Customer Reviews

The New Real Book (in C)

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is one of the best. Easy to read during a gig. Very comprehensive. Plenty of tunes to keep you busy memorizing them for years. One book cannot have every tune, but this a great start. I also recommend volumes 2 and 3.

This book has hundreds of pages filled with all kinds of jazz tunes, written in the clearest font possible. Most tunes have the basic chord changes and general solo's, but some are "as played by ..." and may even have the bass, piano or rythyms section written out, if it's particularly special. A must for people playing jazz from sheet music. If you could ever finish this book, you can get versions two and three both filled only with new, completely different songs!

If you're looking to this book as an updated version of the old "Real Book", you will likely be disappointed. While there are a few tunes in common, most of the tunes in the old "Real Book" are not present here, replaced by newer (sometimes more complicated) compositions. The format and calligraphy in the book, while most excellent, is noticeably more formal than that of the old "Real Book", and may take some getting used to.

THAT SAID, if you disregard the implicit connection to the old "Real Book", this book stands on its own quite well. It IS an extremely well-prepared collection of jazz tunes, some of which you would be hard-pressed to find transcribed anywhere else (e.g., "Waterwings"). This doesn't really replace the old "Real Book", but it supplements it nicely.

[The following is a review I gave for a slightly different version of this same exact book, the Real Book from Sher. I've decided to copy it here because it's applicable.]

From playing in both my high school's and college's jazz ensembles, it was clear to me that "The Real Book" was the bible of jazz standards. No instructor was without a copy. As a bass player, there have been countless times were I was just tossed a photocopy of a page from the Real Book and the instructions of "Here, do a walk over this chord progression."

A number of things made this book the most demanded of its kind. First of all, it contained hundreds and hundreds of jazz songs in a single volume. Second of all, it mostly followed a one-page-per-song format, showing the most essential parts: the chord and structure changes, the introductions, and the melody. If a song seemed to center around something like a particular repeated bass line, then that line was also shown. And last but certainly not least, the type face and unique "hand written" look made it the by far easiest book to physically read (no eye strain!)

Unfortunately, The Real Book was next to impossible to hunt down. No music stores carried it, or at least admitted to carrying it. It was pretty much an under-the-counter item that you could only get if you knew somebody. I guess these $50 books were always secretly copied and bounded in some local guy's basement, in hopes of skirting all the legal copyright issues.

Finally, Sher Music Co. has taken the original Real Book, got copyright clearance from each and every living composer, and in so doing even got to correct many mistakes based off the the composers' very own lead sheets. They also threw in a number of full-page photographs of jazz greats. The result is the only LEGAL, updated, and widely obtainable version of the original underground book.

One of the reviewers here [NOTE: again, this was for the "other" Sher Real Book I reviewed] seemed to make the gross assumption that this is a piano book. It's not. It's a book for everybody in the band. The fact that there are C, Bb and Eb versions of the book should tell you this. I've always been amused by "Piano/Vocal" sheet music books for bands that never even had a piano or keyboard player. For rock bands, they usually attempt a bad transcription of the guitar on the treble clef, and an even worse transcription of the bass on the bass cleff (written an octave down, of course).

Which brings me to the reason why this book was always called "The REAL Book": it's because it didn't take the shortcuts that "Fake Books" take. "Fake Books" are called such because they allow you to "fake" the song, i.e. dumb-down some chord changes, play it in a presumably easier key, and usually even try to adapt the whole song to the single instrument of piano.

It's so great to see a legit copy of this book in print. If you play jazz, this is the one book always worth investing in.

Great book and I got it for a deal. It is not full of lyrics, so if you are a vocalist and looking for that, it is only half.

This well-written book has a wonderful variety of standards, some funky pop and plenty of great fusion pieces. The ensemble writing was invaluable when I was using these charts in a university jazz ensemble. The notes on calligraphy style and the drum guide at the back were also extremely useful as a teaching aid for students interested in jazz arranging. The only "downer" is the spiral binding - I have personally put hard covers on the spiral binding, otherwise the front & rear covers soon fall off.

Discovering this book was a happy accident. I was looking for a general fake book and found a jazz/blues book that taught me a lot about playing this type music. There is a good section explaining chords and shorthand methods used in the book. Unlike the usual fake book, there are alternate treatments given. The price is right, also.

This is a great and accurate book that any serious Jazz player and student needs to have.

My son had to prepare a series of audition pieces in order to audition for Temple University. Their suggestion was a specific jazz piece, with which neither he nor I were familiar. They suggested he buy this book, but from the publisher themselves. We went to their website, got to the right edition, and the stupid site wouldn't let us check out!!! In frustration, we turned to Amazon.com. What a relief! Not only was it in stock and available, it was SO MUCH less expensive! It arrived in 3 days with no shipping fee and was in perfect condition! Now, if only the audition goes so smoothly....

This was recommended to me by jazz guitarists, and while it certainly is clear and accurate as far as I've explored it, I wasn't thrilled with more than half the songs here. Also, while most advanced jazz guitarists play easily in any key, far up the neck, more intermediate guitarists might not be thrilled with how many of the songs are in E-flat, a terrific key for piano but an unpleasant key for guitar, precluding any open-position arranging. I may have unconsciously assumed the "in C" note in the title was referring to how they'd offer up the music (I can transpose from C/Am to any other guitar-friendly key on the fly). I'll probably photocopy three to five songs from it, then give this away to my local library. I'll stick hereafter to using various free sites on-line that allow me to select from a wider range of songs that I like, often allowing one-click transposing as well.