory principles. A common classical music pitfall is relying too much on shallow rote learning, black dot = push down key without the substance of musical grammar & vocabulary.

I often see classical music as a lead sheet with the written notes being the composer’s suggested arrangement technique. It takes some time to see the collections of dots (notes) as higher level pattern like chord symbols but it all leads to the same place!

[edit] your playing becomes less fake by learning how to fake from a fakebook!

A lot of classical compositions were actually just lead sheets… and the modern publications have interpolated a full score

I’ve heard that before, do you know of any examples? It makes sense since many of those composers were improvisers.

Many examples in this article https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Realization_(figured_bass)

There's a great 99% Invisible on the Real Book:

https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/the-real-book/

Link has a lot of photos of a "real" Real Book.

There's also a great Adam Neely video about it (his thesis is that TRB is a "jazz shibboleth").

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dD0e5e6wI_A

Thanks, I had this in a lower comment but it should really be at the top.

Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26737142

The legal Real Book is valuable in that the print quality is higher than a 10-times-xeroxed copy. Melody, lyrics, and chords -- that's all. No chord voicings, no solos.

There was a wikitunes.com site that had lead sheets for most standards, but I think that did get sued into oblivion.

The chords are just "suggestions," of course. A real player will see Bb11-5 and think "oh, that's a 7th chord. I'll add some notes if I feel like it."

There is a very interesting, tough unfortunately and ironically quite expensive, book on the history of fake books: https://www.amazon.com/Story-Fake-Books-Bootlegging-Musician...

There has been considerable litigation around this subject, and IP questions can get really complex. E.g. if you're using a Real Book version of "Donna Lee" you got through a P2P site:

* You're using sheet music pirated from the authors of the real book… * Who were transcribing the song without paying royalties to the rights holders (presumably Charlie Parker's estate)… * Who were re-using the harmony of "Indiana" (and I'm not sure whether the legality of that has been conclusively established).

And this is an argument where there shouldn’t be intellectual property at all in these situations. Oral traditions and sharing music in a similar manner is the oldest tradition in human civilization, one of the things that makes us human.

Ok an exact recording of a pop song or rights to sell a song you didn’t write on a record… those might be considerable… but there needs to be a lot of room for music to be created and shared without whatever generational lock on ownership exists now.

The Real Book (and its ilk) were perfect for the way Jazz was played from the Bop era onwards. You'd play the basic melody so that listeners understood what the tune was and from then on you'd improvise, possibly reprising the melody to finish. The accompanists would use the chords as a starting point, substituting or extending them to match the soloist's direction so if they weren't exactly what the original songwriter intended it didn't matter all that much. No one was attempting to recreate the original recording.

There’s a handy index of various real/fake books here https://www.seventhstring.com/fbindex.html

Lately I've been just reconstructing my lead sheets in lilypond. It's very sparse text and quick work to get a score that looks just like a real book lead sheet, plus you can customize the chart however you want, and then check it in to git for revision history. There's a "lilyjazz" font floating around out there that makes it look handwritten.

If I may plug my own project here, I wrote an online editor wrapping lilypond and some other software to generate lead sheets (Jazz fonts preinstalled):

https://woodshed.in

Sweet! I can’t wait to try it

Username truly checks out. Lilypond is amazing. Still in the learning curve but the results are senstational.

Originally attended university for music composition. This thing was my bible. Heavy, cumbersome, completely in shambles after 2 years.

I'm surprised by this. Was it a jazz program?

And... any other books you'd recommend for someone who wants to learn or improve their composition?

I will never forget buying my Real Book in the early 90s. I bought it from Cotton Music in Nashville.

They pulled it out from behind the counter in a paper bag. 14 year old me felt so cool, like I was joining a secret club.

Anyone who knows a professional musician who gigs for a living knows of these. They are amazing. Just the basics of the song, enough to get the band going. Tons of standards.

So a counterfeit would be a fake Real Book, a fake fake book.

Oddly enough, I went to Berklee in the early 2000's and I never thought much about the history or origination of these!

I've used these extensively as a musician, they're amazing

definitely one of the books of all time

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