Real & Fake Books

Real & Fake Books

Real and Fake Books are essential when it comes to performing music of a complex nature. Containing the main chords melody lines and sometimes lyrics of a song these books were created to help jazz and classical musicians perform live impromptu musical arrangements. The original Fake Books were issued in the late 40s: Fake Book Volume 1 and Fake Book Volume 2 together encompassed about 2000 songs that dated back to the turn of the 20th century. However these songs were illegally printed which meant that copyright owners received no royalties. By 1964 it was noted by the FBI's office in Cleveland Ohio that "practically every professional musician in the country owns at least one of these fake music books". By that point there were many other Fake Books issued including two Modern Jazz Fake Book volumes and Fake Book Volume 3.

Although these Fake Books served as indispensable source material to musicians across the U.S. they weren't without their errors. For example there were many inaccurate chord changes and the roots of the harmony were not included. For this reason Fake Books were only useful to professionally-trained musicians. In the mid-70s unknown students at the Berklee College of Music aimed to fix these errors by releasing their own versions of the Fake Books. Known as "Real Books" these editions were edited to contain a hipper more up-to-date repertoire alongside the standard songs from previous decades. Today licensed versions of Real and Fake Books are easily available thanks to music publisher Hal Leonard - who in 2004 obtained the rights to most of the songs found in the original Real Book volumes.