Brand new here and need help finding basic charts for jazz standards.

[twalker123]

Hi everyone,

I'm very glad to have found this forum and am hoping someone can be of assistance.

I would like to start learning the basic melodies and chords to jazz standards. I'm familiar with The Real Book volumes but I was wondering if there is a more affordable source where I can find similar charts to jazz standards.

Thanks in advance!

[rrbasic]

http://www.ralphpatt.com/VBook.html

[twalker123]

Thank so much. However, I was hoping for something with the melody as well, much like what is presented in the Real Books

[Walker]

The Vanilla Book

That’s a great resource, but it doesn’t have the melodies the OP is also looking for. I’m not aware of anywhere that has the melodies and chord changes for free.

[twalker123]

I certainly wouldn't mind paying for a source at all. Those Real Books can really add up in price.

[PMB]

Sheet Music Direct is an excellent resource. Inexpensive yet extensive and it allows you to save PDFs and print as often as you wish (from memory, many other sheet music sites are limited in that regard):

All The Things You Are Sheet Music | Jerome Kern | Real Book – Melody, Lyrics & Chords

[sgosnell]

C-jam - New Orleans jambook A-L
That's the first page, there are links to the rest of the alphabet.

[twalker123]

Sheet Music Direct is an excellent resource. Inexpensive yet extensive and it allows you to save PDFs and print as often as you wish (from memory, many other sheet music sites are limited in that regard):

All The Things You Are Sheet Music | Jerome Kern | Real Book – Melody, Lyrics & Chords

Great!!! Just what I was looking for!!! Thanks.

[twalker123]

C-jam - New Orleans jambook A-L

Thanks!

[grahambop]

http://valdez.dumarsengraving.com/557JazzStandards.PDF

Partitions gratuites. Real Book - Volume 1, 2, 3(C, Eb, Bb)

[Christian Miller]

Thank so much. However, I was hoping for something with the melody as well, much like what is presented in the Real Books

Why not learn to sing the melodies and try to play them on the guitar once you can do this?

Standards are pop songs, albeit it very old ones. Would you learn a pop song from the music?

[rpjazzguitar]

Somewhere on the internet there is a big file which contains mp3s of a great many important jazz standards.

Listening to that a few dozen times will help.

[twalker123]

Why not learn to sing the melodies and try to play them on the guitar once you can do this?

Standards are pop songs, albeit it very old ones. Would you learn a pop song from the music?

Some I'm familiar with, but not enough to sing the complete melodies correctly.

[MikeJ]

The Real Book Searching

Might help

[Christian Miller]

Some I'm familiar with, but not enough to sing the complete melodies correctly.

this is a good thing to be work on if you want to be able to improvise on a song. In fact it may be the most important thing for keeping track of form, chords etc.

Takes me blinking ages to learn the melody to anything haha but it’s time well spent

[Walker]

Cool finding some resources I wasn’t aware of. The one thing I’ll say is having a copy of the Real Book Vol. 1 isn’t a bad thing. It’s (or maybe I’m old and it “was”) the lingua franca of jazz.

[grahambop]

Cool finding some resources I wasn’t aware of. The one thing I’ll say is having a copy of the Real Book Vol. 1 isn’t a bad thing. It’s (or maybe I’m old and it “was”) the lingua franca of jazz.

See my post above (post no. 10). All 3 volumes of the old Real Book are available as PDFs from the webpage in the second link.

[alltunes]

The Real Book Searching

Might help

Nice link above. For years there has been a set of PDFs circulating that has:

Real Books 1 2 and 3
New Real Book
Colorado
Jazz Fakebook
and some otthers

For me the way to approach learning standards is to first find a standard you like then seek out the chart.
There are many lists of top standards you should learn first. These lists are a good way of narrowing things down.

[Clint 55]

Search the name of the song and then lead sheet in google images.

[44lombard]

For officially published fakebooks, there's a great tune index at The Fake Book Index

Sounds like you don't want to buy $150 worth of books right of the bat, but it may come in handy sometime.

I'm partial to the Chuck Sher publications, particularly The Standards Real Book, which focuses on pop tunes that are now jazz standards. Also, Sher's "New Real Book" vols. 1-3 have more tunes written by jazz composers (including post-1970 stuff), though they also have some Great American Songbook tunes.

But if you want something for jam sessions, the Real Book (original or Hal Leondard legit versions) are probably a better bet.

[AllanAllen]

Search the name of the song and then lead sheet in google images.

This is the only true and correct answer. Followed with a reminder that you get what you pay for

[Donplaysguitar]

There are several of these. Melody, comping, solo, chord melody, for lots of standards. Great resource!

https://www.amazon.com/Mel-Bay-Jazz-Guitar-Standards/dp/0786666455/ref=asc_df_0786666455/?tag=hyprod-20&linkCode=df0&hvadid=312021428070&hvpos=&hvnetw= g&hvrand=17609096752871555955&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqm t=&hvdev=c&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9026807&hv targid=pla-454504799516&psc=1&tag=&ref=&adgrpid=60223809017&h vpone=&hvptwo=&hvadid=312021428070&hvpos=&hvnetw=g &hvrand=17609096752871555955&hvqmt=&hvdev=c&hvdvcm dl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9026807&hvtargid=pla-454504799516

[Clint 55]

At least get real book volume 1. That plus stealing free lead sheets will get you there. The following volumes are good also. I use those occasionally. I have a bunch of other books that I never use like the beatles fake book, t monk fake book, omnibook etc.

[gmek]

I'm partial to the Chuck Sher publications, particularly The Standards Real Book, which focuses on pop tunes that are now jazz standards. Also, Sher's "New Real Book" vols. 1-3 have more tunes written by jazz composers (including post-1970 stuff), though they also have some Great American Songbook tunes.

I've had the new real book forever, and totally agree the Sher stuff is great. It's really well put together and very clear manuscript

[Christian Miller]

The New Real Book is generally pretty accurate to the recorded version (they tell you which in the back)

The only problem I found using it is that the repertoire of tunes is different to the old RB and a lot of players build their repertoire around those, although this is less of an issue nowadays I think (iReal changed things, also I think I play with better musicians who learn tunes differently.)