Customer Reviews

Scott The Piano Guy's Favorite Piano Fake Book

5 star:		(17)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

This book is terrific. It actually makes it fun and rewarding to sit down at the piano. You honestly are playing in a couple of hours. I know Houston did not invent this whole thing with chords, but he pulls it all together and teaches it in an accessible, lighthearted way. I can't believe that I can play!

First, I did enjoy his music selection. Just right for an older person like me.

This is only for beginners who just want to play tunes on the piano and don't really care what it sounds like. Everything is easily written in the key of C with easy chords. Couldn't be simpler.

However, if you seek to improve your piano skills, playing everything in the key of C will not teach you much. Its boring to hear song after song in the same key.

It's also boring that he omits chord changes whenever possible to simplify. He does supply alternative chords to spice up the music, and that's good, but I really miss the chords sequences that he left out to make it easier to play.

I bought this book at the same time I bought one of those extremely large fake books. The other gets used constantly. Scott's is just gathering dust on the shelf.

Per request, the name of the fake book that I use is: This Is the Ultimate Fake Book: It Contains over 1200 Songs for Piano, Organ, Guitar and All "C" Instruments (Hl00240050)

The publisher is Hal Leonard. The book is for sale in 2 places on Amazon. The cheapest way is to buy it from here, used: http://www.amazon.com/This-Ultimate-Fake-Book-Instruments/dp/0960735003/ref=sr_1_6?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1275133024&sr=1-6 I would go with used since it has a plastic comb for long use.

For some reason it's also for sale at an extremely high price. Make sure you don't buy that one.

After struggling with trying to pick up the piano off-and-on over the years, i stumbled across Scott Houston's TV show on a local PBS station a couple of years ago. It was a revelation -- here was an approach to quickly learn songs i liked without trying to read sheet music note-for-note. After watching several episodes of the show, i purchased this book and enjoy it. Yes, some (or many) of the songs are not to my tastes, but even making use of just a dozen tunes is worth the price of admission. I am online today to buy the 2nd 'Fake Book' Scott Houston has produced.

Using lead sheets seems like a well-kept secret. You could probably find this book useful even without seeing the show, but see the show if you get a chance.

Expanding on the title of this review, Scott the Piano Guy seems to have created this fake book as if it was going to be the only fake book he put together. So many of the fake books I've seen or purchased have a requisite number of good songs that I'm interested in but also have many that I would never consider playing at all--almost as if sequels are planned that you'll have to purchase if you want more of the really good stuff. But the selections in this one are excellent for my taste and current level of skill development. The convenience of having the chords graphically shown at the top of each song is a strong plus. I use the book on the organ rather than piano, so some of the inversions typically used are different, but the chord diagrams are still quite convenient. The book is good quality paper and strong. It would benefit from spiral binding, but that's nothing that a trip to the local office supply chain can't remedy for a few dollars. Best fake book I've seen for the developing musician.

Although I'm a long-time note reading pianist, Scott's method is a great way to play pop tunes from memory. What's different with this fake book is the chord charts that are included with every song. Not only are the exact notes annotated for all chords in the song, he also shows the alternative chords (i.e., playing Cmaj7 instead of C) that you can try after mastering the basic chords. Since there are many alternative chords, I appreciate having what he suggests to start with. For example, the Beatles' song "Yesterday" has no alternate chords whereas "The Way You Look Tonight" is loaded with them. I plan to buy volume 2 after I've learned all the ones I like from this book. It's hard for a note reader like me to not have every note and action spelled out, but the reward of being able to play songs from memory keeps me going.

This book is not only useful but entertainingly written. I enjoyed reading it on my commute to and from work. My only quibble is that it's hard to reference next to the piano because it doesn't lay down flat, but hey, what do you want for the money? I also really like the references to web pages where you can hear Scott demonstrate what he wants you to do: that's a terrific concept. Thanks Scott the Piano Guy!

As an intermediate keyboardist, I really have to say that this is one of those "gotta' buy" books, both for advanced beginner/intermediate pianists and electronic keyboardists alike.

Scott Houston, the Piano Guy (a.k.a. public television's video tutorial guy) must have figuratively scratched his head on what to call this book of his. On the one hand it's a fake book in the traditional sense - this one a book of songs in Cmajor (or transposed to Cmajor) along with their lead sheets. Then on the other hand, since in the Piano Guy's video tutorials he teaches "fun!" playing using Cmajor's three primary triads, I, IV, and V (C, F, G) and their supporting chords, and a minimum of black keys, then this book of his is really a lot more like workbook for his method than just a plain ordinary old fake book.

The tip off to what the Piano Guy's book really is, that it's a workbook, can be seen in the composers and types of music he includes in his book. The composers are all notable jazz, blues, C&W, rock and roll, and ballad master greats, both of this and earlier generations. The music included in the Piano Guy's fake book are all absolute classics in those genres, all either in their original key of Cmajor or transposed to Cmajor for ease and fun of playing.

The Piano Guy is big on improvising, the key to playing blues and jazz. So, unlike traditional fake books, he includes alternate chords, jazz and blues chords if you will, that you can substitute to vary the sound and feeling of the music you're having fun playing.

But it's when you use this book with corresponding YouTube videos and CDs that the book's value doubles and triples, not only for pianists, but especially for electronic keyboardists! All of the songs in this book can be found on YouTube ("YouTube (dot) com"), most in both classic and contemporary videos. From those videos (and YouTube audio clips where a video isn't available) not only can you follow this book's lead, but you can also see/hear the melody played in a huge variety of voicings, rhythms and styles. Not only that, but with some of the videos and most of the CDs you can also follow along with vocalists singing the song's lyrics. Listening to vocalists and following the lyrics in this book as a very good help in learning to read and follow sheet music's standard sequence notations.

And in many of the commercial-style videos you'll find in YouTube, you can often see the melodies in this book being played by the composers themselves, as Earl Garner does with "Misty", Bill Evans does with "Waltz for Debby", Paul McCartney does with "Hey Jude", Elton John does with "Can You Feel the Love Tonight", and Sarah McLachlan does with "I Will Remember You". And since the Piano Guy also includes movies in the credits line of the songs of many of the songs in this book you can enter "G.I.Blues" in YouTube and watch a young Elvis Presley in a rock'em, sock'em, walloping video clip of his "Blue Suede Shoes" (page 9 in this book).

If you want to advance in your keyboard and music knowledge and technique you'll really want to think about buying two of these outstanding books, one (new, or used but good) for permanent reference, and another (used, for lower cost) to use as an actual workbook, taking pages out, marking up the music, the chord designations, and inserting measures as you learn more about the style of music you're playing, or would like to play. A box of Ticonderoga's 2HB soft lead pencils with their equally soft non-smudge erasers (Ticonderoga type number 13882, available at Staples, Office Depot, etc.) will let you do this very easily.

Now a word about transposing the music in this book to some other key than Cmajor. It can (and should be) done as a continuing learning exercise with this book, e.g., transposing from Cmajor to the equally common Fmajor and Gmajor keys and their associated chords. And the transpositions can be done easily enough using the Internet. You'll be able to find lead sheets for almost all of the songs in this book in the song database at "Wikifonia (dot) org". Transposing one of the songs in that database to any other key is virtually instantaneous. A nice feature of the site is that you can save to a file and/or print out a lead sheet for a selected song in both it's original key and the transposed key.

So the bottom line is this: If you like what you've read in this review, then by all means buy this book!! (And don't forget an inexpensive, used, second book too if you want to have a copy of the book to use as a mark-up workbook.)

First of all, let me say that if you're relatively new to piano and want to pound out a few songs in the shortest time possible, fake books are a way to go. You will NEED to learn how to read notes (just the melody line) as slow as cumbersome as that may be. ... I'm very slow at it and I still end up marking the book with the notes instead of having to decipher each note (those dots with tails on them LOL!). So, you'll often see my books marked something like this: G C F E C G C F E C D ...etc. (LOL!) But it's easier than trying to decipher notes on the fly!

The reason why only FOUR stars is because I have all the other Hal Leonard simplified Fake Books written in the key of C, plus the three huge volumes of Pop Rock, Country and Ultimate Fake Books. And most of the songs in this book are in the Hal Leonard simplified Fake Books. I would have given it 4 1/2 stars if I could because of my next paragraph.

From looking at all my music books, you'd think I'm a pro at it. But I'm an ADVANCED BEGINNER at best and looks can be deceiving! I'm like those people who come to a Tennis Court all decked out with an expensive racket, tennis outfit, expensive and REAL Tennis shoes, arm and head bands but can barely play tennis. OH WELL, maybe Karma will take over and make us play better!

What separates this book from the others (which is the best feature of this book) are the picture of the Piano Chords above each song. Chords that will be used in the song, plus some harder substitute chords which in most cases enhances the music once you've learned the basics.

It really makes it handy when you're trying to play a tune and all of a sudden you run into a chord you're unfamiliar with. You just have to look at the top of the page instead of having to stop in the middle of your playing and have look it up somewhere in your multitude of notes, which you can never find when you need it most. It's disruptive and frustrating ... So, let's play already and so you try and skip it or find a substitute .. but it doesn't sound right.

NOTE: If you find a very difficult chord to play due to the position of the fingers, learn to do some inversions and it may help. However, NOT all inversions sound right, but for the most part will sound OK. But do try to play the correct way if possible.

The bottom line is that I DO RECOMMEND this book if you don't already have the other Hal Leonard books. You will learn from it! Enjoy!

I really like this fake book as he includes the chord diagrams (beginner and advanced) at the top of every song. It is published by Hal Leonard so you get their familiar music layout. Melody, lyrics, and rhthym are displayed.

It has a nice selection of songs from broadway, jazz, pop, etc. My only gripe would be that it would have been nice to have a few modern pop tunes from the past decade but what can you do.

In short, it is one of the better fake book complilations I have seen, and should give me years of use.

In all fairness, I had checked Scott's book out at the library before purchasing--and that's why I bought it.

I'm an intermediate cross-over guitar player...who just wants to sit down and play pop music on the piano.

This is the perfect book for that: simple lead sheets with simple--mostly C-chords. You start playing songs you know right away. And his song selection is very diverse.

I can't recommend it more profusely.