Lead Sheets and Fake Books

A "lead sheet" is a sheet of music that includes a tune's melody in music notation, chord symbols above the melody line, and, sometimes, the song's lyrics below the melody line. Root around in your grandma's piano bench and find some old sheet music for a popular song of years gone by. Sheet music has all that information plus a simple piano arrangement in bass and treble clef staves below the melody line. Many lead sheets from the old days were made by cutting and pasting sheet music to eliminate the piano arrangement staves.

Professional musicians use lead sheets to play improvised interpretations of songs in their own performance styles. The melody line tells them what the melody is. The chord symbols tell a piano player what chords to play along with the tune. Chord symbols also tell lead instrument players the harmonic context to apply to improvised solos. Whereas most sheet music arrangements are three or more pages of musical notation, the typical song can be represented on a lead sheet with only one page.

Lead sheets are essential tools for professional musicians who do not always play from fully scored arrangements.

A "fake book" is simply a bound volume of lead sheets, usually in alphabetical order by song title. Fake books are usually published as collection of tunes that fit a theme. Jazz tunes, Latin tunes, old standards, and so on. The name reflects the old idea that musicians who read lead sheets or who play "by ear" are "faking" it rather than reading formally arranged parts. The phrase is thought to have originated as a putdown by classically trained musicians but, with popular usage, has become a respectable reference to the ability to play without needing full notation. A popular fake book compiled by a Berkeley teacher for jazz students is called the "Real Book," a whimsical nod to the old idiom.

—A.S.