[Harp-L] fake book sale

[philharpn@xxxxxxx]

Just got a post from Sheet Music Plus announcing their 20% sale on fake books. If you're in the market for a fake book, check out the site. FYI: A fake book is a collection of tunes with the melody line in standard notation and chord changes.


 Not only will a fake book give you the right notes, it will give you the right timing. A fake book usually has hundreds of songs for pennies a song. 


Don't read music, no problem. Check the web. There are several sites that show the layout of harps in all keys and where the notes are. Got a song in Bb? Look at the Bb harp layout and write down the arrows and holes for each note. Want to know which notes to bend or overblow? Find one of the more advanced harp layouts.



Back in the day, fake book were bootlegged; they were illegal copies of tunes (meaning nobody paid the composers/publishers for printing their tunes). Nowadays, fake books are all over. For just about every style of music -- blues, bluegrass, country, jazz, classical, Beatles et cetera. 


Every time I see I see a posting about a new lesson to teach "Summertime" or some other standard, the first thing that comes to mind is: What is this guy going to teach? 


Is this a new arrangement of the tune or merely the melody line (head)? If all he has to offer is "how the song goes" -- anybody who spends a few minutes with a fake book can figure that out. Mostly, it turns out, these lessons are only about  "how the song goes" -- the melody line. And whether to start at the top octave or the first octave. 


I love the Charlie Musselwhite story -- which he has told at SPAH -- of how he accidentally taught himself how to read music. He always stopped at 2nd hand stores to check out the merchandise. One time he found a trumpet instruction book that looked interesting. He took it home and started writing harp tab next to the notes in the exercises. After a while he discovered that he didn't need to write tab for every note and later he didn't have to write tab for any of them. Then it hit him. He had just taught himself to read music. Had he set out to learn to read, he probably wouldn't been able to do it.


hope this helps
Phil Lloyd