ISBN: 0793582598
List Price: $45.00
Amazon Price: $29.70
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Avg Cusomer Rating: 5
Reviews:
Summary: Great resource !
Although like a lot of Hal Leonard books the chords can be a bit "commercial" and the layout lacks that professional fake book lead sheet style that makes it more comfortable to use on a bandstand, I have to say that this is an incredibly useful resource of showtunes - - bordering on voluminous.
About 95% of the tunes the gigging Jazz musician plays comes from showtunes, but few Jazz musicians are willing to openly come out and say, "I play showtunes," that said, to Jazz performers looking for those undertapped standards missed in the REAL BOOKS, this book is a gem... To vocalists, cabaret performers and working piano lounge players consider this a lifetime repoitoire that can fit in a computer carrying bag (minus the computer.)
As for the chords... most of them work quite well with solo piano (especially some of the diminished passing chords and stuff like that) but for ensemble playing a combination of ear and pen and pencil will be necessary.
Tunes are written in reasonable keys, have lyrics and range from classic Cole Porter/Richard Rogers/George Gershwin Broadway to some of the newer stuff (circa A Chorus Line, Jesus Christ Superst, etc.) And as an added bonus, this well indexed fake book even includes a section where the musicals that the tunes came from get brief bios... not only education, but great if you'd like to have a cute, informed Michael Feinsteinish way of showing that you know ABOUT the tunes.
Spiral binding makes the book easy to use on a piano... but weight will be an issue with music stands, and in times these spiral books fall apart so my suggestion is to buy the book and put copies of frequently played tunes in clear sheet binders.
So far, thrilled with this purchase !
Summary: About as good as you can reasonably hope for
I've always been a broadway buff, and I bought this book just for casually toying with my autoharp at home; I'm not a professional musician.
For my purpose, this book is wonderful: I can easily play the songs from the listed chords, and there's a huge variety. I think it has done a great job of picking out the most classic songs from the early through mid 20th century, although by necessity as it gets closer to the present it gets a little more sparse, fleshing out the more popular shows a the expense of some of the excellent but less known ones.
While some reviewers have correctly complained that the book doesn't include everything... if it did, it would look like an encyclopedia, and cost as much. It has a well selected set of music given that they have to cram it into a book you can carry in your backpack. Also, keep in mind that they can't necessarily get the rights to publish everything at a price that would make the book affordable. I accepted before I bought it that I'll need to supplement it with a few more song books, but it's a heck of a lot cheaper to buy this than to buy a songbook from every musical I'd want one for.
The indices are very useful: notice the plural, indices. It's indexed by song title, by show title, and by composer.
I'm rating this book 4 stars instead of 5 primarily because of the binding: I hate plastic comb bindings. I know it's a big book and they want to bind it cheaply so it's affordable, but even a wire spiral would be better... marginally, anyway. I'm convinced the pages will eventually tear along the binding, so I know that I'll eventually have to figure out a way to re-bind it.
My other complaint, and it's fairly minor, is that some of the songs are a bit sparse on chords: I ocasionally find myself wanting to pencil in a few extra chords... but hey, it's my book now, I can do that. If you're really helpless with music you'll have a problem with that, but then, if you're that helpless with music you probably wouldn't want a fake book, now would you?
Summary: Not necessarily what you expect
This book has some interesting good and bad points. First, the good: It's a fake book in the Hal Leonard style, in original keys, of a wide selection of the best known Broadway songs. Lots of good stuff. And unlike The Ultimate Fake Book (which is great for other reasons), the songs are conveniently organized by Show rather than by Title. A nice addition is a synopsis of each show and its relevance at the beginning of the book.
But the bad... first, like other very large Hal Leonard books, the binding is a plastic tab that is hard to turn relative to spiral bindings and tends to come apart over time. Second, many (but not all) songs have what appear to be guitar chord charts, which are distracting to everyone else. And third, it doesn't have all the songs you expect.
For example, it doesn't have songs from the movie versions (which you may not realize weren't part of the broadway version) or songs from updated broadway versions. The play "Grease" is represented, for example, but lacks the theme song (Grease), Hopelessly Devoted to You, Greased Lightning and other big hits from the show. Similarly, Starlight Express in its original incarnation was not that big a hit. "The New Starlight Express" was. Amazingly, there are only a few songs from the latter in the book; it's missing "He'll Whistle At Me" and "Next Time You Fall In Love", along with about six others. This means, of course, that after seeing the (current) broadway production, you won't be able to pick up this book and play the tunes; they're not there.
However, there are a LOT of great tunes that are there, the organization is great, and as always Hal Leonard did a great job of arranging them.
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