Bluegrass Fake Book Recommendations

[bobsax]

I'm discovering a boatload of tunes by ear but a fake book would be really helpful at jam sessions.
Any Recommendations ?
how about
http://www.amazon.com/Real-Bluegrass...1688090&sr=1-8

[AntonLargiader]

When I think "Fake Book" I think more old-time than bluegrass. That's because our group plays with the Fiddler's Fakebook. I, on bass, use the chord names in the music as my starting point. I find that really helpful because as a beginner my ear isn't really ready to pick out all of the chords.

I think if you want to use a Fakebook it needs to have songs that are relevant to what you play. For old-time, the fiddler's Fakebook is great. For bluegrass, probably not so much. The other fakebooks from the same source are not as well regarded. I'd want to see a more complete table of contents for the book you cited.

There is very little out there in the way of bass-specific music. The Bluegrass College has a few tunes online for all five instruments, but that's about it.

The Bluegrass College - Fakebook : Free Bluegrass Tab

[ttreppa]

That's a good one. Parking Lot Picker's Song Book, Bluegrass Fake Book, Folksong Fake Book. Also you can make your own book that will include the songs you know and the ones played and the jams you attend. Keep pickin"
Terry Treppa

[ole Jason]

I like the Bluegrass Fake Book by Bert Casey. It has the melody written in it's simplest form so you get the pleasure of adding your own embellishments.

I haven't tried to Hal Leonard book, I'd be interested to get your impressions of it if you buy it.

[Ed Fuqua]

I thought the joke was "If you heard one bluegrass tune, you've heard them both."?

[mesmithnm]

I bought a copy of the Hal Leonard Bluegrass book. It's compiled/edited by Matt Flinner and it's pretty accurate. Like all fake books, any given song may or may not be transcribed from the version you're familiar with, but as far as I can tell, if it's a Bill Monroe tune it's typically transcribed from the original recorded version by Bill Monroe. Also, the choice of tunes may or may not be exactly what you wish. All in all, I found it to be useful and worth the 20 or so bucks I paid for it. If nothing else, it has all the lyrics included which always helps me since I can remember tunes but not so much when it comes to lyrics. And different lyrics are how you can tell there ARE more than two songs

[wallawallabob]

There are tons of songs on the net with lyrics and chords. Just google the name of the song you want and take your choice! A couple of site among many:

Guitar Tabs, Guitar Chords and Lyrics - Chordie

Bluegrass lyrics chords | Bluegrass Gospel

There are acouple of sites that for a small fee they provide a gizmo that will re-write the song in any key you want:

Molly And Tenbrooks Chords by Bill Monroe @ Ultimate-Guitar.Com

That last link should take you the tabs for "Molly and Tenbrooks", one of my favorite BG songs of all time - Thanks, Bill!

[bobsax]

Great stuff guys!
Thanks
I ordered the Real Bluegrass Book because it has the most songs and it's nice to have it all in one book.
here is the complete list. I haven't checked to see how many tunes(if any) aren't public domain. They should really sell it for less if they're not paying anybody for the songs.
The Real Bluegrass Book, Various, Fake Book - Song List - Hal Leonard Online
Also this is a great site
The Old Time Jam - Backup tracks for your favorite old time tunes
They have a large list of chords in order of key you can play along with and a downloadable 14 page PDF with all the chords for you to print or put on a mobile device.
The guys I jam with use a lot of these changes.

[mesmithnm]

Originally Posted by bobsax

Great stuff guys!
Thanks
I ordered the Real Bluegrass Book because it has the most songs and it's nice to have it all in one book.
here is the complete list. I haven't checked to see how many tunes(if any) aren't public domain. They should really sell it for less if they're not paying anybody for the songs.
The Real Bluegrass Book, Various, Fake Book - Song List - Hal Leonard Online
Also this is a great site
The Old Time Jam - Backup tracks for your favorite old time tunes
They have a large list of chords in order of key you can play along with and a downloadable 14 page PDF with all the chords for you to print or put on a mobile device.
The guys I jam with use a lot of these changes.

I think you'll find the book useful and a lot of fun. Also, there's a lot of stuff in there that you might suspect is in the public domain because we've all been playing them so long but in reality those tunes are copyright protected - like anything by Bill Monroe and the Hazel Dickens tunes. And there's newer stuff like some Tim O'Brien tunes and a couple recorded by AK&US that for sure are still under copyright. So I think the price is fair given that all deserve to be compensated for their efforts.

I haven't taken the book to a BG jam yet - I'm wondering if pulling out a fake book might go over like the proverbial t**d in a punch bowl - I guess I'll find out

[AntonLargiader]

Since we mentioned downloads and key changes, I'll describe what I do to build my own Fakebook. Well, a lot is already in the Fiddler's FB so that is taken care of. But when I need something else, which is surprisingly common:

First search for a score online, with chords. It's pretty rare that I find a score that I like, but it happens. Usually the score will be in PDF form.

Then I look for a MIDI file. Some sites have really boring MIDIs and a lot of sites have the same boring ones, but a nice MIDI has several tracks in it (mando, fiddle, bass, guitar, etc). I import that MIDI into MuseScore which gives me a complete written score in editable format. I'll delete staves I don't need, restructure to build the repeats (the MIDI gives a totally linear score) and then write in chord names that I get from elsewhere on the web. Within MuseScore I can change key at will, which is nice for tunes that are always published in one key but our local group always plays in another.

If worst comes to worst, I will create it from scratch in MuseScore with the help of bits and pieces that I find elsewhere.

Having a nice score in MuseScore is the most flexible, because I can reformat and print it however I want. I'd be happy to share what I have.

Musescore is a Sourceforge-type software project. MuseScore | Free music composition & notation software

[bobsax]

Hi Anton
Interesting stuff. It seems like a lot of work to me but I bet it's useful for melody players.
If you wanted just chords and since most of the bluegrass and old time chord charts are just two or three staves I think an ipod touch or iphone would work in conjunction with the iReal b (formerly iReakbook)
iReal b
There are some bluegrass tunes in the iReal b forums but I haven't figured out how to get them.
It may be faster(if you have a Mac) to do quick charts with the Mac version then put them on an iPodtouch or ipad. Here is a demo.
iReal b for Mac - YouTube
I'll be getting this when I have the time let you know how it works.
I have the iRealbook on my iPodtouch and it has a lot of great features;
1Quick look index
2transpose
3 different color schemes.
4 and set lists

[AntonLargiader]

IRB definitely looks interesting! I'm probably going to have an iPhone before long. We've talked about an app just like this.

As far as 'a lot of work' goes, it's a lot but it's not just for me. It's basically how I make new pages in the FFB for songs that we don't have. Banjo and I use the chords, the fiddler uses the melody. Just for me, I'd write out a chord chart (I have plenty of those also) and color it done.

[Steve Killingsworth]

If you're looking for songs and not just instrumentals Chris Jones' Wordbook is a great source. It's just him singing each tune accompanied by a guitar. It includes a book of lyrics and chords. It's great for learning lyrics and the melody.

And you'll find that Ed's little jest is not far from the truth. Once you get 10 or 15 tunes under your belt, you'll find that you can keep up on most others without much difficulty.

[bass_snake]

Thanks for this thread. I' ll check them books too.

Richie

[bobsax]

Well the Real Bluegrass Book came in the mail and my first impressions are not good.
I guess I was hoping for something like this
The Ultimate Country Fake Book - 5th Edition sheet music by Various | Sheet Music Plus
With the Ultimate Country Fake book, besides an alphabetical list there is a list of songs associated with artists.
It also has 700 tunes with often two songs per page and rarely
is there a chart that takes up two pages.

The Real Bluegrass Book has a large font and many songs taking up two pages. At a glance , it looks like too me that most of these songs could of been made to fit one page.

I also suspect that most of the songs are public domain and cost the publishers nothing to print as far as licensing.

[mesmithnm]

I hate to sound like a broken record, but most of those songs in the Real Bluegrass Book are NOT public domain, although many are. Each song that carries a copyright notice at the bottom of the page had to be licensed and that seems like well more than half from just thumbing through my copy of the book.

Also, that large font is common to all of the Real Book series (and started with the first unlicensed Real Book, a jazz fake book that came out of the Berklee school in the 70's - I got my first copy in '77 from the Copy Cop on Mass Ave). The idea is that the large font is easier to read on the bandstand in poor light (and when you've had one more beer than was prudent). I've had to try to read the small font fake books over the piano player's shoulder in a dark bar and that's when I grew to appreciate the large fonts. YMMV.