Fake book
Encyclopedia
A fake book is a collection of musical lead sheet
Lead sheet
A lead sheet is a form of music notation that specifies the essential elements of a popular song: the melody, lyrics and harmony. The melody is written in modern Western music notation, the lyric is written as text below the staff and the harmony is specified with chord symbols above the...

s intended to help a performer quickly learn new songs. Each song in a fake book contains the melody line
Melody
A melody , also tune, voice, or line, is a linear succession of musical tones which is perceived as a single entity...

, basic chords
Chord (music)
A chord in music is any harmonic set of two–three or more notes that is heard as if sounding simultaneously. These need not actually be played together: arpeggios and broken chords may for many practical and theoretical purposes be understood as chords...

, and lyrics
Lyrics
Lyrics are a set of words that make up a song. The writer of lyrics is a lyricist or lyrist. The meaning of lyrics can either be explicit or implicit. Some lyrics are abstract, almost unintelligible, and, in such cases, their explication emphasizes form, articulation, meter, and symmetry of...

 - the minimal information needed by a musician
Musician
A musician is an artist who plays a musical instrument. It may or may not be the person's profession. Musicians can be classified by their roles in performing music and writing music.Also....* A person who makes music a profession....

 to make an impromptu arrangement of a song, or "fake it."

The fake book is a central part of the culture of playing music
Music
Music is an art form whose medium is sound and silence. Its common elements are pitch , rhythm , dynamics, and the sonic qualities of timbre and texture...

 in public, particularly in jazz
Jazz
Jazz is a musical style that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States. It was born out of a mix of African and European music traditions. From its early development until the present, jazz has incorporated music from 19th and 20th...

, where improvisation
Improvisation
Improvisation is the practice of acting, singing, talking and reacting, of making and creating, in the moment and in response to the stimulus of one's immediate environment and inner feelings. This can result in the invention of new thought patterns, new practices, new structures or symbols, and/or...

 is particularly valued.

Fake books are not intended for novices: the reader must follow and interpret the scant notation, and generally needs to have thorough familiarity with chords and sheet music. However, fake books can be an avenue to playing songs quickly; a few chords and a one-note melody line can allow even an amateur to play a passable version of any song with relative ease.

Despite the name, fake books are often unbound, consisting of a thick, loose stack of sheets.

History

A predecessor to fake books was created in May, 1942 when George Goodwin, a radio station director, released the first Tune-Dex cards. Printed on 3"x5" cards that were the same size as library catalog cards, Goodwin provided lyrics, melody and chord symbols as well as copyright information. Goodwin also promoted the cards to professional musicians until 1963, when poor health forced his retirement. According to Barry Kernfeld's book "The Story of Fake Books", by the 1950s gangsters were duplicating the Tune-Dex information into bound fake books with prices between $10 and $25.

For many years the "standard" fake books were called simply "The Fake Books." All were composed of song
Song
In music, a song is a composition for voice or voices, performed by singing.A song may be accompanied by musical instruments, or it may be unaccompanied, as in the case of a cappella songs...

s illegally printed, with no royalties paid to the copyright owners. In 1964, the FBI's Cleveland, Ohio, office observed that "practically every professional musician in the country owns at least one of these fake music books as they constitute probably the single most useful document available.".

The first two volumes, Fake Book Volume 1 and Fake Book Volume 2, issued in the late 1940s–1950s, together comprised about 2,000 songs dating from the turn of the 20th century through the late 1950s. In the 1950s the Modern Jazz Fake Book, Volumes 1 and 2 was issued, and Fake Book Volume 3, containing about 500 songs, came out in 1961.

The music in Fake Books 1, 2, and 3 was photocopied or reset with a musical typewriter from the melody lines of the original sheet music. Usually chord symbols, titles, composer names, and lyrics were typewritten, but for a number of songs these were all photocopied along with the melody line.

The chord changes in these books were notoriously inaccurate. Most of them were based on the guitar and ukelele chords commonly found in earlier sheet music, which often did not include the roots of the harmony. For example, a chord labeled "Fdim" ("F diminished") for guitar or ukelele might functionally be a G7b9 ("G seven, flat nine") chord, which has a G as the root plus all the notes of an Fdim7 chord. Thus, successfully using the Fake Books required the expertise of jazz musicians and others trained in functional harmony in order to reinterpret the chord symbols.

The three Fake Books were well indexed, alphabetically as well as by musical genre and Broadway show. Interestingly, although the tunes in the Fake Books were compiled illegally, the creators printed copyright information under every song — perhaps to give the false impression that the Fake Books were legal.

The Modern Jazz Fake Book was divided into two sections, each indexed separately as Volume One and Volume Two. The music was transcribed by hand from recordings, and each transcription included performer name, record label, and catalog number. Unlike today's fake and "real" books that have "jazz' in their titles, the Modern Jazz Fake Book included no standards, but only original tunes written and recorded by jazz musicians.

All these books have been long out of print.

During the school year of 1974-75, an unidentified group of musicians based at the Berklee College of Music
Berklee College of Music
Berklee College of Music, located in Boston, Massachusetts, is the largest independent college of contemporary music in the world. Known primarily as a school for jazz, rock and popular music, it also offers college-level courses in a wide range of contemporary and historic styles, including hip...

 in Boston published The Real Book
Real Book
The Real Book can refer to any of a number of popular compilations of lead sheets for jazz tunes, but is generally used to refer to Volume 1 of an underground series of books transcribed and collated by students at Berklee College of Music during the 1970s....

,
which claimed to fix all problems of poor design, although it was riddled with errors which were gradually corrected by generations of players. Steve Swallow, who was teaching at Berklee at that time, said the students who edited the book intended "to make a book that contained a hipper repertoire, more contemporary repertoire." Alongside the standard tunes of previous decades were lead sheets for compositions by then-contemporary composers such as Keith Jarrett
Keith Jarrett
Keith Jarrett is an American pianist and composer who performs both jazz and classical music.Jarrett started his career with Art Blakey, moving on to play with Charles Lloyd and Miles Davis. Since the early 1970s he has enjoyed a great deal of success in jazz, jazz fusion, and classical music; as...

, Herbie Hancock
Herbie Hancock
Herbert Jeffrey "Herbie" Hancock is an American pianist, bandleader and composer. As part of Miles Davis's "second great quintet," Hancock helped to redefine the role of a jazz rhythm section and was one of the primary architects of the "post-bop" sound...

, Chick Corea
Chick Corea
Armando Anthony "Chick" Corea is an American jazz pianist, keyboardist, and composer.Many of his compositions are considered jazz standards. As a member of Miles Davis' band in the 1960s, he participated in the birth of the electric jazz fusion movement. In the 1970s he formed Return to Forever...

, Joe Henderson
Joe Henderson
Joe Henderson was an American jazz tenor saxophonist. In a career spanning more than forty years Henderson played with many of the leading American players of his day and recorded for several prominent labels, including Blue Note.-Early life:From a very large family with five sisters and nine...

, Wayne Shorter
Wayne Shorter
Wayne Shorter is an American jazz saxophonist and composer.He is generally acknowledged to be jazz's greatest living composer, and many of his compositions have become standards...

, Carla Bley
Carla Bley
Carla Bley, née Borg, is an American jazz composer, pianist, organist and band leader. An important figure in the Free Jazz movement of the 1960s, she is perhaps best known for her jazz opera Escalator Over The Hill , as well as a book of compositions that have been performed by many other...

, Pat Metheny
Pat Metheny
Patrick Bruce "Pat" Metheny is an American jazz guitarist and composer.One of the most successful and critically acclaimed jazz musicians to come to prominence in the 1970s and '80s, he is the leader of the Pat Metheny Group and is also involved in duets, solo works and other side projects...

, Mike Gibbs
Michael Gibbs (jazz composer)
Michael Clement Irving Gibbs is a jazz composer, conductor, arranger and producer as well as a trombonist and keyboardist....

, Ralph Towner
Ralph Towner
Ralph Towner is an American multi-instrumentalist, composer, arranger and bandleader. He plays the twelve-string guitar, classical guitar, piano, synthesizer, percussion and trumpet.-Biography:...

 and Steve Swallow
Steve Swallow
Steve Swallow is a jazz double bass and bass guitarist and composer born in Fair Lawn, New Jersey.One of the leading bassists in jazz, Swallow is noted for collaborations with Jimmy Giuffre, Gary Burton and Carla Bley...

 (amongst others). It was extremely popular and in its turn spawned a number of "fake Real Books".

Fake books originally infringed copyright
Copyright
Copyright is a legal concept, enacted by most governments, giving the creator of an original work exclusive rights to it, usually for a limited time...

s, and their circulation was primarily underground. The 6th edition of the Real Book is published legally.

See also

  • Jazz standards
  • Real Book
    Real Book
    The Real Book can refer to any of a number of popular compilations of lead sheets for jazz tunes, but is generally used to refer to Volume 1 of an underground series of books transcribed and collated by students at Berklee College of Music during the 1970s....

  • Rise Up Singing
    Rise Up Singing
    Rise Up Singing is a popular folk music fake book containing chords, lyrics, and sources. There are 1200 songs in the 2004 edition.The book does not include notation of the songs' melodies , meaning that users must either know the tune, or find a recording, to be able to learn many of the songs...

  • The Fiddler's Fakebook
    The Fiddler's Fakebook
    The Fiddler's Fakebook, by David Brody, is a collection of fiddle tunes in lead sheet form It includes tunes in the following styles:* England* Scotland* Ireland* Shetland* French Canadian* Nova Scotia/Cape Breton...

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