Understanding Fake Books and Lead Sheets

In this lesson, I want to talk a bit about fake books and lead sheets.

What is a Lead Sheet?

• If you look at the chart that you've got for "Ornithology," the right hand is basically what you get in a lead sheet:
  • A single line melody
  • Chord symbols

However, on a lead sheet, you wouldn't get any left hand chord voicings. You wouldn't be told what to do in the left hand.

Choice with Lead Sheets

• Lead sheets give you a lot of choice.
• One of the main skills of being a jazz pianist is deciding:
  • How to interpret the chord symbols
  • What to do in the left hand specifically

What is a Fake Book?

A collection of lead sheets is a bunch of tunes given as single lines and chord symbols only, collected into a book. This compilation is called a fake book.

History of the Fake Book

• The original fake book was called the Real Book, a sort of play on words.
• It was a bootleg publication, but now there are lots of legal versions available. Just search for "Real Book," and you'll find them.

Most jazz musicians have several of these because no fake book is really going to give you all the tunes you need.

Why is it Called a Fake Book?

Well, it's almost like you're faking knowing, faking knowledge of a tune, but you've got the bare bones of it, the information you need.

Why Jazz Musicians Prefer Fake Books

The reason jazz musicians like to work from fake books is because they provide:

• Maximum choice: They don't want to play somebody else's arrangement of a tune.
• The ability to make their own decisions about:
  • Chord voicings
  • Harmony
  • Tempo
  • Texture

On piano, that's a lot of different variations, lots of different parameters.

Getting Started with Fake Books

It's really important, at some stage, that you get your own fake book and start playing some of the tunes in it.

Interpreting Fake Books and Lead Sheets

To interpret fake books or lead sheets convincingly, you need to have a grasp of various harmonic concepts to apply them to different situations, tunes, and keys.

Recognizing Common Patterns

It's also useful to recognize tried and tested patterns. For instance:

• Many tunes have bridges, which are common chord sequences.

A very common example of a bridge is the dominant seventh cycle, which we saw in the theme in Part One of this course:

• Four dominant seventh chords going up in two bars
• Each going up in fourths, ending on the five of the key

You'll find that bridge in "I Got Rhythm," for instance. It's often known as a Rhythm Changes bridge.

Another common pattern is 2, 5, 1s, with four bars each going down a tone. You can see this in tunes like:

• "I Can't Get Started"
• "Lover Man"
• "Wave"
• "One Note Samba"

If you'd like to check out the PDF that is attached, you can see a list of different bridges and the tunes they are found in.

Conclusion

Recognizing these formats is quite useful because once you've done it once, it's much easier to tackle when you encounter it again in another key.