(SNP) As far as I know the Real Book didn't exist until
approximately 1973. I was at Berklee when it came out and have met the
guys who started it. Mitch Coodley and Stu Balcomb.
Unless I was terribly misled at the time that's when it came out.
I was actually the first guy in Toronto to sell the RB.
I brought it home from boston and made up several copies using the U of
T copy machine. I then wandered the halls of the then new jazz program
at Humber College like a drug dealer: "Anybody want to buy a fake book?"
The Spaces I pdf appears to be a mixture of several fakebooks that were
around in the late 70s, including The Real Book. Some of the lead sheets
in this book are just photocopies of the lead sheets in the Real Book.
Spaces II looks like somebody decided to write out the Real Book
themselves for some reason. Lots of the same tunes but different copying.
Spaces III reminds me of a fake book going around here in the 80s that
everybody called The Montreal Book. Not sure if they're the same though.
Spaces IV looks like somebody's weird edit of The Real Book.
The Spaces 5 pdf is a scan of another fake book I bought in Boston in
the mid 70s. I've still got it in a binder somewhere in my basement. It
never seemed very accurate to me, but has some great tunes in it.
I especially like the Spaces 6 pdf with all the transcribed solos. I've
never seen that before. At first glance it seems pretty accurate too.
I was looking for something to practise my reading with and I think that
this is going o be it.
Post by GerryRegarding why the first page of the current edition of Spaces has a
reference to the Real Book, I don't know. It might well be a newer
updated version of that volume. The first editions I had of the Spaces
volumes were pretty ugly. I haven't seen them in years, though I think
they are living in my garage.
I know that when I first got the Real Book I found some tunes that had
appeard in the earlier Spaces hodge-podge but had been corrected of some
bad changes, and even more noteworthy were cleaned up and easy to read
where they had been ugly and difficult (with 5 bars per line and other
aspects).
--
Joey Goldstein
Hi Joey
I got my first fakebook in Toronto in 1976 - didn't have a title or
cover, but I've always referred to it as "Ted Moses' Fakebook" or
"Mother Necessity Jazz Workshop Fakebook". All the transcriptions are
tidy and readable, and there are very few errors. In Vancouver a few
years later, I got "The Real Vocal Book", and that was the first time
I had heard the despicable word "Real" in such a title.
The only real transcriptions are ones you do yourself. This should not
be a lost art.
Spaces 6 is an incredible mess, but it is still a valuable resource.
In order to transcribe a Coltrane solo, you'd have to have good chops
and good understanding of melody and harmony. But how could you get
that if you can't write a readable chart? Even Humber College requires
good notation skills.
Now we don't have to use photocopiers in order to read these charts!
It is so affordable - and convenient - to have the digital version. I
don't feel bad about owning these digital copies because I am using
them strictly for research.
No wonder all this stuff has been republished professionally. Lots of
people want to read it. But even the pros working for Sher and Hal
Leonard make mistakes. So I take matters into my owns hands, and not
just with a pencil in the margins.
I'll use these old resources and make my own readable charts using
Finale (whatever version available on whatever computer's at hand).
And when I get around to sharing them, you-all will be the first to
know.
And I'll try to remember to cite the source.
AMMO