Customer Reviews

Chicago - The Retrospective Collection (Piano/Vocal/Guitar Artist Songbook)

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This book commits several of the most serious sins a song book can commit.

First, it says that in addition to being for vocals and piano, it is also for guitar. It is not. Listing the source chord above the notation with a small, generic chord grid below it does not constitute "for guitar." Play the open-guitar D major chord and G major chord, and then listen to "Dialogue (Part 1)" and tell me if that sounds anything like what Kath is playing. There are no tabs or notation for solos. I foolishly thought I was getting a lot of great Chicago songs for guitar here and I'm now paying the price.

Second, it says that it is for piano and vocals. It kind of over-does it on the vocal part, meaning they've put the vocal melody INTO the piano notation, while also having the vocal melody also by itself on its own staff. I've seen this done before, and I've NEVER understood the logic. If I have a piano AND vocal book, would it not stand to reason that I want to SING the vocals while not playing the melody of the vocals on the piano? If I wanted the melody in what I was playing, I would have bought a piano-only book. Now, aside from the fact that it sounds foolish to sing a melody you're playing simultaneously on your instrument, it makes the notation that much harder to follow when trying to play it. If I want to actually play something that sounds close to the recording, I have to work on reading the music without the extra notes. Guess that means I'll be spending a few pointless hours in Finale. And that actually takes us to the third problem,

The notation is greatly simplified. Look--Robert Lamm (and I guess Bill Champlain, too) is a great piano player, but most of his parts aren't horrifically complicated. So with that in mind, why have the piano parts been trimmed down? Most of the bass lines are single notes. You know, playing only single notes in the bass line on the piano was abandoned around the Baroque period and around level 3 of the Mel Bay Piano Instruction Course.

So I'm out nearly $20 for a songbook that's only value is to be stuffed in some old lady's piano bench to be brought out once every six years for about fifteen minutes. I hope the seller is customer-friendly enough to help me straighten out this horrible purchase.

I lost my sheet music several years ago. Now I'm trying to get back inot piano playing. This book helped bring back a lot of memories. Great music. Thanks.

I play bass guitar, and it can be hard to find songbooks that have basslines as well as the more normal guitar chords/tabs/score and piano score. Yeah, with that you can figure out the bass line, but it's a lot easier if you don't have a lot of experience transcribing to have a bass line already transcribed for you, especially if you're in a cover band that likes to play music that's as close to the album as they can. This book has it all. Plus you also have the music score above the tab, so you don't have to guess at the tempo/dynamics of the music you're playing. I've got Vol 2 of this series and it's just as good as this volume is. If you are interested in playing any of Chicago's music, these volumes will come in very handy.