Your musicians will need information from you. You need to bring your music sheets to the stand. How do you that?

  1. Print your chart / music sheet with the chords. Just one page, maximum two will be wonderful. Use the app iRealPro, for example, to get easily readable music sheets. Your musicians must be able to read them at first glance and sometimes in dim lit rooms.
  2. Always print 3 or more music sheets, you may be handing them out to a pianist or guitarist, a bass player and/or a drummer.
  3. In the previous chapter you’ve made decisions on the tempo, style, intro, etc. of the songs you want to perform. Write this information in your chart(s) or on a separate piece of paper, so you won’t have to elaborately explain to your musicians.

Real & Fake books explained

Realbooks‘ and ‘Fakebooks’ used to be the primary source for jazz musicians for a long time (approx. 1970 – 2010) until apps like iRealPro took over. These books provide the melody, which is handy, and the chord symbols are still big enough, most of the time, to be instantly readable.

Before that, most jazz musicians learned new tunes from records, which is a great way because you have to either remember them or write them down yourself. In both cases, you are training your ears and memory; both precious assets for (jazz) musicians.

However, any changes made by the performing musicians to the original chords or melody could easily go undetected. It’s like the game in which a sentence is told to someone who has to repeat it to someone else and so on; in the end, you end up with an entirely different sentence.

This has often happened through time, which is one of the reasons why no two books or apps contain precisely the same chords or even melody to a tune. Finding the oldest renditions of songs will likely get you closest to the actual intention of the composer.

Most Realbook and Fakebook charts are just fine for most purposes.

Real/Fake books can be purchased! For high or low voices! Including lyrics! Here they are on Amazon, but Google “Vocal Real Book” and add “high voice” or “low voice” and you’ll find other vendors as well.

Low voices: https://www.amazon.com/Real-Book-Vol-Low-Voice/dp/1423451228

High voices: https://www.amazon.com/Real-Vocal-Book-voice-Second/dp/0634060805

Songbooks

Songbooks of a composer, for example ‘The Gershwin Songbook’, are an excellent source for melodies and lyrics, but the chords, though they may be original, aren’t always suited for jazz purposes. On top of that, these songbooks usually contain the piano accompaniment as well, making them hard to read at a glance. Learning the melody and lyrics from songbooks is great. Using songbooks as sheet music for jazz musicians is not the way to go.

Realbooks, Fakebooks and apps like iRealPro are much better suited for that.

New

The latest versions of the ‘Realbooks’ – called “New Real Book” provide lyrics as well. Though they are an excellent source for sheet music, they don’t contain nearly as much American Songbook compositions as the earlier editions. For that you need to try and find the ‘Vocal Realbook’ or some editions of the ‘Fakebooks’, but they can be hard to find and not all of them are legal.

The internet or other jazz vocalists are your best chance. Instead, the latest versions of the ‘Realbooks’ offer a lot more modern jazz compositions; unfortunately many of which aren’t songs: meaning they contain no lyrics. However, these latest Realbooks are still a great source for good sheet music of some jazz standards and some newer material.

iRealPro

Apps like iRealPro (iOS & Android) provide the opportunity to download free charts of hundreds of jazz standards. Most are ok, some excellent, some rubbish. If you find great charts for iRealPro – they are the best charts to use in jam sessions. Very easy to read at a glance. Songbird’s course ‘How to sing jazz’ provides 50 tried and tested iRealPro charts of popular jazz standards – a great way for you to start building your repertoire!

Use this app to study, so you’ll train yourself to always be in time. The app doesn’t stop when you make a little mistake :), you have to continue, just like in real performances. Also, when you print its charts, you will be performing with the chords that you are already used to.

Here’s what working with iRealPro is like.

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