Digital Edition of The New Real Book, Vol. 1 Released!

For about 15 years now, we have been getting repeated requests to offer our fake books in digital form, as musicians increasingly use iPads, Kindles, computers, etc. to practice, rehearse and gig with.

Since the print licenses already obtained for the hard copy of these books did not extend to digital use, each song had to be re-licensed, and this was simply not possible until last year. At that point, the major copyright holders decided to allow digital use of the songs they controlled in The New Real Book – Vol. 1, and that started the ball rolling.

Many months and endless hours of work later, and The New Real Book, Vol. 1 – Digital Edition is now available for download!

The book is beautifully crafted from the highest quality scans we could produce. (The original book was hand-copied and so no digital source files exist.) Many thanks to Sunil Sharma for a careful and professional job in that department.

The book features an interactive Table of Contents where you can click on any tune and be immediately transported there—an invaluable feature on gigs. Every effort was made to retain the look and feel of the original edition, and we are happy with how close we were able to come, even with the photographs.

All musicians who will be using this digital edition owe a debt of gratitude to my webmaster, Bob Afifi, for single-handedly pushing for this project to come to fruition, and for his invaluable aid and advice in creating the highest quality finished product possible. It simply wouldn’t have happened without him. Thanks, Bob!

By giving musicians a legal, high-class alternative to the poorly-done, illegal scans of our New Real Books, we hope to make everyone’s job of creating great music just a bit easier.

Anyway, enough said. We hope you enjoy our this gem as much as we do!
– Chuck Sher