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The Real Book (2021)

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Re: The Real Book (2021)

#31

Post by analog31 »

neonscribe wrote: post #20
analog31 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a jazz bassist, 61, and first saw a Real Book 43 years ago. There were, and are, always a few hard-liners who look down on reading tunes from a book, on the bandstand. They're not necessarily the oldest, or best players, or have the best reasons. Whatever. Most of the gigs that I've played, fake books were accepted. There are similar debates in most musical styles. Roughly 20 years ago, I decided to stop bringing…

If the band is flipping through their books, paper or electronic, to choose what tune to play next, that isn't a performance worthy of the term. It's a jam session. Which is fine, but hopefully nobody is paying to listen to it.

I agree, but sometimes you don't know all of the details of a gig before agreeing to play, especially since I'm not the top call bassist in my locale. Then you put on the best show you can under the circumstances.

Re: The Real Book (2021)

#32

Post by titaphraz »

It's insane to think that so many owe so much to an contraband book.

There's a very good podcast about (music) copyright and how it's used and abused. The podcast is mainly about Men At Work's "Down Under" and the crazy copyright case that hit them: https://www.podbean.com/media/share/dir-xqda4-23ebff8b

Re: The Real Book (2021)

#33

Post by jdietrich »

MrMcCall wrote: post #22

One of my favorite jokes: Guy decides to go deep into Africa up the Congo River. After getting to the last easily accessible entry into the river, they board the smallish boat to begin the arduous trek deep into darkest Africa. A day or three into the journey they start hearing distant drums, then as they continued after some days it got slowly louder. The guy started getting spooked and asks the Captain, "What's up…

This drummer is sick of everyone ribbing him about not being a real musician, so he goes to the music shop to buy a proper instrument.

He says to the owner "I'd like to see some guitars, please".

The owner says "you must be a drummer".

The drummer says "How did you know that?".

The owner says "This is a fish shop".

The drummer wanders down the street and finally finds the music shop. He's in there for hours, overwhelmed by the choice, weighing up all the different options.

After much thought, he musters up all of his courage and says to the owner "I'd like the big red trumpet and that accordion over there".

The owner says "Well, you can have the fire extinguisher, but I can't sell you the radiator".

Re: The Real Book (2021)

#34

Post by neonscribe »

dhosek wrote: post #25
pjdesno wrote: post #13

Someone I know who went to Berklee in the early 90s said that it was a required text for certain jazz classes, and you had to buy it from a bootlegger.

I remember a friend managed to get a copy of a real book in the 90s and was so excited about it. When I sat down to play some tunes out of it, I was unfamiliar with the notation where Cmin7 was written C-7 and CMaj7 was C△. I figured out the latter, but thought the former was Cdim7 which led to some weird harmonizations before I figured it out.

The lack of agreement on how to spell chord symbols is a genuine problem. Brandt and Roemer's 1976 Standardized Chord Symbol Notation provides a reasonable standard, which was adopted by Sher Music in their "New Real" line of books, but it's not quite the same as the style chosen by the original Real Book authors that was mostly kept in the Hal Leonard editions. iRealPro uses a slightly different style. Chord chart readers have to be prepared for a variety of styles, unfortunately.

Re: The Real Book (2021)

#35

Post by h-c-c »

glimshe wrote: post #28
h-c-c wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A married couple hasn't spoken to each other in 10 years. Their daughter seeks out the best marriage counselor she can find and gets her parents to agree to go to a session. After their first visit the daughter follows up with the therapist and asks if he could get them to talk to each other. "Not this time, but we have another appointment next week. I'll take another crack at it." The parents show up to their next a…

You two! Bass solos can be great! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=it0PN8RrEZI

I am a bass player sir.

My joke has more to do with the fact that bass players tend to feel unappreciated when the audience talks during their solo. Bass solos are always quieter so, there's some sort of bias there I'm sure.

Recently at a jazz club a bass player friend of mine who graduated from the same music school as me found ourselves talking through the bass solo from the act on stage. "Oh man, we're doing it now." Lol

Re: The Real Book (2021)

#36

Post by seabre »

This brings up a lot of memories. I got lost on the way to jazz school and studied CS instead. Still went to school on a partial music scholarship. Wound-up playing so much anyway that it killed my grades. Worked out in the end, lol.

If you have a copy of the "illegal" Real Book you'll notice that there are a lot of Steve Swallow tunes in there :-)

There are definitely people that look down on using the Real Books/iReal as a crutch. IMHO it's not a huge deal. But, it is widely encouraged to learn as many commonly called tunes as you can though. You can find lists of those in various places: https://www.shermusic.com/1883217040.php and https://www.shermusic.com/1883217482.php for example. The reason for that honestly is that you will find yourself in a scenario where something called isn't in your book. Popular chord changes get re-used a lot, so the more material you know can help you "figure out" the unknown tune quickly. Called tune just rhythm changes? Blues changes? So What/Impressions changes? etc.

Re: The Real Book (2021)

#37

Post by shermantanktop »

CephalopodMD wrote: post #24
vunderba wrote: post #5

As an aside, fake books are a great way to get your feet wet learning how to extemporize while still having some guidance around the chord progression and melody. If you have an iPad, there's an app called iReal Pro with loads of lead sheets that add in some accompaniment (drums, guitar, etc.) so you can "play along" as well. https://www.irealpro.com

iReal pro is the new real book

For good and for bad. Its strengths are available to all and its gaps (melody!) and quirks (lack of variation) impact everyone’s development.

Re: The Real Book (2021)

#38

Post by shermantanktop »

neonscribe wrote: post #34
dhosek wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember a friend managed to get a copy of a real book in the 90s and was so excited about it. When I sat down to play some tunes out of it, I was unfamiliar with the notation where Cmin7 was written C-7 and CMaj7 was C△. I figured out the latter, but thought the former was Cdim7 which led to some weird harmonizations before I figured it out.

The lack of agreement on how to spell chord symbols is a genuine problem. Brandt and Roemer's 1976 Standardized Chord Symbol Notation provides a reasonable standard, which was adopted by Sher Music in their "New Real" line of books, but it's not quite the same as the style chosen by the original Real Book authors that was mostly kept in the Hal Leonard editions. iRealPro uses a slightly different style. Chord chart r…

A lot of opinionated variations on chord spellings, too, with tritone subs sometimes included or not, 7b9s represented different ways, etc.

Re: The Real Book (2021)

#39

Post by giraffe_lady »

shermantanktop wrote: post #37
CephalopodMD wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

iReal pro is the new real book

For good and for bad. Its strengths are available to all and its gaps (melody!) and quirks (lack of variation) impact everyone’s development.

This was true of the real book too. Quite a lot of the songs have incorrect transcriptions, sometimes they use a different key than the original, or the "original" key when a different one is more commonly heard. All editions of it I've seen have this to a significant extent, of course with differences making it even more confusion sometimes.

And a lot of natural variation has been elided with these tools, a lot of jazz classics I'm pretty sure didn't really have a "standard" version until after the real book took over; different fake books were popular in different cities and so there was regional performance variation that we don't see much of anymore.

There are probably novel issues introduced by the ireal fakes but a lot of them are the same problems my grandfather was observing as a young working musician when the real book became so dominant. They are extremely real downsides of these tools though.

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