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The Real Book

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Re: The Real Book

#121

Post by Analog24 »

bsder wrote: post #111
analog31 wrote: post #109

I'm a bassist. I got my Real Book in 1982. I was already playing in the high school jazz band, but as a suburban kid, I had zero exposure to things like jam sessions and live jazz performances. Nobody had taught me how to learn harmonies from recordings, so I was kind of lost. The Real Book gave me a way to follow recorded tunes and grasp what the players were doing. Later on, being able to play from "lead sheets" en…

> Today, those tunes are hopelessly overplayed Which is, in fact, the point. You can't "jam" over a tune that everybody doesn't know forwards, backwards, and sideways. I do agree that it would be nice if musicians added something from the latter half of the 20th century to "standards".

You absolutely can jam over a song you don't know inside and out. If everyone did know the song that well then you're just playing the song. Real "jamming" (not trying to be too pedantic with the use of the word) happens when you don't know where the song/jam is going and you build off of and comp each other.

Re: The Real Book

#122

Post by scarecrowbob »

analog31 wrote: post #116
bsder wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Today, those tunes are hopelessly overplayed Which is, in fact, the point. You can't "jam" over a tune that everybody doesn't know forwards, backwards, and sideways. I do agree that it would be nice if musicians added something from the latter half of the 20th century to "standards".

Jamming over a tune that you don't know is called "faking." That's a skill unto itself. ;-) But I think it's also a skill worth learning.

I've spent a lot of time playing bass on stage with band's I've never rehearsed.

I heard a saying the other day you might like...

bass players aren't paid to play quickly, they are paid to hear quickly.

Re: The Real Book

#123

Post by nhumrich »

bewareandaware wrote: post #105
mtalantikite wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a very clear memory of taking the subway to a random music shop in Boston near Berklee as a teenager that an older musician friend had told me about that had Real Books in the back. Went up to the counter and when I asked for it the person working there got real quiet, asking me what key I needed it in, and then ducked into the back to grab it. I think it was something like $45, which was a lot for 15 year old…

I thought they were all in the same key! I got mine because someone gave it to me. Then later I gave it to someone.

they come in the different transposed keys for instruments that read in different keys, but technically. the actual key, is all the same.

Re: The Real Book

#124

Post by scarecrowbob »

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?

An issue I have with this is that most of the electronic music I produce isn't really so much trying to follow a melody or harmony, but is mostly "new stuff".

However, I have been playing keys in a Pink Floyd cover band for the last two months, and that process of both learning the parts and, more interestingly, programming patches in my synths to mimic the stuff has been fun. I just programmed the patch for "Brain Damage" this afternoon, and I've been finding various walkthroughs and tutorials very helpful, even if the basic tones (mostly saws and squares with a ladder filter) are pretty easy.

I really like fakebooks, but Youtube has kind of obviated the need for the various textbooks that were popular in the 80s, at least for me.

Re: The Real Book

#125

Post by analog31 »

scarecrowbob wrote: post #122
analog31 wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Jamming over a tune that you don't know is called "faking." That's a skill unto itself. ;-) But I think it's also a skill worth learning.

I've spent a lot of time playing bass on stage with band's I've never rehearsed. I heard a saying the other day you might like... bass players aren't paid to play quickly, they are paid to hear quickly.

Indeed, I also tell people that we're not paid for the notes that we play, but for the notes that we don't play.

Re: The Real Book

#126

Post by webmaven »

iaresee wrote: post #78

I can still remember going to Kinkos with a friend’s copy of the real book in 1996 to make a copy of my own and get it spiral bound. Not only did you get the charts, but you got their notes. And the notes of anyone before them from the book’s lineage. Still have. Still use it.

> I can still remember going to Kinkos with a friend’s copy of the real book in 1996 to make a copy of my own and get it spiral bound.

I was, around that time, a Kinko's employee, and the company got really sticky about copyright in the next couple of years, especially after the regional franchises were bought out, clamping down on the official unofficial nod-nod-wink-wink say-no-more policy. A lot of it was driven by photographers upset at people getting their event photos scanned for which the photographer kept the rights, and students duplicating textbooks or handouts, but it bled into nearly everything and was becoming a huge PITA. My understanding is that it got even stricter after the FedEx purchase, though I wasn't there at that point.

Re: The Real Book

#127

Post by hamiltonkibbe »

cjohnson318 wrote: post #107
MrGando wrote: post #106

The real book is actually full of egregious mistakes and philosophically speaking is quite questionable. There’s a significant body of great Jazz musicians (eg: Yotam Silberstein) who avoid the book at all costs. My teacher -who’s part of Yotam’s quintet- is also very careful with the book and tries to avoid it.

On any list of "Jazz for Beginners" you'll see Blue Bossa, and right off the bat, in the fourth measure, The Real Book has an unlikely Bb7 chord. Most jazz musicians I've spoken with use the changes Cm7 / Cm7 / Fm7 / Fm7 for the first four measures, instead of The Real Book's Cm / Cm / Fm7 / Bb7. I'm not sure how that Bb7 got there, or how it's stayed there after 50 years, but there it is.

I just checked since I’ve never heard it played with that Bb7 in bar 4... I’ve got one of the old unlicensed editions and it has the “right” changes, Cm7 / Cm7 / Fm7 / Fm7. Some of the stuff in the legal versions is particularly wonky.

Re: The Real Book

#128

Post by homarp »

JoshCole wrote: post #68
dhosek wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had the misfortune of having a friend in high school who could listen to something and transcribe it. I remember at band camp watching him with a cassette player and manuscript player transcribing an instrumental break from a Chicago song. He'd play a couple seconds, score it out, then play a couple more seconds until he was done. I say misfortune because I assumed this was a binary thing: you either could do it or…

This is true of other skills that seem magical. One that stands out to me as being learnable, but often seen as magical, is 'savant like' memory capabilities. People assume that these people have different minds and that is how they have such incredible recall, but the truth is our memories are really strong when the recall is a spatial query and the object being recalled is encoded well. People mistake their short t…

for 'savant like memory', see the book ' Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything' HN discussion here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4528807

and on the memory palace: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2395739

and on spaced repetitions https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24857437 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13151790

Re: The Real Book

#129

Post by wirrbel »

Real book and fake book have been so influential that transcription errors or „odd“ choices have somewhat become Standards and you see people be irritated if people play the original compositions

Re: The Real Book

#130

Post by DennisP »

caseyross wrote: post #24

I can't help thinking that this story is a fantastic example of the free market at work. Two college kids use their insight to spot a market need that the "big guys" missed, and create a wonderful, useful product that becomes a smash hit. Of course, when I say "the free market", I'm talking about the one where good ideas can be shared and copied freely --- not the one populated by sheet music landlords, whose laws we…

In fact, a lot of this music wouldn't exist if not for people freely sharing and copying ideas. The article mentions "authorship disputes that go back to the early days of jazz. Many jazz songs arise out of collective tinkering and improvising in jam sessions. It’s sometimes quite hard to say who exactly wrote a given song."
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