Re: Martino system
reed ( (no email) )
Fri, 04 Jul 1997 15:02:54 -0700
At 03:38 PM 7/4/97 -0600, you wrote:
>> How does the Herb
>> Wong fakebook compare with the new Sher books? Marc Sabatella's biblio
>> doesn't say much about it from what I recall. If I have to commit my
>> meagre finances to a fakebook, what would be the best choice? I've been
>> told that a fair amount of space on the Sher books is taken up by
>> "non-jazz" stuff.
>
>Sher goes out of his way to include pop/rock tunes that he feels might help
>a band satisfy some requests for something the audience would recognize.
>The Wong book (published by Hal Leonard) doesn't do this so obviously, but
>there are a heck of a lot of Tin Pan Alley tunes, old movie and show tunes,
>and so forth, that no jazz musician has ever covered, and I suspect were
>included simply because Hal Leonard owns some interest in the rights to
>(completely unfounded speculation, but the only thing I can think of).
>When you get down to it, I think the Hal Leonard book has more useful tunes
>in it than any one of the Sher books by itself, but it has a couple of
>things going against it. It is nowhere near as popular, meaning you might
>be the only one at the gig or session with that particular book, meaning
>you can't really do most of the material in it. Also, the typeset is so
>small, and the layout so awkward (tunes split across pages for no good
>reason, no attempt to break lines on phrase boundaries, etc) that it is
>pretty much unacceptable for sight-reading, especially in gig situations
>where the light isn't neceassarily so good.
>
>So I would say, if you plan to be playing with others in the near future (a
>good idea, regardless if this means professionally or not), you are better
>off with the "first" Sher book (New Real Book Volume 1). But if you are
>looking just to shed some tunes at home, you'd be better off with the Hal
>Leonard book (Ultimate Jazz Fakebook). I sure wish there was a better
>answer than this.
>
The main problem with the Herb Wong book is the chord changes.
They are essentially sheet music changes. Also, no attempt was made
to re-transcribe any of the jazz heads so it's the sheet music
version again and I would be very suspicious of the melodies.
The changes amd melodies in the Chuck Sher books are derived from a more
careful study of several transcriptions (done by the editors .. top musicians
Bob Bauer and in Book 3, Larry Dunlap), the sheet music, and sometimes
the composers lead sheets. They contain something much more complete
in terms of correctness and historical relevance.
The Herb Wong book is a good source of standard tunes for someone
that can fix the chord changes themsleves. I would however be suspicous
of the jazz heads (i.e. Bird, Horace SIlver, Miles, etc).
reed
>--------------
>Marc Sabatella
>marc@outsideshore.com
>
>"The Outside Shore"
>A Jazz Improvisation Primer, Scores, Sounds, & More:
>http://www.outsideshore.com/
>
>
>
>
>
Reed Kotler
reed@justjazz.com
http://www.justjazz.com