Fake Books

About “Fake” Books (NOT specifically for harmonica): A “fake” book contains songs written in a concise format that includes only the melody and chords which can be used and read by all instruments. This allows you to interpret the song’s performance as you feel is appropriate. You must be able to read music and chord notation to use “Fake” books (see the Harmonica Song Books and Tab Books for easy-to-read harmonica notation). This is great for quickly learning songs by yourself or with an ensemble. Each song in a fake book only has a single melody actually written out in notes, which is usually the vocal or lead melody. This melody will have the lyrics written beneath the notes, with each word aligned to its corresponding note. Above the notes of the melody will appear the names of the appropriate chords to play – for example, a “C minor” chord would be written as “Cmin” or Cm”, rather than writing out all of the notes in those chords as they appeared in the original version of the song. This format is very compact, which is why you will often see “fake” books containing 500 or more songs.”