Customer Reviews

The Ultimate Broadway Fake Book

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is a good buy for a pro pianist like me who might get requests for tunes I've never heard of from shows I've never seen. It has three indexes: by tune, by show, and by composers and lyricists.

One of the best things in the book is an alphabetical show-by-show synopsis, containing information about each show's history, its major personnel, and its plot.

However -- and it's a BIG however; in fact, several howevers: an awful lot of the songs are second-rate and I can't imagine getting requests for them, or even wanting to play them myself.

The book proclaims its inclusion of "great songs" from several more recent shows such as "Rent"; gimme a break -- these songs are barely listenable, much less "great."

Throughout the book, many of the chord changes are incorrect (this is a musician's constant complaint about ALL fake books).

Most of the songs do not include the verse (and for Rodgers & Hart, Gershwin, and Kern these are often essential parts of the song). And there are inexplicable omissions.

For example: (1) Some of the included shows are lacking some of their best songs: "The Nervous Set" omits "Spring Can Really Hang You Up the Most," "Finian's Rainbow" omits "Necessity." "The Merry Widow" omits "The Merry Widow Waltz." "Mack and Mabel" omits "I Promise You a Happy Ending." (2) Some excellent shows are missing altogether. No "L'il Abner." No Cy Coleman's "I Love My Wife." And Leonard Bernstein is represented only by two songs from "Wonderful Town"; no "Candide," no "On the Town," no "West Side Story."

And of course there are many songs I already own in other collections, although the book is useful as a one-stop source for all of these, and there are about fifty to a hundred decent to superb songs that I own nowhere else.

There is ample representation of Rodgers & Hart, Rodgers & Hammerstein, Kern, Gershwin, Porter, Frank Loesser, Jerry Herman, Harold Arlen, Lerner & Loewe, Andrew Lloyd Webber, et al.

In the end, despite its flaws, to me the book was well worth the price.

Although like a lot of Hal Leonard books the chords can be a bit "commercial" and the layout lacks that professional fake book lead sheet style that makes it more comfortable to use on a bandstand, I have to say that this is an incredibly useful resource of showtunes - - bordering on voluminous.

About 95% of the tunes the gigging Jazz musician plays comes from showtunes, but few Jazz musicians are willing to openly come out and say, "I play showtunes," that said, to Jazz performers looking for those undertapped standards missed in the REAL BOOKS, this book is a gem... To vocalists, cabaret performers and working piano lounge players consider this a lifetime repoitoire that can fit in a computer carrying bag (minus the computer.)

As for the chords... most of them work quite well with solo piano (especially some of the diminished passing chords and stuff like that) but for ensemble playing a combination of ear and pen and pencil will be necessary.

Tunes are written in reasonable keys, have lyrics and range from classic Cole Porter/Richard Rogers/George Gershwin Broadway to some of the newer stuff (circa A Chorus Line, Jesus Christ Superst, etc.) And as an added bonus, this well indexed fake book even includes a section where the musicals that the tunes came from get brief bios... not only education, but great if you'd like to have a cute, informed Michael Feinsteinish way of showing that you know ABOUT the tunes.

Spiral binding makes the book easy to use on a piano... but weight will be an issue with music stands, and in times these spiral books fall apart so my suggestion is to buy the book and put copies of frequently played tunes in clear sheet binders.

So far, thrilled with this purchase !

This book has some interesting good and bad points. First, the good: It's a fake book in the Hal Leonard style, in original keys, of a wide selection of the best known Broadway songs. Lots of good stuff. And unlike The Ultimate Fake Book (which is great for other reasons), the songs are conveniently organized by Show rather than by Title. A nice addition is a synopsis of each show and its relevance at the beginning of the book.

But the bad... first, like other very large Hal Leonard books, the binding is a plastic tab that is hard to turn relative to spiral bindings and tends to come apart over time. Second, many (but not all) songs have what appear to be guitar chord charts, which are distracting to everyone else. And third, it doesn't have all the songs you expect.

For example, it doesn't have songs from the movie versions (which you may not realize weren't part of the broadway version) or songs from updated broadway versions. The play "Grease" is represented, for example, but lacks the theme song (Grease), Hopelessly Devoted to You, Greased Lightning and other big hits from the show. Similarly, Starlight Express in its original incarnation was not that big a hit. "The New Starlight Express" was. Amazingly, there are only a few songs from the latter in the book; it's missing "He'll Whistle At Me" and "Next Time You Fall In Love", along with about six others. This means, of course, that after seeing the (current) broadway production, you won't be able to pick up this book and play the tunes; they're not there.

However, there are a LOT of great tunes that are there, the organization is great, and as always Hal Leonard did a great job of arranging them.

It has everything and I mean EVERYTHING. If you are looking for an audition piece its in here.

I have so much fun playing Broadway songs on my violin. I really do. The nice thing about this book, especially for violin, is that it only shows the melody in treble clef so it eliminates the annoying page-turning you have to deal with when playing from a piano book. Though sometimes I get sad the book doesn't have a song I like in it, but it really has a great selection, one or two songs from any Broadway you can think of and many pages of music from greats like Les Miz and Phantom. Well worth the investment.

Yes this new edition contains way more songs than the 4th edition. However I think they could have revised the 4th edition and been just fine, by eliminating some songs that people don't care about, and using that new space to add the new songs they worked so hard to find. It is a great resource for musicians because the songs are so close at hand, but here's the problem...the book is significantly larger than the binding is capable of holding. That's right, there are so many pages that there is no binding big enough to hold it, so rather than make it two separate books, Hal Leonard just crammed all the pages into the much smaller binding. I bought my book 6 weeks ago, and already it has fallen apart and I've lost most of the pages. $50 down the tube right there.
There are also included shows where the songs just can't be translated to chords, the accompaniment is too important. The biggest example of this is "Still Hurting" from Jason Robert Brown's "The Last Five Years". To play this song by chords really ruins the song, and has no business being in a fake book. Frankly I think they were trying to hard to include songs from recent shows. Sorry Hal Leonard, but the song selection is great, and the product is terrible. Either cut back on some songs, or make it two separate books for A-M and N-Z or something along those lines, because the book is just garbage.

i've been pining for the broadway fake book for years, and i finally mustered up enough courage to buy myself one. the fact that it has a collection of over 800 songs is fantastic. though a lot of the songs are for the female register, even having half of the book is worth it, since music notes or other sources charge per song. the book is big, and a little cumbersome, but certainly a gem to plop down on the couch and race through to find good songs for your repertoire. 5 stars, recommend to the up and coming performer who needs to find songs fast!

I really love all that this book contains, but it was poorly bound and fell apart the second day I had it. There are so many pages due to it's hundreds of songs, but the technique used to bind the pages together is less than impressive.

The contents are much improved--great songs that were not in previous editions ("Somebody, Somewhere," "Stars,") as well as newer shows. But the binding started to separate within the first 2 days of use!

This book has helped me in my music by letting me learn popular songs that are easy and Fun to play! Highly Recommended! The Broadway Fake Book 5th edition has ever song from any show you could imagine!