Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Adult Beginners Forum Do you enjoy playing from a fakebook?

I'm not asking for recommendations of just any book that teaches how to play from a fake book.... I'm pretty specific here...

I'm asking here if there is a good fake book teaching method book out there that emphasizes more than just one note melody playing on the right hand. Is there a good book out there that focuses from the start on teaching fake book playing with the right hand playing more than one note right hand melody stuff?

Thanks!
Angelo

A book like Levine's 'Jazz Piano Book' takes you from the first chapter to playing Shells, which is harder than it looks.
The following chapters dig into pretty advanced stuff, like sus / phrygian chord, and then rootless voicings.
Then more intense chapter.
It's very dense, so it's the kind of book, if you're a beginner, you'd finish the first chapter after maybe 2 months, one tune a week or so.

The limit that you hit real quick with fakebooks, is that they don't convey the rythmic / arrangment part of the tune so well. All tunes look the same, but should sound different. Take Speak Low, you would probably want to use a particular approach to that tune. Same for Ipanema, or WhisperNot, etc... So to me, they're useful in that you don't have to memorize the tunes, but they're not really good as a learning tool.

I'm not sure I helped, sorry if I didn't ...

Thank you, knotty!

Does that book focus only on jazz, though?
Or can its contents be applied to other types of songs, like pop ?

Angelo

I bought "How to play from a Fake Book" by Michael Esterowitz. That was reccommended here in piano world. But its a little advanced for me. I am almost finished with Alfreds AIO book one. I decided to shelf it until I have finished book 2. I do think it is a skill I would like to learn eventually.

Yes. I like it, and I have a great book (series of 3 in fact) that does more that one-hand-melody playing with the right hand. unfortunately it's in dutch....and hasn't been translated as far as I have been able to find out.

It starts from a real beginners level (you could start with it having 0 piano experience) , and gives loads of ideas on how to make songs sound different from each other rythm/arrangement wise. And it goers way into really improvising in part 3.

Ingrid

Realistically, it's just Jazz

"How to play piano despite years of lessons". The book is about 30 years old, but I found it a fairly good and entertaining read, in addition to the techniques that were taught.

The early focus on the book is taking a Piano/Vocal/Guitar arrangement, ignoring the Piano section, and doing your own thing by following the Vocal line & chord names. Which is what is contained in a lead sheet / fake book. The initial technique is playing the chord note as an octave low on the keyboard, bouncing between that & the chord itself toward the middle every other beat. Then playing the melody an octave higher than written. This way you are using the entire keyboard, not just the middle section.

Then, later on it goes into throwing additional notes into the right hand. The basic rule of thumb is to take the chord, and play it in the right hand, but play it in whatever inversion that gives the melody note as the top note of the chord. If the melody note isn't a note of the chord, then play it by itself in the right hand.

Another technique I've been following is to study arrangements that sound good, and figure out what was done with the chords. What I've found out is that you throw additional chord notes in the right hand whenever the music feels like it needs to be stronger, such as at the beginning and end of a musical phrase, and when the music is building a crescendo. But always play the right hand chord in an inversion which keeps the melody note on top. Oh, and when you find what works, don't be afraid to pencil in the additional notes on your lead sheet (or a photocopy of it).

'Then, later on it goes into throwing additional notes into the right hand. The basic rule of thumb is to take the chord, and play it in the right hand, but play it in whatever inversion that gives the melody note as the top note of the chord. If the melody note isn't a note of the chord, then play it by itself in the right hand.'

That's more or less how my 'fake' books start from book 1, page 1

Thanks everyone.

IngridT: What is the name of that book you have that's written in Dutch?

Thanks!

Inorder to play the right hand with more than just a melody note requires you to learn first how to add the chord tones below the melody note as Ingrid said.

It took me a while to be able to do this but continually practicing from a fake book will eventually lead to success in this.

The left hand can sound good by mearly playing open chords, or the so called shell voicing. This means that if the chord is a dominant seventh just play the root and the dom 7th. You can add the 3rd in the right hand.

As advised above, "How to play from a fake book" is excellent and I would recommend it. Another good book to have is a book of chords such as Mel Bay's "Delux Encyclopedia of Piano Chords". I used this book as a reference when I was learning the chord inversions.

Good luck

Excellent string. IngridT, appreciate your comments on How to play from a Fake Book. That's now on my wish list.

Derekp mentioned How to Play Piano despite years of lessons. I'm re-reading this again - started last week - and picking up valuable information that did not register the first time I read the book. IMHO it's on the must have list.

Good string, appreciate every one's comments.

Malcolm

Angel, majones,

The books I have are called 'Popsongs spelen, zo doe je dat'(Playing popsongs, this is the way to do it) )by Bernie Vane.

Anytime I hear fake-book talk at the forum here I think these are excellent books in comparison to some of the stuff mentioned here. Just because they start from page 1 with the (inverted) chord approach for the melody hand. And I must say that working from these books really improved my 'classical' playing as well. All of a sudden I started to notice all kind of (inverted) chords in mainly the left hand of many pieces written in 2 clefs. Makes the note reading a lot easier. And I became 'easier' with fingering stuff. By playing all these inverted chords without actually reading all the separate notes (in the popsong book, working from a single melody line) you are forced to develop a kind of 'natural' feeling for fingering: often you play a chord with the right hand on the first note of a bar, but you still have to be able to play the following notes in a practical way, so you have to adapt your chord-fingering to enable whatever comes next. This is a nice 'different' approach from the more 'fixed' and written-down fingering you learn in the first or second Alfreds book.

If I made anybody enthousiastic enough to order a dutch copy, I promise that if you start up a separate thread on it I'll supply you guys with translation services where necessary! OK??

Ingrid

PS.. I neglected my popsongs lately, but writing about it...I'll start working on some new ones!

Angelo, I started out playing from fakebooks but they can lead you down a path of dissapointment in the future if you soley rely on them.

I think they are a great tool to use if you want to improvise but it's the left hand that can suffer if you just end up playing never ending arpeggios or chords.

If you DO use a fakebook, try and improvise your LEFT hand almost as much as your melody line right hand so your bass line does'nt end up sounding predictable all the time.

I have been working on this myself and have graduated from playing never ending arpeggios (left hand) to more elaborate stuff.

Everything in moderation!.

Fakebooks are fun and a great tool to improvise from but don't let your sightreading abilities suffer as a result. Do a little of everything.

IngridT - The Dow was up 300 points today so I celebrated by buying Esterowitz's book from Amazon. Doing my share to stimulate the economy.

Thanks for the heads-up.

Malcolm

This is exactly my problem. I know chords and can improvise the right hand quite freely, going up, going down, some varitations here and there, change in rhythm....

but the left hand is predictable broken chords.



MSH, did you use a book or books? Or did you just try different things out yourself?

Dave, I'm not just famous for my lustful body and charming personality but I actually made a contribution of sorts a few years back. It was the invention (although a bunch of people probably do this anyway!) of the Mr Super-Hunky method of learning to play piano designed for people with dodgeball mentality or better. I set the bar a bit low to include my own acuity.

In a nutshell, this method is a combination somewhere between playing from a fake book and the actual written score. Maybe more like using an "easy piano" version of a piece of music and then improvising from that. In addition to doing that, many times I will re-write certain sections of a score or add something to it in sections.

I will normally use an easy version of a score more like a guide as where to go with the tune.

People have mixed reviews on this method as you WILL need to be able to read an "easy" piano score. Beginer level sightreading is needed. [[Don't let this discourage you though because it should'nt take you longer than a year to be able to play a basic "easy version" score.

The possible problem with my method is instead of continuing to learn more advanced level sightreading, you take a different path towards improvising and playing by ear. This way you will be able to imrovise or virtualy any tune as much as you desire. In addition you will eventually be able to play by ear basic combinations that will start to sound nice. You will not be able to play more advanced scores as your sightreading abilites will be limited to a "beginer" level.

Of course with any method, you will get out of it as much as you put into it unless you are naturally gifted in that area.

If your goal is to be able to perform advanced scores as written, then this method is not for you.

If you really want to be able to embellish any tune that you hear or create your own music, this as will numerous other methods will work. You simply need to choose whatever method that is most compatible with your learning abilites. PLUS, choose a method that meets YOUR wishes, not somebody elses.