PG Music Home Forums PG Music Product Forums Band-in-a-Box for Windows Jazz Standards????

The fake disks I sell are nothing but a time saver for you.

It takes hundreds of hours to get the fake disks to sound as good as they do, and really, that is what you are paying for.

You can buy the fake books I used, enter the published chord changes, find the best style, check it, fix your typo errors, check it again, make minor changes to make it work better with BiaB, check it again, and put your own fake disk together.

The books I use are from major publishers. That doesn't mean the chord changes are exactly right, but they are much better than most people who used his/her ears and published the chords somewhere on the 'net for free.

Case in point. A good customer asked for "Another Day In Paradise" by Bertie Higgins. An old soft rock song that meant something to him. I couldn't find the chords on the 'net, and couldn't download the sheet music either. I listened, put my guess at the chords and then asked on a musician forum if anyone knew the song. About a dozen different guesses came up. We were all close but disagreeing. I found a used copy on the sheet music on an auction site (ebay I think) and bought it. None of us were right, and it isn't a very difficult song. With Jazz it gets even harder to get the correct chords with your ear.

I prefer to go with published chords as they are usually either spot on or close to the correct chords. Often especially with jazz standards, the original chords were notated for ukuleles thus limited to 4 notes. Many of the fake books have expanded that for piano/guitar and many of them use more contemporary chords.

If I want a chord substitution, I want to make the choice, know why I'm making the sub, and compare both to be sure the sub is better to my ears than the original.

The Real Book (6th edition) fixed most of the errors of the pirate Real Books that were riddled with errors. A couple of the Hal Leonard books slightly simplify them, the chord sub books put the contemporary chords and the author's substitutions, and especially the Sher books strive to stick to the contemporary agreed on correct chords.

If you want free, in most instances you get what you pay for. If you buy the books and do it yourself, it takes a lot of time. If you buy from me you save that time.

Insights and incites by Notes