The Only Fake Book for Beginning Improvisers & Ensembles
The first-ever fake book designed specifically for beginning jazz musicians, The Real Easy Book: Volume 1 helps students and young combos sound good right away — while learning classic jazz repertoire and building their musical confidence.
Developed and road-tested for years at the Stanford Jazz Workshop, this book includes simple but inspiring arrangements of great jazz tunes, along with detailed support for rhythm section players and horn lines written in three-part harmony.
We have saved band directors countless hours by writing out everything your band needs to know to sound good: Sample piano voicings, guitar chord diagrams, sample bass lines and useful scales for improvisation are included with each tune.
In addition, The Real Easy Book – Vol.1 is now written for three horns!
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Three-horn arrangements of each tune
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Separate pages for each horn player
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Parts simple enough for beginning players, but which create fuller, much more interesting performances.
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The new parts are written in a limited range to be playable by a variety of instruments.
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Each tune now includes harmony parts for the melody, background parts behind soloists, ensemble 'shout choruses,' etc.
We’ve included the easiest tunes from Horace Silver, Eddie Harris, Freddie Hubbard, Red Garland, Cannonball Adderley, Sonny Rollins, Cedar Walton, Wes Montgomery and more!
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Developed and road-tested for years at the Stanford Jazz Workshop's summer jazz camps. It works!
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Each song will sound good played in rock, funk or Latin styles, as well as swing.
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Perfect for individual students of all ages, as well as jazz combos.
Sample Tune: Cold Duck Time
Check out the Complete Index of Songs!
Sample Songs:
Spiral-bound, 172 pages of fun and inspiring arrangements by renowned pianist, arranger, and author Larry Dunlap.
A separate Drum Chart Supplement is now available with charts for each song and great instructional material for the drummer to learn all the different grooves used in jazz!
For an additional extensive audio supplement, check out:
https://www.jeffmiguel.com/store/p/the-real-easy-book-audio-recordings
Endorsements:
“The Real Easy Book - Volume 1 is my all-time favorite entry-level fake book, and Volume 2 is just as impressive for the intermediate level improviser. I really like having a fake book with written-out scales for soloing, chord voicings, guitar diagrams and bass lines. The selection of tunes is awesome. Extraordinary care has been given to the accuracy of each tune. Both volumes should be required fake books for jazz improvisation instruction.”
— The Jazz Educators Journal
“Finally a book made for people who are beginning to play jazz. A compilation of great tunes, presented with succinct information for all instrumentalists. I wholeheartedly recommend this to anyone who is — or works with — a beginning improviser. Bravo!”
— Bruce Forman
“This is exactly what I have been looking for for 35 years. This is great stuff - instant jazz combo! The results we have gotten from The Real Easy Book already are fabulous and suddenly lots of kids are not afraid of jazz and improvisation anymore. Thank you!”
— John Herdan
