The Real Book: Citation Needed!

yeah so apparently i'm playing jazz this weekend on the organ with some band here in town, and needed to learn some tunes for it. i also needed to de-rustify myself as i've been mainly soldering and pushing buttons and turning knobs for the past 3 years because no one around here wants to hire my band because we're awesome and kick that much ass.

in my time playing music and being an organist, i've actually not spent that much time with this "real book" thing that all the "jazz musicians" like to hide behind when they're playing gigs. i own "The New Real Book" and "The Hal Leonard Jazz Fakebook", and have a few photocopies of charts here and there, but generally i learn tunes by ear. i've never really listened to "Have You Met Miss Jones", "Anthropology", or "500 Miles High" ... so i went about trying to learn from this "real book" thing that people bought out of the back of a truck until 2005, when Hal Leonard actually bought the rights to all the songs and stole the original artwork because of course no one will admit to having anything to do with it.

why does anyone trust this thing? it was put together by a bunch of Berklee students and Steve Swallow, who went about putting a bunch of their own tunes in no one played until the Real Book circulated, and messing up chords right and left. it is an observed fact that Berklee students like to make things really {censored}ing complicated for no good reason ...

it's almost like anytime they came across a chord that lasted more than a bar they were like "HEY LET'S BE CLEVER AND PUT A I-VI-II-V THERE!", and other substitutions which weren't part of the original song were also burned in there.

so here's the question: what really killed jazz? was it the conception of "The Real Book" ... or when Wynton Marsalis declared jazz "America's classical music"? it's gotta be one of these two events.

if you wanna reach back further, i'm game for that too.

Was taking this seriously until you dropped this little nugget. But then again, it's par-for-the-course for you. Just shows my initial assessment of you wasn't wrong.

Jazz is about making the songs YOUR OWN. Make your own chord voicings and arrangements. From my point of view the transcriptions in the real book are too simplistic to be used "as is". They are just ment as a guide when jamming with other people off the cuff..

If you're just starting out with jazz (sounds like it), then focus on picking songs by ear, and learning all kinds of phrases and chord voicings. No "real" jazz musician plays from the real book as if it were the holy grail or something...

thank you very much! it's good to know that i haven't lost my touch.

Hey, no prob...I meant that with the utmost respect.

Goofball, Im a little surprised at your comment there. S&TG is IMO (and probably many others) one of the most respected and highly regarded posters on this forum.

Around here there are a lot of jazz musicians. A jazz piano friend once invited me to a jam session in town. Little did I know that jamming to them meant playing songs from the real book: "turn to page 56, we're playing (...) now". I got there on my bike with my triton le on my back just for that? I stayed for two songs and left.

Most of those jazzers rely on the real book. At least those I've seen here. It kind of disturbs me tbh, because they never play anything that's just improvised on the spot..

i don't blame you at all, i'd probably book out as well (if they expected me to play bass.) however, i wasn't impuning the concept of reference materials, nor would i ever discourage people from exploring them in a jam session like that. my point was on the actual changes to the songs made by these Berklee students and Steve Swallow (who has apparently whitewashed the wikipaedia entry for The Real Book) ... it's kind of like the Jehovah's Witness's edits to the Bible. (yeah i realise that was some extreme hyperbole, but i think you get what i'm saying.)

by the way, i should point out that the only time i've ever done a recording session for a Berklee grad, he was a blues guitar player who handed me this chord sheet. it appeared to start off from a songwriting perspective as a 16 bar, four chorus plus solo, ballad ... with a progression that was something like i IV V I for the first four bars, then like 4 different flavours of the III chord, then a turnaround. then he added bridges in between the sections, and then _modulated_ in major or minor thirds between each bridge and each chorus.

as it was handed to me, it was, literally, 4 minutes of completely unrelated chords in a nonsensical sequence. i don't even remember a chord repeating the entire song.

and, yeah, somehow i made it through it. fortunately all i had to do was play chords.

In all seriousness though, have you looked at the website http://www.realbook.us ? I think it's mainly stripped down chord progressions. The only bull{censored} thing is that you have to register to access them, not that it costs anything but it's yet another thing to register for.

Cool thing is, for an amateur like me, is that it will transcribe them into any key you wish.

There is a jazz guitar player that I have seen a couple of times around the Twin Cities, and in particular in my home town playing at the local Borders and our indoor park ampitheater. Frankly I do not know how this guy gets a gig. Supposedly he teaches lessons and is supposed to be some sort of educated dude, but his comping and soloing sound like absolute {censored}. When I mean {censored}, I mean so bad that now if I hear or see the guy at Borders I walk out the door because I can't stand to listen to him. We are talking bad at bot rhythm and notes/chords. I think he has a tin ear and plays all of his comping using memorized chord changes of the type STG was talking about above hammered into some version of a fake book.

I don't think that the majority who graduate from a school that emphasizes jazz theory have this problem, but there certainly are some who basically suck due to lack of innate ability. They graduate because they have enough brains to crank out the theory, explain why even though it sounds wrong it is "right" under their set of rules, and execute the chord changes. There was a guy from my high school who got into Berkelee and was one of those types - all his solos were just a scale that fit theoretically with a chord played really fast (the faster the cooler the solo is too, right?).

I think that we also should remember that just because someone is/was a student at Berkelee or "studied at Berkelee" does not mean that they graduated from Berkelee (how many musician/composer/engineer bios do you read in magazines that say "studied at Berkelee" but not "graduated from Berkelee"?). Students are learning and failure is a part of learning.

I have never thought about trusting whether a song in a "real" book is true to the original. I have one of these real books and I also have a "first fake book" that I am working out of learning to play melodies with right hand and comp with left hand with my piano teacher. However I have always picked out songs to play from the books that I know already, and my piano teacher has picked out a few to start with because they are good easy starting points and I know the song already. Also typos and errors in printed music are certainly common just like they are in any text; e.g. many authors or publishers of math and science books keep web pages with errata pdfs to print out. My teacher and I have found typos in one of my books that is supposed to be just a different version of hers.

In some ways the propagation of these commercial fake books mirrors our times. If one musician thinks a song in a "real" book is wrong how does the information get communicated and discussed with others? In the past, all the guys in the band would figure it out and change their books with a pencil. Maybe it still happens but the commercial book stays the same.

Boy I have a lot to say today as this topic stirs up lots of thoughts.

It would be nice to have a fake book of some sort with just the important chords; no fancy/once-trendy turnarounds, no bass runs or voice leading indicated through an arcane series of chord symbols.

Most fake books--and the real book is king of this--have three passing chords notated for every structurally important one and no indication of which is which. It tends to pull your sound into a particular idiom, if you don't get bogged down solving puzzles, which may not be the idiom I want to play in. If they'd just give me the chords that matter to the song, I am more than glad to supply my own voice leading and turnarounds without distraction.

Checked out http://www.realbook.us/ and it's promising but I really don't like Roman numeral notation. I gave it a valiant try a few years ago (likewise Nashville notation, which uses Arabic numerals in place of the Roman) but, while it's just fine for relatively simple songs, when they start modulating in any serious way I find I have to think too hard to actually play while reading it. Good reference, though, and I'll likely use it as a reference if not an actual playing copy.

Well, you don't have to read it in Roman numeral notation...you can use the little drop-down menu at the top and change the key to anything you want and it will show the actual chord changes.

For instance, here's a screen shot of "500 Miles High" in Emin:

But that may not have been there a few years ago when you checked it out, I don't know. It's cool for reference. Doesn't have all the songs though.

Well, you don't have to read it in Roman numeral notation...you can use the little drop-down menu at the top and change the key to anything you want and it will show the actual chord changes.

Ah, I hadn't caught that. Nice. Especially for a baritone; most books are pitched for tenor/soprano and I either have to transpose (too much brainwork--play piano, sing, and transpose at sight; urgh) or sing higher or lower than I'd prefer. Thanks for the pointer.

In passing, a couple of books that I quite like:

Dick Hyman's Professional Chord Changes and Substitutions for 100 Tunes Every Musician Should Know, which is just what it says. The changes are reasonably modern with alternates in grey type. You know that it reflects Hyman's own playing, which is a good reference. And it's printed one-side only on tear-out pages so you can haul out the songs you want, punch them, and put them into your personal binder. Still has the turnarounds and voice leading notated as chords but at least I have some idea of where they come from.

The Beatles Fakebood which basically gives you what the Beatles played--same key same chords. And more great songs per inch than any other songbook I own.

There's your mistake.

A real/fake book is like the Bible, it's open to interpretation. The purpose of the real book is not for study purposes, it's for speed. It's musical Cliff Notes, it gives you an outline of a tune.

Getting gigs and playing well have little to do with each other. Getting gigs is about hustle, playing well is about locking yourself in a practice room. It's like Congress: Michele Bachman has to be one of stupidest, most incompetent humans on the planet, yet she gets a gig.

There's your mistake. A real/fake book is like the Bible, it's open to interpretation. The purpose of the real book is not for study purposes, it's for speed. It's musical Cliff Notes, it gives you an outline of a tune.

Ideally, this is true. Too many of them obscure the plot outline with irrelevant details. (I use them for the chords, mostly, not the tune, which I probably know.)

Even the key signature is a huge help. In a noisy club, someone might say "in the key of G" and you might hear "in the key of B".

It's like Congress: Michele Bachman has to be one of stupidest, most incompetent humans on the planet, yet she gets a gig.

I know, I am embarrassed to say she is my district's rep

Someone from Wisconsin wrote a real letter to the Star Tribune stating that they are going to drive around our district on their way back to Wisconsin now because they want to avoid all the stupid people who voted her in... multiple times.

There are those around me who think her perceived incompetence arises from media slant and not real lack of brains. Those who tend to think she is brilliant also tend to be the right-wing fundamentalist types. This is definitely liberal press but worth a look: Dump Michele Bachmann

The realbook didn't kill jazz. Jazz isn't quite extinct, just extirpated from most of its former range. There is still living jazz in New York City, and it has little to do with the Realbook.

Most other places, though, jazz has been restaurantified. Somehow people started to get it in their heads that jazz was mellow, easily digestible, civilized, and suitable for background music. This trend increased because restaurants have most of the jazz gigs, outside of cities with happening jazz clubs. Stuff like "Kind of Blue" and "Birth of The Cool" are nice, but really that mellow stuff is an exception to the rowdy nasty dirty brothel music that is the soul of jazz.

I still think that the original, illegal Realbooks are the best fakebooks. They reflect the way people were playing the tunes at gigs. Yes there are mistakes, and yes there are idiomatic turn-arounds and substitutions. But if you are playing jazz from the realbook, and you can't recognize the substitutions and extra turnarounds, YOU are killing jazz, not the book. (And by "you" I mean you, me, and anyone who reads from a fakebook on a "jazz" gig).

"Have You Met Miss Jones" is not Jazz, it is a cheezy show tune-- who cares what the correct chords are? McCoy Tyner reharmonizing it and playing the fsck out of it is jazz, and you can bet he doesn't play two choruses the same.

Even jazz compositions, like Wayne Shorter tunes, can only be an approximation when written as a chart. The chords are just an abstract idea, and they will be different for each chorus on the record-- one book might use the chords that were played on the head, another might use the chords from the first solo chorus.

To summarize: realbooks didn't kill jazz. We did, when we confirmed the public's notion that jazz is insipid drivel by playing "Autumn Leaves" on a rompler, along with a fretted electric bass player, and no drummer.

Wow, lots of strong opinions here. Personally, I never look at what instruments people are playing to judge if they're playing "real jazz" or not. If someone is playing on a rompler and the bass player is playing an electric bass...I don't care. What I DO care about is what they're playing. I'm not a snob that goes around with his nose in the air looking upon a trio or quartet saying to myself "oh, he doesn't play an upright double bass...so they can't be playing REAL jazz". I'm not saying anyone here is like that...but we've all met or heard those people before.

I personally like my jazz like Bill Evans or Monk or Jimmy Smith. I like jazz also from contemporaries like Christian McBride and Chick Corea or Sonny Rollins. All very much alive and very much playing jazz. Also, I know everyone here probably poo-poos the Grammies...but I thought to myself when Herbie Hancock's album won "Album of the Year" two years ago that it was pretty special. Granted, Hancock's album was far from the "rowdy nasty dirty brothel music" that frogmonkey says.

But yeah, most people not familiar with jazz will think it's "easy listening" or Kenny-G type stuff. Elevator music....when the swath that jazz cuts across is wide and varied. Would anyone say that Monk is easy listening?

If I were to play the "American Songbook" repertory in a club, I'd never never bill myself as "jazz." I improvise; I also swing, but my harmonic aesthetic is not jazz but 1920s & 30s radio ballad. I grew up hearing those songs in that idiom and that's how I prefer to play them.

There is, though, a sort of post-MOR way of playing that is neither fish nor fowl, not jazz, for sure, but not especially idiomatic to the origins of the tunes either. Noodling over a progression. I can see how you might slip into it with years of playing for people who are really there to eat drink and mate. But it's not very engaging stuff.

I probably should have avoided the rompler reference, because it opens a whole other can of worms here. I have heard some good players use a rompler. But I have never heard a walking bass line sound good on a fretted electric bass.

I do have a chip on my shoulder about romplers vs pianos in jazz, and I believe it has something to do with the "America's classical music" notion. I'll try to explain. Pianos are getting rarer and rarer in venues. Too often I have seen jazz pianists show up to a gig where there is a decent piano and play a rompler instead. They'll say the piano isn't quite in tune, or that it's too bright, or that the action is uneven. They want everything to be clean and neat, like music in a museum. Art Tatum didn't have perfect pianos, nor did Monk, or Oscar, or Bud Powell. Now, the last venue in my town that had a piano and paying jazz gigs got rid of their piano because I was the only cat that played it!

Herbie is good at getting Grammies. Wasn't Christina Aguilera on that album?

Oh I agree with you. The whole state of the music world is kind of going downhill. Clean and neat and overproduced is the order of the day. Hell, I remember that Led Zeppelin recorded their first album in like 3 days, then mixed it in a week and released it. Now you see bands literally taking YEARS to produce something, and most of the time it just sounds like ass.

And yeah, I used to see a piano at just about all venues I used to play at. Now, nothing.

And yeah, Herbie is good at getting Grammies...but what impressed me was "Album of the Year"...granted it was over the Foo Fighters, Vince Gill, Kanye West and Amy Winehouse....but still.

yeah it isn't real jazz bass if it ain't upright. this is, of course, why I'm an organist.

hmm. reminds me of how Wynton says it's not really jazz if the bass is amplified at all.

I actually tried learning these tunes on the Minimoog ... however I felt naked without RH chords. I would have liked to have pulled that off though ... realbook gig with Minimoog bass.