Item Number: HL.240221

ISBN 9780634060380. 8.5x11 inches.

The Real Books are the best-selling jazz books of all time. Since the 1970s, musicians have trusted these volumes to get them through every gig, night after night. The problem is that the books were illegally produced and distributed, without any regard to copyright law, or royalties paid to the composers who created these musical masterpieces. Hal Leonard is very proud to present the first legitimate and legal editions of these books ever produced. You won't even notice the difference, other than that all of the notorious errors have been fixed: the covers and typeface look the same, the song list is nearly identical, and the price for our edition is even cheaper than the original! Every conscientious musician will appreciate that these books are now produced accurately and ethically, benefitting the songwriters that we owe for some of the greatest tunes of all time! 400 songs, including Body and Soul, Easy Living, Take Five and hundreds more!

About Hal Leonard Fake Books

A "fake book" contains songs written in a concise format that includes only the melody and chords, letting you interpret the song's performance as you feel is appropriate. This is great for quickly learning songs by yourself or with an ensemble.

Each song in a fake book only has a single melody actually written out in notes, which is usually the vocal or lead melody. This melody will have the lyrics written beneath the notes, with each word aligned to its corresponding note. Above the notes of the melody will appear the names of the appropriate chords to play - for example, a "C minor" chord would be written as "Cmin" or Cm", rather than writing out all of the notes in those chords as they appeared in the original version of the song.

This format is very compact, which is why you will often see fakebooks containing 500 or more songs.