Real Book

The Real Book

The Real Book is a variety of fake book comprised of several hundred jazz standards. There are several versions of the Real Book- it comes in different keys for transposed instruments, as well as guitar chord and vocal editons.

The songs in the Real Book are hand-written transcriptions- meaning someone listened to the songs and wrote what s/he heard. However, these transcriptions are unlicensed- no money is paid to the record company or composer. This makes the Real Book an underground commodity, and somewhat hard to find.

Despite these difficulties, the Real Book is truly the aspiring jazz musician's best friend- almost any self-respecting player has at least one.

The Foreword to The Real Book: Fifth Edition-

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FOREWORD

The Real Book is the answer to the fake book. It is an alternative to the plethora of poorly designed, illegible, inaccurate, badly edited volumes which abound on the market today. The Real Book is extremely accurate, neat, and is designed, above all, for practical use, and every effort has been made to make it enjoyable to use.
Here are some of the salient features:

1. FORMAT
   • The book is professionally copied and meticulously checked for accuracy - in melody, harmony and rhythms.
   • Standards and other short forms are on wide spaced, 9 stave paper. All others are on double staff system with chords underneath for easy reading.
   • Form within each tune, in terms of both phrases and larger sections are clearly delineated and placed in obvious visual arrengment.
   • All two page tunes open to face one another
   • All standard type tunes remain true to their original harmonies with little or no reharmonization except for modern notation and in the case of some turnarounds. Many of the modern jazz tunes were take directly from the composers' own lead sheets or individually transcribed from their recordings.

1. SELECTION OF TUNES AND EDITING
   • Major jazz composers of the last 30 years are concentrated on, with special attention to the last decade.
   • Many standards and Broadway show tunes which have become part of the jazz repertoire vis-a-vis Bill Evans and others are included
   • While some commonly played tunes are absent from the book, many of the classics are here, including bop standards and a good helping of Duke Ellington masterpieces.
   • Special attention had been paid to the giants of the last 15 years or so - Miles, Coltrane, Wayne Shorter, Mingus, and to the new wave of current writers - Carla Bley, Chick Corea, Mike Gibbs, Keith Jarrett, Steve Kuhn, Steve Swallow.
   • Complete transcriptions of many current album cuts, some as yet unreleased, complete with horn arrangements and written rhythm figures, are included.

1. SOURCE REFERENCE
   • The composer(s) of every tune is listed.
   • Wherever possible, one or more examples of jazz recordings of the tunes are listed. (The tunes are not necessaarily taken from those particular sources, however).

The Real Book was painstakingly created because the editors care about music and want it to be well played and fun to play by you, the musician. "Enjoy!"

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