How to Play from a Fake Book

Rating:
Summary: disapointing
Review: I enjoyed the opening of this book very much, but most of it's suggestions to develop a "professional sound" require 4 note chords with greater than an octave reach, with no alternatives for those of us with smaller hands.

Rating:
Summary: disapointing
Review: I enjoyed the opening of this book very much, but most of it's suggestions to develop a "professional sound" require 4 note chords with greater than an octave reach, with no alternatives for those of us with smaller hands.

Rating:
Summary: Great way to learn piano
Review: I took classical piano lessons growing up, which is a very rote way to learn. I didn't particularly like it and I didn't particularly get good at understanding music -- I got good at fingering specific pieces.

I would have, in retrospect, preferred the method of learning and understanding the chords so I could pick up pieces on my own. The idea of "fake" books is to improvise the harmony based on the chords and play the to melody line along with it. By learning the chords and some ways of stringing them together, you can master just about anything.

It's not that simple -- it's a lot of practice to be able to turn chords on the sheet into realtime music. But it's a lot of fun, and I actually "get it" now on how music is put together.

This book in particular is well written, bringing you quickly to understand how to do this. It assumes basic ability to read music. And it is slightly corny in parts. But aside from that, its a nice self-paced tutorial into playing from "fake" books or other sheet music that includes chord information.

Rating:
Summary: How To Play From a Fake Book
Review: This is a great book! It's well written and easy to understand. It gives a good introduction to some basic music theory as well as presenting the tools needed for improvisation, which is bascially what playing from a Fake book is: taking a written melody with chord symbols and putting it together with an accompaniment arrangement that you create! If you're looking to learn about playing from chords, or creating piano arrangements, or an introduction to jazz theory; this is a great place to start.