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The Real Book

99percentinvisible.org

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Re: The Real Book

#51

Post by biggieshellz »

zimpenfish wrote: post #13
pthreads wrote: post #4

When I was learning to play the saxophone my instructor had an old copy of the Real Book. The transcriptions of songs by some of the jazz legends would blow my mind. I thought the people being able to transcribe those were geniuses (still do). They had no sophisticated software to help them. It was all done manually by listening to countless hours of recordings over and over again. All those chord changes, harmonies,…

> They had no sophisticated software to help them. Which is a shame because they sometimes make bad transcriptions... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OFWCbGzxofU is a deep dive by Adam Neely into "Girl From Ipanema" covering how "The Real Book" neutered the blues countermelody because ... someone just didn't write it down in the 70s and everyone learns it from TRB now.

Same thing with Blue Bossa. The syncopation in the original is completely missing in the Real Book chart, and now every high school jazz musician learns it the Real Book way and runs it into the ground.

Re: The Real Book

#52

Post by GavinMcG »

zimpenfish wrote: post #13
pthreads wrote: post #4

When I was learning to play the saxophone my instructor had an old copy of the Real Book. The transcriptions of songs by some of the jazz legends would blow my mind. I thought the people being able to transcribe those were geniuses (still do). They had no sophisticated software to help them. It was all done manually by listening to countless hours of recordings over and over again. All those chord changes, harmonies,…

> They had no sophisticated software to help them. Which is a shame because they sometimes make bad transcriptions... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OFWCbGzxofU is a deep dive by Adam Neely into "Girl From Ipanema" covering how "The Real Book" neutered the blues countermelody because ... someone just didn't write it down in the 70s and everyone learns it from TRB now.

Thanks for sharing that! What a great dive into the particulars—way beyond my music theory knowledge, but still accessible.

Re: The Real Book

#54

Post by ybbond »

ahhh, good old days.

back when I was in elementary school, my big bro was learning jazz and taught me music (still do, but my progress is slow).

then he went to university. by the end of semester he came back home brought some chunky books printed on 70gsm paper. he give some to my cousins

the blog's hero image reminds me of that book. one of them is still in my house's storage.

Re: The Real Book

#55

Post by jeffbee »

h2odragon wrote: post #53

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samizdat Illegal sheet music, underground comics, the "Anarchist's Cookbook" and similar... long tradition.

I don't know if that analogy holds. A fake book is indispensable for working dance bands who want to play at banquets or whatever where someone will request songs the band hasn't played before. The Anarchist's Cookbook is just for teenagers to download and feel like they are sticking it to the man. There are not, to my knowledge, a whole lot of practicing anarchists.

Re: The Real Book

#56

Post by noneeeed »

MauranKilom wrote: post #5
wazoox wrote: post #3

Why did you change the title?

It's possible that the word filter for titles that HN uses removed the "real". But yeah, whatever the cause, the result is bad.

Especially as 99 Percent Ivisible have a book out, which is what I thought this was going to be about.

Re: The Real Book

#57

Post by Rochus »

There is a great potcast at the bottom of the page worth listening to, with even more interesting information than in the article. So many people were using the Real Book for years without knowing who actually compiled and typeset all these wonderful lead sheets.

Re: The Real Book

#58

Post by h2odragon »

jeffbee wrote: post #55
h2odragon wrote: post #53

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samizdat Illegal sheet music, underground comics, the "Anarchist's Cookbook" and similar... long tradition.

I don't know if that analogy holds. A fake book is indispensable for working dance bands who want to play at banquets or whatever where someone will request songs the band hasn't played before. The Anarchist's Cookbook is just for teenagers to download and feel like they are sticking it to the man. There are not, to my knowledge, a whole lot of practicing anarchists.

Good point. a closer analogy might be found in that body of knowledge i would call "telecom bullshit"; the arcane private standards that start to happen whenever you get near anything carrier or cell phone type stuff. I'm largely ignorant of it, but there is a library of data there thats certainly "encumbered" and still necessary.

The minutiae of building codes; plumbing and electrical specifically, are such a body of knowledge without a corresponding bible. There's the apprenticeship "how its done," which implies "around here, where we know what the inspectors like"; in many places the inspectors have never seen a copy of the codes they're supposed to be enforcing.

Re: The Real Book

#59

Post by [deleted] »

cousin_it wrote: post #6

Someone should make an online "real book" for electronic music production, with a bunch of popular beats and instructions for how to reproduce them in a DAW. Does such a thing exist?

[deleted]

Re: The Real Book

#60

Post by tjr »

jpitz wrote: post #39
pthreads wrote: post #4

When I was learning to play the saxophone my instructor had an old copy of the Real Book. The transcriptions of songs by some of the jazz legends would blow my mind. I thought the people being able to transcribe those were geniuses (still do). They had no sophisticated software to help them. It was all done manually by listening to countless hours of recordings over and over again. All those chord changes, harmonies,…

I've spoken to a few professional arrangers, and I always ask "How many times did you have to listen to that to write it down?" "Just once." Genius indeed. Or 10,00 hours. Or both.

I would think definitely some 10,000 involved. I have done transcriptions for years, but not very frequently. I don't have 10,000 hours, but I have more hours today than I did 20 years ago. And I'm definitely better at it. Ive reached the point where some music I really can just hear and write down, but there's still plenty that I need to work at meticulously.
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