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Playing from a fake book

Written by Administrator Sunday, 31 August 2008 13:56

Playing from a "fake book" is really just a matter of some simple computation. If you can balance a check book, you can play from a fake book. But it does take some prerequisite knowledge.

The Ability to Read the Melody

Of course, you have to be able to read at least notes on the treble clef.  To practice, check out this treble clef sight reading trainer.  If you are a beginner and can't read music, don't worry, if you think about it, if you are interested in playing a song from a fake book, you will already know the tune. I mean why would you want to learn to play a song you don't know?  So, you don't really need to be able to read music all that well to get started, because the melody notes and rhythms are already somewhere in that vast gray mass behind your eyeballs. :)

The Ability to Read the Chord Symbols

The chord symbols are not that difficult to read, for a good primer, of course, you can check out my "How to Speed Read Piano Chord Symbols", and then study with the free flash tools on this site.

Putting the melody and the chords together

This is the most interesting part and it's what has kept me interested in this hobby for so many years. This is also where the creativity comes in. But at first, you will not want to be creative when you are reading from a fake book, because you will want to be consistent.

Here's a simple set of rules to help you get started:

Playing triads from a fake book:

1) If the melody note is the root of the chord, play the fifth and third underneath.

2) If the melody note is the third of the chord, play the root and fifth underneath.

3) If the melody note is the fifth of the chord, play the third and root underneath.

Here's a melody, as it might look in a fake book (except of course for the note names written under the staff):

Here's the melody harmonized according to the rules just laid out above:

Playing seventh chords from a fake book:

The rules get more complicated as you add seventh chords.

1) If the melody note is the root, you should play at least the third and seventh underneath.

2) If the melody note is the third, you should play at least the seventh underneath (and the root in the bass). Also, DON'T DOUBLE THE THIRD -- unless you have very experienced at harmony and voice leading.

3) if the melody note is the fifth, you should play at least the third and seventh underneath.

4) if the melody note is the seventh, you should at least play the third underneath. I would also add either the root or the fifth (or both if you like).

 Here's the same melody as before, but this time, I've replaced the C chord with a C7 chord.  You notice, the biggest change is that the chord must include the seventh (Bb).  The fifth becomes less important, since it's not a chord-defining tone.  For it to be a seventh chord, you must only have the third and seventh.  Chords with just the third and seventh are often called shell voicings.

(If this sounds too complicated, you can always just practice the exercises in my book "How to Play from a Fake Book Without Gettin' the Blues").

Playing 9ths and 13ths from a fake book:

The rules for 9ths and 13ths are the same as for seventh chords, just these chords require one extra note, either the ninth (up two half-steps from the octave), or the thirteen (down three half-steps from the octave).

More practice

To practice, I would check out my book "How to Play from a Fake Book without Gettin' the Blues". It has 200 pages of exercises that will take all the thought out of playing from a fake book and make it as automatic as touch typing -- that is of course, unless you want to get more creative, then it's a nice framework from which to expand.

You can view sample chapters at Patternpiano.com.