This Sheet Music Was ILLEGAL...and mostly wrong
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- Опубликовано: 12 июл 2022
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What other things in the Real Book do you know about that are just plain wrong?? Also, the Harmony 101 course is available right now for 30% off, no code required! cornellmusicacademy.com/harmony
It would be quicker to make a list of correct charts
My jazz professor at ACU in Texas had an original Real Book. His name is Mike Rogers. He’s an incredible musician and director.
please review the new tlt "this comes from inside"
I think all the Metheny stuff was based on Pats original charts so is accurate. They don’t yet have the titles they’d be given for Bright Size life. Interestingly that didn’t always match up with what was recorded, but it’s how Pat wrote them.
@@EricHVela basically all of the Parker tunes are full of errors. The Omnibook isn’t great either, but it is better.
In the early 90's I walked into a music store and I said (too) loudly "I need a Fake Book. I was told you sold them". The shopkeep put his hand up and said "shhhhh....those are illegal". Then he took me to the backroom and sold me one for $25 cash. No shit.
Ha! By the mid 90’s they were $35! Ask me how I know.. 😁
I bought one the same way in 1977 or so in Boston. My piano teacher told me about it. Got the same initial response from the store guy. I think I paid $20. Still have that book. I believe I heard about and bought the legit one just within the last year or so (2022). I have not taken the time to compare them though.
@@stephenrothman6058 They left a few things out and there are a couple of different tunes in the new one, Vol. 6 from Vol. 5, which was the last of the illegal ones. Not too bad though. I like Vol 5 better, but maybe that’s just because I’m used to it. That cool that you have your original! And from Boston, that must have come to you hot off the press. I still have my original paper copies of Real Book 1 and 2 as well. The copies I have now are pretty rough though and both are “re-buys” that I picked up after my first set got destroyed over the years at gigs and jam sessions. Such is life. I’m sure I’m a little rougher now too.
@@demonmonkeypoop There are scanned PDFs of each of the first three Real Books, Third Edition, floating around online, and they've been there for at least a decade. (I helped put them there.) The catch is, they're all in C treble clef, so not suitable for sight-reading on a B♭ or E♭ instrument. You'll have to do your own searching, I wouldn't drop a link here even if I was allowed to.
Got my first real book in '85, fifth edition, I think I paid $20. Walked into the music store, went to the counter an asked. Guy got real quiet and asked "Who sent you?" ... "Umm ... nobody, I just know they exist." He wasn't that happy with the answer but since I was only 19 he was pretty sure I wasn't a narc. Pulled one from under the counter.
Charles: "...The Real Book, at least until about 2004, was illegal."
Me: *slowly turns and gives the sideeye to my 1999 copy of The Real Book on the shelf behind me*
I’ve got “side-eye” on a 1982 and a 1991 copy. So glad I don’t use my real name on my channel or the police would be knocking my door down.
I'm calling the Jive Police!
@@MisterTingles I’m not scared of the Jive Police. It’s the Jazz Police that terrify me!! 😳😨😰😱😱😱😱😱🎷🎺🎼🎵🎶🎹🎸🎻
@@geocosmicvalentine
*knock knock knock*
Son, just put the book dow-NO, son you can't have it - you can't say you like jass unless you respecc jass"
@@russellzauner 🤣🤣🤣👍🏽
all the keys you mentioned for jazz are all trumpet and especially saxophone-friendly. that's the reason they're used so often in jazz.
Yeah, as a string player, I much prefer the sharp keys, and that flows over to Piano to me too.
@@caidthackeray8896 I can't stand sharp keys just because I played bass in a band with alto sax and my hands just default on Bb and Eb frets every time
trombone is in the same boat
they’re wind instrument friendly, so it’s easier to work around. i often default these easier keys when playing piano because i played trombone and defaulted to those flat kets (Bb, Eb, Ab, etc.)
Was coming to comment exactly that. I play drums though, so I guess it doesn't matter.
I can't tell you how much I questioned my ear when I used The Real Book to try and learn Anthropology. "Wait, there's a B natural on the 2nd beat? ....waaaaaait" and ran like I was on fire to some old recordings of it with Bird and Satch and slowed them way down. There's no Cb in that head, but it's on the paper. After seeing a handful of other "choices were made" notes in the transcriptions I realized the Real Book is indeed "close enough for jazz" and basically just treat it like a suggestion.
Big deal that’s nothing
OMG, I struggle with that so much too! I often listen to the tune many times, and then try to learn the sheet music and combine the stuff, and it is so annoying when it doesn't match! I start to question whether it is me who read it wrong, or is it them who wrote it wrong.
For me, a person who is not that good at reading the sheet music, this is sometimes a really painful experience to try and figure out if I am right or wrong (especially on old recordings where the sound is hard to hear when slowed down).
@@oresthopiak8609 I'm not educated in music theory but I remember reading guitar tabs once in a while, and trying stuff out, and there's SO MUCH WRONG. Like I could tell that a solo note was played way up on the fretboard with a darker string than what was transcribed just from the tone of the guitar in the recording. And how the original made it more logical fingering wise for what comes next etc. And I wondered how someone transcribing stuff like this could make such a mistake.
Made me stop using tabs altogether and just listen and try to figure it out myself like I'd always done.
@@computer_toucher I often try to combine tabs and transcribing by ear. If I hear stuff at full speed and they seem to match, then I learn it from the tab. If they don't match, then I have to slow down the song and transcribe by ear.
Even if there are videos of someone teaching a song and I don't like the fingering, I change it to git my needs. This could happen to the person writing tabs, as most often people do this for themselves. My guess is that you wouldn't really like fingerings of Django Reinhardt, for example =D
I learned the Anthropology head using the Real book and played it to my guitar teacher. He looked at me and said, good but what the hell are you doing there in the beginning, it's not only hard to play it's also wrong 😅
A lot of these mistakes come from only listening to one version of the song and deciding arbitrarily to make it the model. The Blue Train in C minor with a weird backdoor progression comes from a Cedar Walton recording and But Not for Me with a dominant II chord is from the Miles Davis recording. For some reason, the students must've thought everyone should play it that way instead of just writing down the original and letting people make changes they want in-person.
What’s strange to me about the one for blue train is why on earth would you not go to the John Coltrane recording for reference? I figured for most Jazz musicians it was common knowledge that he wrote that tune.
@@soulubilityofficial6635 Very wierd indeed! The sixth edition appears to get it right thankfully.
It's kind of funny how if you look in the _The Ultimate Beatles Songbook_ it looks like someone created it's arrangement of Michelle of the fifth edition _Real Book_ without listening to it, proof of how widely these errors can spread, despite the sixth edition fixing that one too.
@@claytonr.young-music912 Lennon-McCartney in the Real Book? :o
@@soulubilityofficial6635 I get your point, but often the true source doesn’t contain great harmonies, so as a musician you’re stuck with either staying true or staying modern. It’s always nice to hear a min11 or #11 seventh harmony, but you’re not often going to find it on old time ballads, often it works though.
what is strange is that Charles Cornell makes videos about jazz without having heard the quintet of Miles Davis
My band director had this massive stack of real books in the back, easily like 100 of them and each and every one was in pristine condition (most of our other music books or sheet music copies were pretty beat up) and yes each and every one was treated like the holy grail lmao
I love that 😁 as it should be done
I hope the "pristine condition" was temporarily put aside to allow the errata page to be applied to the relevant charts.
@@mal2ksc the what?
Just a note to the editor: the piano levels are maxing out the UV meter in this video - coming out a tad distorted (clipping) through the whole range.
This was interesting but my comment has nothing to do with The Real Book. I get a sense of pride when a younger person finds the voice and styling's of Ella Fitzgerald "beautiful". My mother sang in collage and Fitzgerald had a lot of influence on my mom. She worked hard to recreate that throaty resonance of Elle's voice. What I hear in my memory are tunes my mother sang while working in the kitchen, or sang sitting on my bed to sing me to sleep, sounding a lot like (what I realize now as) the recordings of Elle. I can not hear Elle Fitzgerald sing without confusing the sound with my own mother's voice. Beautiful, indeed!
ooh, and here I was wondering if my headphones were giving up
noticed it too the audio sounds awfully low res in this vid
Loving the big words here buts it’s a VU meter 😅
@@Guy84_ Haha. Yep. Brain fart! I actually looked at that and let it go anyway.
I was FREAKING SCARED I though I got my laptop speaker broken 😂
Bill Evans's take on Like Someone in Love is one of the main tracks that got me into jazz
Me too, bill Evans is a legend have you ever listened the album "alone"?
that cut is AMAZING i've listened a million times
I know it from the version Björk did on Debut. Love that version ever since.
For me is, his When You Wish Upon a Star that got me into jazz.
Actually the Like Someone in Love score in the Real Book is the way Bill Evans played it. It is even written on the bottom of the page in some editions...
my theory professor went to -Berkley- Berklee and told us about how it was illegal and the proceed to ask us for a flash drive so we can have a digital copy
It happens everywhere. Ever tried looking up online guitar tabs or chords to something? Sometimes you start playing and you're like... wtf were they smoking? This is not even close. And then there are like 7 versions of it with different amounts of "upvotes".. each with their own problems and you kinda have to mix and match... but hey.. it's free.. for the most part.
I was thinking while watching this how an unofficial book like this wouldn't become so prolific under the current tech. Everyone puts their written-by-ear versions simultaneously on half a dozen different websites and their constantly being tweaked and adjusted based on feedback. And if one version doesn't work it takes seconds to back out and check another one. No need to go to a store much less ask under the table.
As an amateur guitarist (which I still am), we used to buy second-hand compilations of simplified chords to sing various pop/rock songs. They were pretty much the same accuracy level as most of the online tabs/chords which were written for the same purpose. Official or not, we haven't bought one of those in years. We just print out or write down what we want in physical form, often with minor adjustments.
@@BonaparteBardithion Oh yea for sure, it's very easy to look these things up for free nowadays. But more often than not I have to take it as a base and do a lot of fixing for myself to get to be actually accurate. In tabs it's usually a little bit better, but with chords it can be all over the place and not correct; not even close. As if they figured it out by ear without playing to the actual song around a campfire somewhere "oh good enough whatever".
@@ruadeil_zabelin
For sure. I basically go in knowing it's not going to sound anything like the original or well known versions. Good enough for recreational and open mic, but at some point you need to listen to and play with the recordings if you want any accuracy.
I always use those as scaffolding, and then cross-check against the recording and fix the errors. It's still faster than starting over, as long as they're 80% correct or better.
@@mal2ksc Yea
Jazz musicians like flat keys because wind instruments are more accustomed to flat keys. trombones and trumpets are both in Bb, and alto saxes are in Eb. Flat keys are therefore wayyyy easier to play in.
It always confused me how wind instruments are so often pitched in a flat key, despite natural-key alternatives existing. Trumpets in C are a thing, as are clarinets in A. Trombones are already almost always in C.
@@InventorZahran there are a variety of reasons that wind instruments are pitched how they are pitched, but the single best answer i can muster up for you is that if they changed the fundamental pitch, they’d also change the timbre of the instrument. idk if you’ve heard a C trumpet and a Bb trumpet played side by side, but the C horn has a much brighter tone even though it’s just one tone higher. and on the trombone front; i’ve been playing trombone in my city’s orchestra and brass band for a very long time and not once have i seen a C trombone.
@@shiquote That actually makes a lot of sense! As for the C trombones, the music notation software I use (Notion) will select a C trombone by default, rather than a Bb transposing one. Since it also defaults to Bb trumpets, Bb clarinets, and Eb or Bb saxophones, I just assumed that C must be the most common pitch for trombones.
It was always my understanding that the changes used in Real Book I were taken directly from the specific recordings listed at the bottom of each lead sheet (or interpolated from multiple sources if so listed). That's what we did anyway, 30-some years ago! So for "Like Someone In Love" the idea was that if you listened to Coltrane's version from the "Lush Life" album, you could here the changes he and his group used and see them go by as well. I double-checked that this was still the case just now, it is still is... with an asterisk!
You are absolutely right about the different key change, even from the lead sheet to Coltrane's recording. His is in Ab and the lead sheet (as you mentioned) is in Eb!! I never knew that! LOL! However, adjusting for the key change, the chords are exactly right.
On the other hand, when I played Blue Trane for the first time in high school, I was just playing straight from the record. (Honestly can't remember if we had an Aebersold record at the time...)
As far as "But Not For Me" (RB II), I couldn't tell you where those changes came from. The record they used isn't listed at the bottom like it is in RB I.
And yeah, I bought my first Real Book in 1988 from another college student for $30. Still got it, too!! And yeah, it was kind of like buying pot - you had to know a dude who knew a dude! LOL!
3:30-3:40 Because it’s easier for horn players to play flat keys as opposed to sharp keys.
Flat keys are preferred because it works much better for the transposing wind and brass instruments like trumpet and tenor sax in Bb and alto sax in Eb, so a piece in Eb (three flats) would be in F for trumpet and tenor and in C for alto, as opposed to say a piece in A (three sharps) which the horns would have to play either in B (five sharps) or F# (six sharps!)
Blue Train is actually corrected in the sixth edition of the real book.
yeah if he actually LOOKED at the 6th edition instead of posting some version from the bootleg day.
@@thepostapocalyptictrio4762 Doesn’t change the fact that they used the Cedar Walton version of Blue Train up until the sixth edition. But, feel free to continue to purposely miss the point, sweetheart
@@DefenestrateYourself miss the point? Realistically a new player is just going to buy the legal version off Amazon and not know the old versions were worse. Why bring up issues that don't apply to the Real Book anymore anyways? Im a believer in transcription myself, but I think the book has some value, especially for a beginner in jazz.
Man, i’m a musician and I just recently have been getting into your vids. I’ve been busy and bogged down by life recently and i’ve not had time to play any kind of music. But watching your videos kinda sparked something in me that was like “hey, play some piano when you get home from work, arrange a song, get a jazz combo together.” So thank you for helping me feel that feeling again. Keep doin what you’re doin! Boom, subscribed.
This is one of many reasons my jazz teachers DESPISED the real book. (even though a lot of us used it) They always pushed having us learn the melodies (and changes) by ear, in all 12 keys. I remember hearing stories of some of the musicians calling tunes but in completely wild keys, like F# or B, as a way to "weed out" anyone who really couldn't hang.
I'm still pretty weak on transcribing chord changes, but I definitely go for the recordings as a better way of "how it goes."
I see carving on the bandstand now (and calling weird keys is part of carving) as abusive bullying, and I seriously think it dissuades many people from even trying, and many others from ever trying more than once. If they can't hang with the group yet, they're sure as hell not going to learn from someone calling Cherokee in F♯ at 400 bpm.
I've had it done to me -- and I actually _did_ hang with it (the tune called in a strange key in my case was "Caravan") and afterward the leader said "We didn't really expect you'd know the tune, let alone in that key."
@@mal2ksc see, for them, it's not about teaching or learning. One of my directors said, "You either know the tune, or you don't." Harsh, yeah. Absolutist? Absolutely.
@@nickbell8353 Used to be that way myself. Then I got the chance to run a band for a little while, and it was... well they weren't great, but shouting at them wouldn't have helped matters any. And when I tried to bring in a ringer to solidify things, and the ringer told them they all sucked and left, I was able to say in all honesty, "Don't worry too much... he sucked three years ago. I know, I was there. Don't let it get to you."
If you let the assholes dictate the working conditions, don't be surprised when the job attracts more assholes and drives away people who might be great, they just aren't on board with that Buddy Rich style. Unfortunately this was more the rule than the exception for a long time. To quote Stan Kenton: "I don't care if he's a nice guy, give me an asshole who can play!" And of course Ellington had Juan Tizol who loved to threaten people with knives. Those who complained got fired.
All 12 keys?! I’d be terrified
@@in.stereo I get the hesitation, but it's not so bad; the trick is figuring out which scale degree the notes fall under, once you find out where the tonic is.
I always had some mental questions about the “Real Book” as some of the arrangements seem to be pointlessly complex but challenging. Fascinating stuff. Thanks for reminding me how a great Ella was
Adam Neely wasn't wrong when he said that the Real Book is a "jazz shibboleth." (If you don't know what that means, check out his own video on the Real Book from a few years back.)
I’ve been wanting someone to do a video on this for forever. Fantastic job as always! I’ve run into this problem so many times.
First lesson from my jazz piano teacher in college was, "Throw out your Real Book." Thanks to him my transcription skills improved dramatically. The RB is a good guide, but trust your ears...
It's foolish to throw out the real book before one has ears. Its best to use it as a way to get acclimated and then learn how to hear mistakes. You learn Spanish faster if you have a book plus immersion that just immersion without any basic resources
My transcription skills are more than adequate, writing things down for other people to play was how I made a living for couple years. But I still very much appreciate having a Real Book around. I can generally tell where it's "wrong" (compared to the version I have in mind at least) and make the corrections much faster than I could write down the chart from a blank page.
On the flats vs sharps thing, I grew up doing voice so it didn't matter to me at all, ever. Then I started teaching myself guitar, and sharp keys were always easier because you could play more of their chords in standard tuning without having to barre. Then I started teaching myself keys and they're all kinda the same, though I prefer flats because I feel like sharps are cliche due to the tendency of guitar-focused music to use those keys. From what I understand, flat tunings are preferred among jazz circles because it's easier to work with brass and woodwind instruments in them.
We do love those keys expect for 1, I nevvvverrrr seen a jazz musician who likes playing in C. Even c jam blues ends up getting modulated lol
You should look at the music for both Blade Runner movies. They’re both really interesting compositions.
I was really hoping for a Vangelis tribute video from Charles or Rick after he passed in the spring. Sadly, we got nothing.
That'd be great!
Oh god yes, seconded!
Yesss I love Vangelis. The Soundtrack for BR is a masterpiece. I hope your comment blows up!
@@brianspenst1374 definitely a lot of Vangelis tracks would be amazing. Sadly, Charles doesn't seem to respond much to comments :/
Great video Charles. I’ve discovered a few songs in TRB over the years that I realized were wrong but unfortunately none come to mind at the moment.
What really got me excited was when you “added a few chords” to the turnaround in “But Not For Me.” Those chords you added were beautiful and it’s that part of jazz that seems to elude my ability to understand even after more than 50 years of playing piano. Is what I’m describing something that your Harmony 101 course covers?
I’m just a hobby player but those kinds of tricks are what I really crave to know how to pull off. You make everything look easy but of course it’s not.
this channel is just great, man! Well done!
not a jazz musician here but im from bangladesh and a student of indian classical music and nazrul sangeet. this video gives me so much more appreciation for what my music teacher always used to tell us - gaan holo gurumukhi bidya, which literally means you learn singing directly from the mouth of a guru or teacher, which i guess can be generalized as something along the lines of, music is always learnt from an instructor first hand. he always told us that the shwarolipi or sheet music is for when you already know the song, but forgot the melody in a specific place or got confused about a specific part. basically to help you brush up on or confirm something you already know, never your first or initial source of receiving instruction. only after we had learnt how to sing a particular song would we attempt to play it too and it would always be by ear. to this day i have shelves upon shelves filled with shwarolipi books but i only consult them when i need to, and never learn directly from them. but i understand it might be very different for instrumentalists as opposed to how it is for me, primarily a vocalist. also, this of course completely disregards the never ending debate of which the "real" or "true" melody is for individual pieces that have not been standardized as certain genres have historically been better documented than others, but that subsequently brings in the question of what the acceptable extent of artistic interpretation is in terms of the level of freedom given to the performer, but im rambling now so ill stop because like i said my point was that i have a little newfound appreciation for my (otherwise very strict) ustad thanks to this
In the appendices of the Real Book the author cites the versions of the recording used to write out the changes to the song , and in some cases the recordings used. They transpose the music to more horn friendly keys which is why .
I'd love to watch an entire video of you just correcting all the mistakes from the Real Book with the recordings. Love your content!
This was such an interesting video! I'd love to see more jazz history on this channel 😁
I love how much your videos have taught me about music. I've played for 20 years and used to throw theory aside for the sake of time, and I've never had an easier time learning than watching your videos. Thank you!
I think a big reason jazz is often in flat keys is because it's old old old beginnings came from marching music, which was often done in flats. But I'm not a music historian and that might be wrong.
I used the Real Book in college to help me understand what I was hearing on records. It helped me solidify the voicing, progressions and rhythm into my own playing .
As someone else mentioned, flat keys are horn players' favs. In a middle school band you start off with the concert Bb scale. Then F, then Eb.
Between this, and many websites that provide chord charts for various contemporary genres getting the chords 80% correct (most of them always skip the bass of the chord, or misinterpret chord voicings), I’ve grown to trust my ear and just make my own charts for gigs.
I feel like flats are easier than sharp's because it sounds better to move the route note down a 1/2 step than it does to move it up. Therefore you hear that half step key change in a lot of western music, so naturally we have more practice in it.
I remember trying to learn "but not for me" after listening to chet baker's version and being so confused and let down by the real book chords
I am so fascinated with music theory and the relationships between certain chords in certain instances and how changing a very tiny detail will suddenly change the overall mood of the music. that said, I do not understand it at all even though I've listened to hundreds of hours of people playing examples and explaining it.
I couldn't tell the difference between the RB version and Ella's version until he stopped and played the two parts side-by-side.
The reason Jazz musicians favour the flat keys is that they are more natural for the horns. Guitarists, on the other hand, far prefer sharp keys, as they give access to more open strings- but jazz guitar, being mainly a rhythm instrument, has had to suck it up and adapt to the flat keys. It's been said of Parker that, being self-taught, he didn't realize that saxophonists played mainly from C to Ab, and learned equal facility in all keys- which, of course, put him ahead of the pack.
The first time I came across one of these jazz fake books was way back in 1973. I was playing a B3 in the noon/afternoon session in this club. The main player who played organ for the main attraction in the evening used to leave this binder on the music rack. When I checked it out, it was full of mimeographed sheets of hand written fake sheets (melody lead and chords) of jazz tunes arranged in alphabetical order. To a musician who just started gigging at that time, it seemed like such a treasure trove. I used it while I was there but wasn’t able to take it out of the venue to xerox it. I later found out that the binder full of fake sheets could only be bought privately through special contacts. I never found the right connection at the time. I believe that that was one of the earlier renditions of the Real Book. Much later in the 90’s, a musician friend of mine gave me a PDF containing 12 of these fake books including the Real Book and something called the New Real Book. This type of fake books is good to use when you’re in a jam. One could hardly expect absolute fidelity in terms of the transcriptions in this kind of publications. Many people must have been involved in the compilation of these sheets, with some transcribers better than others. Besides, like others mentioned in this thread, jazz tunes have different renditions performed by different artists. Even with the same artist, sometimes they would use different chord substitutions and different phrasing of the melody on different recordings.
This was a truly helpful and interesting video!
Back in 1968, when I was 13 years old, my Dad bought me three fake books. The cover prices were $50, $50, and $35 but they actually sold for about half that. I still have them.
I used the real book when my friends and I played in a jazz combo during high school. It was good fun and was a great book to get us familiar with a lot of the standards!
A video on the history of the Arban’s book would be cool. That is the trumpet players bible
Also… our jazz instructor always made us listen to the original songs and made us write and figure out the chords by ear then have us play the chords on the piano. He wanted us to understand all the various styles the musicians used so we can borrow licks from them in our improve lol
Hey man, could you do a video on James Blakes "Retrograde" ? Specifically the live version (Live on KEXP) where he plays the really juicy but kinda abstract chords? I've always found that piece really unique with a strange blend of styles that work great together.
Would love to hear your insight on it!
When so many jazz tunes are played in b-keys (F, Bb, EB and so on), it’s probably because the horns playing jazz are tuned in Bb or Eb (saxes, trumpets, clarinets).
Well yes, The Real Book is full of faults. It goes for melodies and especially for chords.
Another thing about Real Book is the selection of tunes. There are so many weird pieces in Real Book nobody ever plays and there are so many lovely jazz tunes that are just not there.
In the Alaska the musicians who run the local jazz festival recently put together the AK Real Book made up of Alaskan jazz musician's and composer's songs. We eached waved the copyright for print in favor of it becoming an educational tool to help grow the local music scene. I have several songs in the book and it was great to play this year's festival with an entirety original set between myself the trumpet player. The pianist, who was someone I respected immensely and had been wanting to work with for at least 20 years, ended up telling me he only said yes to the festival gig because we were doing original music. I'm not saying we are going to give away the royalties to recording or other situations, but I think it's a great tool for jam sessions and community building. Love you channel by the way!!!
On the subject of score and recording not matching up, I’d really enjoy a video on songs where the original recording doesn’t match the *original* score. The one that springs to mind for me is King Creole, where Elvis sings a driving, heavily accented rock and roll song - but Lieber and Stoller’s score for it has a very different feel almost verging toward oompah…
Had no idea this was illegal! We always had one, but it was always just.....there. I don't remember anyone buying it, nor do I recall seeing in a store, so this sure explains a lot
I find flats generally easier to read than sharps. It may be partly due to some of the Jazz repertoire I've played, but getting into some of the Classical music that's in C-sharp Major and my brain is sometimes saying, Nope! Yes, I can try to trick it by thinking of the enharmonics, thinking of some of the notes and chores as flats instead, but then that only works to a degree. Yes, going back and taking a better and proper look, I can break it down and it makes sense -- at a quick glance or reading something down for the first time, flats over sharps (anything from like B Major or higher number of sharps) any day!
Miles Davis quintet starts “But not for me” on the the V of V on the 1954 “Bag’s Groove” album,
Some of the mistakes in the book are from specific instrumental recordings (not based on the original composition).
Yeah - I wouldn't call them mistakes in that case. They are simply based on a different version. And all in all, the original version isn't always the most "important" version. For example the original version of Fly Me to the Moon was in 3/4, but the 4/4 version by Sinatra is the one that everyone uses as a point of reference - that is the "source material", even though it isn't the original version.
Loved this video! Thank you Charles! 💚
I absolutely adore Gershwin, and it was so cool to see someone else raving about the beauty of his music. Made my day. Thank you!
My dad literally has an old copy of this book that he gave me and I never knew any of this. Thanks for the video!!
Please cover Donald Fagen when you get a chance. The Nightfly in particular has some wild chords and harmony. Kamakiriad's second half is also fantastic.
favorite album (other than morph) by my favorite artist!!!
The Nightfly is brilliant - when I was a kid, I figured out New Frontier after seeing it on MTV - It was a step towards being the chord hound I am now. I am self taught on piano, so I had to spend some time with it, but I learned so much from that one song.
Hard to argue though how important this earliest, if illegal, reference book was to those of my boomer generation. It soon became the essential standard jazz player wannabe repertoire list, and it enabled welcomed access to an entire generation of musicians, many of whom, like myself, would not have had the time to "sort it all out" without the information it offered. We should also not forget the role it seems to have played in providing life-support to what had become a rapidly dying form of popular music. I'm admittedly reaching here, but The Real Book (the product of students and faculty at Berkeley?) is IMHO was as important to the devotion of jazz musicians then as the Bible was to early Christianity. Sure...both contain errors requiring continued study, reinterpretation and refinement, but in the end both are supremely important works...their impact and importance should never be underestimated.
Thanks for the insult to Christianity.
@@moirbasso7051 Insult? None intended.
@@moirbasso7051 it’s true. No matter how true something is, if it was made that long ago it probably has a lot of mistakes. The telephone game x10000000 generations.
Great piece. These 'approximations' are prevalent in printed music. Back in the nineties when Becker and Fagen decided to tour again after 20 years (resulting in the album "Alive In America") they decided to "re familiarize" themselves with their back catalogue by going through the various notated versions of their work. Such were the inaccuracies, they decided to go back, dig out the recordings and brush up by ear...
I still have my Real Book sold out of the trunk of a car in Ft Lauderdale Docks in 1979 (working my first cruise contract). A lot of the standards are favorite versions of the compilers (from Boston I gather) . So they weren't looking for the original versions, they were looking for the hip jazz versions. These days I look at the RB occasionally, but I've been doing my own versions for years.
Lol my trumpet professor remembers buying the real book from some guy in the back of his van
This explains why Desafinado always sounded off to me when I played it with this book. Still a worthy while purchase for any Jazz musician, though. Huge time saver, and you can still learn a lot from it.
Great video! 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻
I wouldn't call the arrangement of "Like Someone in Love" in the Real Book "wrong". It's just a different arrangement, with some different passing chords that employ various II-V changes. I've always liked the Real Book version, and frankly I wouldn't play the version arranged for Ella unless trying to play THAT particular arrangement. The Real Book version lends itself to a jam session much more easily, probably its intended purpose.
I find sharps way easier to deal with than flats- but that’s because my primary instrument is guitar, which people tend to conceptualize in sharps (and also keys with sharps tend to have more open strings than keys with flats)
I’m sure if I started as a trumpet player it would be the opposite
You mentioned you find flat keys easier to deal with than sharp keys. This changes per instrument. Violin, viola, and cello are tuned in 5ths and are generally easier in sharp keys.
It must be noted (don't know if someone else has pointed this already in the comments below, haven't read them all yet) that "Real Books" come in more than one key. There is the C version (supposedly the "correct" one) but also the Bb version, the Eb version, etc. which are usually meant for wind instruments in the said keys since they can't be tuned, whereas the C version is usually meant for the piano. Versions other than the C version have all their songs transposed from C to said key.
That being said, it was interesting to learn from this video that transposition alone doesn't account for the differences between the "Real Book" (henceforth called just RB) version and the original version. I've struggled with that issue when learning Bill Evans's "34 Skidoo". The version that hooked me onto this piece was the "Montreux II" version (which has a really cool intro), whose harmony in the RB version only matches the recording in the main theme. Later on I found out the RB version I had was actually the one from the album "How My Heart Sings", but even there I notice differences in the chords between the recording and the RB.
That’s super interesting to hear the preference for flat keys is a jazz pianist thing too. I’ve played almost exclusively classical pieces (especially romantic era) my whole life, and most of my life I felt like flat key pieces were much easier to both read and learn. Lifelong friend who also plays feels the same way.
Now, though I feel relatively comfortable with each, though flat keys still feel more “intuitive”. Oddly, I think just because my all-time favorite pieces tend to be in keys with 5-6 accidentals, I feel most uncomfortable in keys with only 1-2.
"That's ALL of the jazz!" Cracked me up 😂
I compose more in keys with flats because when I started, I found it easier to write flat symbols than sharp symbols on paper...
My dad was a jazz basist in college and I've seen this book laying around out house but never thought much of it. Man, this was interesting.
My uncle was a bebop drummer who played in NYC in the 50s. I inherited a bunch of really weird illegal fake books, some of them with pretty obscure songs.
The Berklee Bible. I bought one from behind the Counter at a Kinkos in Boston in Fall 1979. Those were the days.
I still have my fifth edition. It's extremely banged up.
And yes I totally find it more natural dealing with flats. Everything rolls counterclockwise around the cycle, it's just the way it is. Sometimes I practice around-the-cycle stuff going the other way, but it's definitely "the other way". For me, anyway.
Hey Charles, I've been following your channel for quite some time now, and I absolutely love your content! Just being a casual, non-scholastically learned musician, and just going by ear, I would have classified the songs in these examples as being blues due to the low tones and lack of "enthusiasm", lol, so what is the difference between this being jazz instead of blues? Thank you in advance!
I grew up playing classical piano and decided to take up jazz at 25 in 1993. I had to buy my Real Book from a specific guy “under the counter” at my local music store. It was a funny scene in hindsight. LOL.
Personaly I tend to start the song 'Like Someone In Love' (in Eb major) not with the tonic at all, but instead with the chords Dm7(b5) then G7(#11, +5) then Cm7, followed by Fmaj7 (add 2)/A, then chromatically descending Ab7 (#11) Gm7, Gb 13 (#11) Fm7, etc. Although Bill Evans didn't actually do this, it's the sort of thing he often did do...
thanks for the lesson, charles.
This is; as always, really interesting!
Ahhh the Real Book. I remember as a young Jazz Trumpet music major buying one at a music store in Hollywood. The attended reached under the counter pleased it in a brown paper bag ant told me to put it right away in my gig bag. To be young and coping a music book like I was scoring a nickel bag. 😆
Another problem with fake book sheets in general being “authoritative” is that many of our jazz standards were originally written for full orchestration. For example, Jerome Kern’s All The Things You Are was written for a Broadway play with FOUR lead voices (two male, two female) singing both counterpoint and call-and-response, backed up by orchestra. Later, individual recording artists started singing adaptations of it, reducing it to one voice with rhythm section to accompany. How can any fake book lead sheet even begin to approximate Kern’s original score? What is even the point of trying to apply a standard of “authenticity to the original” to a jazz cover of anything?
I've still got my car trunk version of the Real Book from back in the 70's old yellowed, pages falling out, but it's history so I keep it.
I've heard a lot of the myths about the Real Book and how it came about over the decades, I heard someone outline the Real history of the Real Book a couple years ago that sound like the real story. It was two Berklee students that like most needed money. They saw that students were running around all the time with handfuls of crumpled up lead sheets for the common tunes they jammed on and practiced. So the two got the idea to make a book with all those tunes so it would be easy to carry around. The one guy was an experienced copyist so he'd redo all the leadsheets. The other guy's job was to collect lead sheets for the book based on ones he found laying around and suggestion from students and other "staff" at Berklee. This was why there are a lot of certain Berklee instructors tunes and also why some songs are in wrong keys. The guy grabbing leading at time was grabbing transposed lead sheet no concert key. So they made the first Real Book and started selling it. Then the Real Book got popular and being illegal other people started copying and selling the Real Book. So the two broke student who created the original Real Book didn't make that much money because of all the copy cats. The guy who did the copying for the original did eventually design the now famous Real Book font the books are printed in and made some money there. He is still in the music business doing all sorts of music services. The other guy who collect all the leadsheet supposedly threw in the towel on the music business. To me that is the most believable story on the beginnings of the Real Book. But I do remember the days of going into certain music stores and whispering... Got any Fake books??? Then they'd pull some out from under the counter.
Man great video! You should start a series correcting the errors in the Real Books and talk about them.
That's a good point. I played by RB on sax in Eb. Maybe they had too many work with transpositions. Thruth is I learned a lot from them. Now chods and everything are on the net. Thank you
flat keys in concert pitch transpose easier for Bb and Eb instruments (horns)
for example, Bb concert is C for a trumpet, but G concert is A (more sharps therefore percieved to be more difficult to play)
strings are the opposite, and prefer sharp keys because they fit the open strings better. a lot of beginner violinists aren't actually taught flats or f naturals until much later on because they haven't developed the ear to listen for the difference in pitch that early on, something I learnt the hard way when a bunch of beginners tried to play an arrangement I did and had no clue how to play Ab :D
Couple years back i purchased a bunch of music in a binder at a yard sale, it just looked like photo copies of hand transcriptions. I had no idea what it was until today.
Talking "Right" chords and "Wrong" chords in a jazz context- very funny!
oh the irony
Day 2 of saying:
I think you should look at some of the music from Dirty Loops. Specifically their cover of Thriller, Ring of Saturn, and Follow the Light. They are super groovy and the chord movements are incredible
we're many here apparently to wish in looping some songs lol
I still have mine!! Bought it at Berklee in 1980!!
Re other musicians knowing if you learned a tune from the book and not from recordings: In college (~1994) everyone seemed to play There Will Never Be Another You. There was one bar (maybe #10) that gave away whether you’d learned it from albums or just read the book.
BTW the original has a beautiful verse/intro; it’s from a 1942 movie musical called Iceland, a romcom about skaters.
Yeah, I bought the car trunk version in undergrad like everyone else in the middle 80s, but I quickly learned that there were a lot of issues with it. The problem is, so many people learned things out of it that even if it was wrong, that's what most people (in the circles I was in, at least) were playing. Even if you did the research and dug up the original sheet music or show score or even composer's manuscript (yes, I was that nerd) it didn't matter because everyone knew it the "wrong" way. (I also got a copy of the Spaces set from the same trunk ~35 years ago and I still consult it from time to time for obscure tunes and unusual contrafacts.)
It wasn't until I got to jazz grad school and got a withering stare from my adviser along with "You learned that from the Real Book, didn't you?" when we listened to my audition tape together that I learned to stick to my guns and at least learn the composer's original intent before going too far afield.
He also threw out one of my early big band charts because I got the changes wrong because I was following the Real Book and not looking up the original.
Bear in mind, too, that on many recordings you're hearing the arranger's intent, not the composer's. The Ella But Not For Me is Nelson Riddle's interpretation of those changes, not Gershwin's. Riddle didn't go too far afield, but they're not the same. There certainly can be problems with the original sheet music, but it's always worth a look when you're learning a piece that comes from that tradition. If you can get your hands on the original show score, so much the better. (The internet is great for doing that kind of digging.)
Of course you can modify it from there, but it does help to know the original.
In the early 80's a friend of mine told me to go to this particular music store, wait till I was the only customer, then tell the guy working there I was interested in a jazz fake book, and tell him Rex (my friend's name) sent me. I did, the guy took me in the back room, unlocked a big drawer and sold me the Real Book for 25 bucks cash, He put the book in a brown paper bag, and then put it in the store bag. I later went back and bought Real Book vol. 2 and Vintage Jazz Standards vol. 1 and 2 (in one vol.) Really. I still have them!
Jazz is often written in flat keys because the saxophones transpose in Bb and Eb (so playing a C major scale on an alto sax sounds like an Eb major scale). So flat keys are just more natural for them to play.
For "Like someone in love" or "Blue Train" you could argue that there are "original" versions by virtue of the tunes being introduced to the public in recorded form. For a tune like "All the things", it's not so simple. This tune was written for the musical "Very warm for May". In the musical versions I've heard, it is performed with a verse, and as a rubato type ballad. In jazz, the verse is omitted, and I'm not even sure who came up with the "jazz intro". It's still very much a cycle of fifths tune whatever version is being played, but for a lot of those old Broadway tunes, both the rhythm and harmony, as well as the phrasing of the melody, is very different from the original Broadway sheet music. The point is that many of these tunes were appropriated by jazz musicians at the time. They were tunes that everybody "knew", hence the term "standard", so you could have a common repertoire to play on a jam session. By the 70s, when the book was made, a lot of these common references had been lost among musicians. Sure, it's weird that they didn't use the original version of "Blue Train", but I'm not sure that chart was written with the idea of the Real Book becoming a standard reference, it was probably some guy's transcription of whatever version he liked. My point is that in some ways it's unfair to say that the the Real Book is "wrong".
My understanding of the discrepancy in chord changes in the real book was that students of varying degrees of talent put it together.
So you get “jazz” versions of what were originally pop songs at that time…I mean, correct me if I’m wrong, but a lot of standards started out as musical theatre or straight up pop songs and were “altered” by guys like Parker and Miles to be a lot hipper.
The “Blue Trane” chart is clearly written by a kid who hadn’t gotten to the Coltrane part of his education
I managed a music store from ‘94-‘04 and our owner was real weird about stocking any fake books. We had our ordering manager get us some despite his reluctance. I sold many copies of “The Real Book” not realizing it was illegal and wished now I would have bought one myself. Now, we carried many fake books from major publishers like Hal Leonard but we kept ALL of them hidden from our 70 year old owner just to avoid him some stress.
Damn right... for the Berklee peeps it was Mr. Music in Allston MA...
Chuck Sher put out several incredibly high-quality, legal real books from the late 80's thru the early 2000's. Amazing arrangements of classic and contemporary jazz, and very easy to read. I was bummed when Sher Music stopped producing these (though they are still doing amazing educational material). There's a lot of backstory to how that went down and it tangentially involves the legal book you spoke of here.
Interesting point at 3:40 about finding flats easier... as a classically trained musician, I find that less accidentals is always easier regardless if it is flats or sharps. I guess it is just easier when you are playing always from what's written in the score. So G would be easier than Eb. I wonder if jazz musicians find flats easier because they are not constrained to sheet music
Flats are more common because the horns that play jazz are tuned in flat keys (Bb, Eb) so people just gravitate to playing in the flat keys like F, Bb, Eb, and Ab the majority of the time since, as you said, playing with less accidentals is easier in general. If you look at tunes that have other origins (e.g. the bossa nova tunes) you'll see the sharp keys popping up more often like G, D, and A since they come from styles where other instruments reign (like guitar or violin).
As someone who just grew up playing trombone in concert bands, any time there is a B-natural (or any sharps) it is harder. Slide positions on a trombone, and correspondingly on valved instruments, are tuned such that the nominal position plays Bb - all the way in on the slide, no valves pressed down.
I don't find Eb any harder to read or play than F or Bb, but once you get to Ab it starts to get harder - mostly due to the first time you need to use the 5th slide position.
I always found flat keys to be much easier on the piano, which I somewhat attributed to the fact I played trumpet as well, which is generally a flat instrument. A friend of mine who played sax and piano found sharp keys to be easier and more natural. Could just be a coincidence, but it made some sense to me. I always just felt my hands fit into the shape of flat keys better than sharp keys.
It's kind of cute that Charles can't imagine why many jazz tunes are written/played in flat keys when he knows how to play the trumpet. And has certainly written arrangements for sax. :-D I mean, in the end it's probably a combination of this and jazz harmonies/melodies often using diminished 3rds, 7ths and 9ths and fewer augmented intervals. But I am sure that jazz being born as music to be played and improvised by normal people (not professional musicians), sharp keys are just harder for basically all transposing brass instruments.
In the pre-Internet early '90's I bought my "Real Book" from the keyboard player in a local jazz band. I will cherish it forever. It is true that a bunch of stuff is wrong. It is also true that at the time it was head and shoulders above anything else available.