Saxophone Forum


by vipegrad
(47 posts)
19 years ago

The real book

I am interested in finding a real book for jazz. I am wondering which would be most widely used. Do the page numbers in different brands or editions corospond? Also,i play tenor sax. Any help would be appreciated. Thank you.

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  1. by knorter
    (205 posts)

    19 years ago

    Re: The real book

    It would help to know what kind of jazz you are interested in playing because my answers would change based on the material you are interested in. As far as transposition goes I would recommend getting a book in concert key no matter what you purchase. This will teach you to transpose and will enable you to think about songs in different keys. These are 2 really important skills to have when playing jazz. What songs or types of songs do you want to play?

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    1. by vipegrad
      (47 posts)

      19 years ago

      Re: The real book

      im not quite sure, not swing, but i was mainly wondering if there is a certain one that most people have to bring to gigs.

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      1. by knorter
        (205 posts)

        19 years ago

        Re: The real book

        Well the one that most people have, at least when I was in college, is "The Real Book". There are several legal volumes of this but I'm referring to the illegal copy that looks horrible. The only problem with this book is that a lot of the changes are wrong and even some of the melodies are inaccurate. Plus tunes like Autumn Leaves are written in a key that most people don't play it in unless they learned the song from this book(although it is always helpful to learn a tune is many keys). The legal volumes of "The Real Book" are ok but not great. I actually think that Jamey Aebersold's play-alongs have the most accurate versions of standards but that gets expensive really quickly because each volume only contains about 15 songs and they cost about $15 a volume. Another book I find helpful is "Pocket Changes". This is a book that is in concert C and contains only the changes to just about any standard a beginner would want, but no melody. This is really helpful for practicing and also to give to the rhythm section on a gig when they don't know a tune that you know. This isn't helpful for melodies and would require you to learn them from another source. All of these books contain standards like "All the Things You Are", "Blue Bossa", etc... universal tunes that everyone should know whether you are in California, Iowa or New York. When you say swing are you talking about big band music and older songs like "In the Mood"? I'm just making sure that I'm leading you to the right material. A few of those types of tunes are in these books for gigging purposes but mostly these books contain standards and bebop tunes. Speaking of bebop, the "Omnibook" is one of the better sources for learning Bird tunes. The best source for learning tunes should be your ears. Once you get some of these books you should focus on buying the definitive recordings of several popular standards and try to memorize the melody and chord changes by using your ears. When you feel that you are ready to do this let me know and I can give you some tips about learning tunes.

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        1. by syrasax
          (75 posts)

          19 years ago

          Re: The real book

          The Real Book is real and only 25 bucks. aebersold.com/Merchant2/merchant.mvc?Screen=PROD&Product_Code=REAL&Ca tegory_Code=FAKBOO

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        2. by sax_maniac
          (984 posts)

          19 years ago

          Re: The real book

          Doesn't the version 6 real book have modern legible printed manuscript rather than the (sometimes garbled) hand written manuscript in the earlier books? That's certainly a plus if that's true.

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        3. by syrasax
          (75 posts)

          19 years ago

          Re: The real book

          That is my understanding sax maniac. I just put the order in today so I don't have it in front of me yet.

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        4. by vipegrad
          (47 posts)

          19 years ago

          Re: The real book

          I shouldnt say that i dont want swing music, because i know thats gets played a lot at gigs. My main purpose is to find out what book most people will have at a gig on any given night. Thanks for all the help by the way.

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        5. by knorter
          (205 posts)

          19 years ago

          Re: The real book

          Using books is ok for now but your end goal should be to not need a book to do a gig involving standards. We all have to start somewhere. Let me know when you are ready to learn tunes from memory. As a moderator I can't endorse an illegal cd-rom of real books :) Good luck.

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      2. by Spike
        (248 posts)

        19 years ago

        Re: The real book

        Try tenor madness in Cedar Falls, Iowa. Otherwise, you can probably find one locally.

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        1. by jbroad572
          (46 posts)

          19 years ago

          Re: The real book

          Forgive the ignorance, but what exactly is a real book?

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          1. by sax_maniac
            (984 posts)

            19 years ago

            Re: The real book

            "The Real Book" is a book of jazz standards that has evolved over time. It can be found in Bb, Eb, C, bass clef, and vocal. Several volumes of each. It's ok for picking out coarse melodies and chord progressions - lots of scribbly manuscript that can be tough to decipher at times. that's where I think volume 6 was introduced (officially and legally) to make it easier to read. the Real Book has a "gray market" history as there may be quite a number of transcriptions in there that are not licensed. Again, I think Version 6 has been published to clear up this matter. I've got most of them on CD-ROM.

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            1. by jbroad572
              (46 posts)

              19 years ago

              Re: The real book

              Thanks for the clarification. Sounds cool. Might need to pick one up for myself.

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