What is a fake book? What are chord symbols?

Good morning. Chord symbols. You know what chord symbols are? Those little notations above a line of music. They may say just C. That means to play the C chord in either hand or both hands, or if it says C minor, then you play the C minor chord. If it says C augmented, you’d play the C augmented chord. If it says C6, you play the C6 chord, and so on.

Down in the information below, the details below, I’ll put a link to some pages that will be helpful to you, so you can learn all of those. I won’t cover that on the video. I just want to show you the principle of playing the piano by chord symbols as opposed to reading music as it is.

Let me turn to my original fake book. I got this fake book when I was a teenager, and it cost $50. $50 back then, was a lot of money, but it was worth it. I used to practice through this endlessly. You can see, it’s called a fake book because you can fake, or improvise music as you go along.

Here’s a song called Blue Moon, which is all familiar to you, I’m sure. It’s in the key of B flat. If I can read the melody, the tune, and know what the chords are above it, then I can learn to improvise and arrange. I’ll show you the step-by-step progress of how you do that from a very beginner up to a little more advanced. I would read the melody, and I’d play that in my right hand.

By the way, this is what I did when I was a teenager. It was this simple. I knew how to read music by then, because I had to take piano lessons. I would play the music. My teacher would correct me, because I played that syncopated, and it’s not written syncopated. Then, I put the chords in the left hand. I see the first chord is E flat. The second chord is C minor, while I hold that. The next chord is F minor, B flat chord, E flat, C minor, F minor, B flat, E flat, C minor, F minor sus, E flat. Then, it starts again. You see, you just work through it like that.

Then, it’s just a step-by-step process. That sounds simple, but that’s really the hard work. Once you know how you play the melody, and once you know what the chords are, then you can add things to it gradually. For example, in the right hand, I would probably add a third, a harmonizing note under it, like this. That would sound a little better. This is what I actually did.

I’d add a swing bass. Swing bass is where you hit a low note, then a chord, low note, chord. You get the idea. You gradually build on that.

The next step might be to play a full chord. Let me do it up here. Then, I might add octaves, and so on.

Then, I might try another style, like this.

Or another style, and so on. You just add to it. That’s basically how you play by chord symbols, by reading the melody note and then learning the chords, and then gradually adding style on top of that. I kept it very simple today.

I just wanted to show you some, this is an original fake book that was $50 way back when. This was less than that with 1200 songs in it. This probably cost $25 or $30, or something like that. They got cheaper as you went along. This is much, much cheaper than that was, relatively, is what I’m saying. Here’s another fake book of the world’s favorite songs. That has a whole bunch of songs in it, too.

I strongly recommend that if you don’t already have a fake book, that you get one, and just start working through the tunes that you would like to play using those chord symbols. When this video is over, go down below, and go to those pages that I recommend about chord symbols, so you can learn those better.

Thanks for being with me. We’ll see you again tomorrow on YouTube and on playpiano.com. If you haven’t signed up for our free piano tips, come on over to playpiano.com and do that. Thanks! Bye.

YouTube video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3VEOActBpyY&feature=youtu.be
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