Scott The Piano Guy's Favorite Piano Fake Book - Sheet Music Beginner Piano Book for Adults and Kids

As an intermediate keyboardist, I really have to say that this is one of those "gotta' buy" books, both for advanced beginner/intermediate pianists and electronic keyboardists alike. Scott Houston, the Piano Guy (a.k.a. public television's video tutorial guy) must have figuratively scratched his head on what to call this book of his. On the one hand it's a fake book in the traditional sense - this one a book of songs in Cmajor (or transposed to Cmajor) along with their lead sheets. Then on the other hand, since in the Piano Guy's video tutorials he teaches "fun!" playing using Cmajor's three primary triads, I, IV, and V (C, F, G) and their supporting chords, and a minimum of black keys, then this book of his is really a lot more like workbook for his method than just a plain ordinary old fake book. The tip off to what the Piano Guy's book really is, that it's a workbook, can be seen in the composers and types of music he includes in his book. The composers are all notable jazz, blues, C&W, rock and roll, and ballad master greats, both of this and earlier generations. The music included in the Piano Guy's fake book are all absolute classics in those genres, all either in their original key of Cmajor or transposed to Cmajor for ease and fun of playing. The Piano Guy is big on improvising, the key to playing blues and jazz. So, unlike traditional fake books, he includes alternate chords, jazz and blues chords if you will, that you can substitute to vary the sound and feeling of the music you're having fun playing. But it's when you use this book with corresponding YouTube videos and CDs that the book's value doubles and triples, not only for pianists, but especially for electronic keyboardists! All of the songs in this book can be found on YouTube ("YouTube (dot) com"), most in both classic and contemporary videos. From those videos (and YouTube audio clips where a video isn't available) not only can you follow this book's lead, but you can also see/hear the melody played in a huge variety of voicings, rhythms and styles. Not only that, but with some of the videos and most of the CDs you can also follow along with vocalists singing the song's lyrics. Listening to vocalists and following the lyrics in this book as a very good help in learning to read and follow sheet music's standard sequence notations. And in many of the commercial-style videos you'll find in YouTube, you can often see the melodies in this book being played by the composers themselves, as Earl Garner does with "Misty", Bill Evans does with "Waltz for Debby", Paul McCartney does with "Hey Jude", Elton John does with "Can You Feel the Love Tonight", and Sarah McLachlan does with "I Will Remember You". And since the Piano Guy also includes movies in the credits line of the songs of many of the songs in this book you can enter "G.I.Blues" in YouTube and watch a young Elvis Presley in a rock'em, sock'em, walloping video clip of his "Blue Suede Shoes" (page 9 in this book). If you want to advance in your keyboard and music knowledge and technique you'll really want to think about buying two of these outstanding books, one (new, or used but good) for permanent reference, and another (used, for lower cost) to use as an actual workbook, taking pages out, marking up the music, the chord designations, and inserting measures as you learn more about the style of music you're playing, or would like to play. A box of Ticonderoga's 2HB soft lead pencils with their equally soft non-smudge erasers (Ticonderoga type number 13882, available at Staples, Office Depot, etc.) will let you do this very easily. Now a word about transposing the music in this book to some other key than Cmajor. It can (and should be) done as a continuing learning exercise with this book, e.g., transposing from Cmajor to the equally common Fmajor and Gmajor keys and their associated chords. And the transpositions can be done easily enough using the Internet. You'll be able to find lead sheets for almost all of the songs in this book in the song database at "Wikifonia (dot) org". Transposing one of the songs in that database to any other key is virtually instantaneous. A nice feature of the site is that you can save to a file and/or print out a lead sheet for a selected song in both it's original key and the transposed key. So the bottom line is this: If you like what you've read in this review, then by all means buy this book!! (And don't forget an inexpensive, used, second book too if you want to have a copy of the book to use as a mark-up workbook.)

Well written and at times very entertaining. The song choices are fine, especially if you're from my age group. The gripes in other reviews regarding all the songs being in the key of C are unfair since that is declared to you before purchase. Besides, what is wrong in doing it yourself and trying to transpose to other keys? That would help you a lot. I give this book 10 out of 10.

Now I just stared playing piano, so getting a fake book, which requires you to have the ability to improv, probably wasn't the smartest purchase. However, I justified it because I figured that improving was something I'd need to learn to do anyway. So just take my review w/ that knowledge - this is probably a better review for those just starting out. Well, I liked the book. It's simple, the suggested chords are very helpful. As a beginner, it helped me learn each song fairly quickly. What I don't like (although I don't know for sure if this is a thing that ALL fake books do) is that everything was in the key of C. When I say the key of C, I really mean that all the songs I've played so far are transcribed using only the white keys. Yes, they may be in a different mode, but still, you can be certain that the song you're learning will not be transcribed in the key the original song was written in, which is a bummer to me. I had to "shift" the songs I learned to their proper key (because I'm a stickler w/ that type of thing). A small gripe, but something I wanted to share.

I'll speak for myself, a beginner who can't read music, has no talent, and no experience; this book is great. It may well be great for those more advanced with talent too. I got Scott's DVD at the library and this technique opens up a whole new world for anyone interested in the piano. His Play The Piano in a Flash is a great reference book and addition to this Fake Book. I bought a competing piano lesson book at the same time and it is nearly useless because of the way it deals with chords. Scott's book gives the chords for each song as a PATTERN RECOGNITION KEYBOARD PICTURE and all of the tutorial chords are based on that. For a novice like me, I care NOT that a C chord is made up of CEG, all I need to know is where to place my left fingers based on the chord pattern not on the notes of that chord. I have learned 7 chords in 1 hour over 2 evenings as part of learning "The Girl From Ipanema" and I can't tell you what those chords are made of but I know where to place my fingers. Scott goes over this in his TV series. The fake book by BN is a fine book but the chords are made up of notes that are meaningless to me. According to Scott, and I fully agree, Chord patterns are key to learning to play by ear. All of the chord patterns are detailed on EVERY PAGE of a song. You don't have to go to the back of the book to find and study the chord, and then flip back to the song to try to play it. You learn the chords using pattern recognition (not notes) for the songs you want to play as you are studying melody notes for the right hand. I can't imagine a simpler method. If you ask me what makes up a C#min, A7, or Dmin chord I'll say "I don't have any idea but give me a piano and I'll show you how to play it". I can actually do that after two 30 min sessions.

He has lots of music in his books. However, there are many chords to have to memorize for your left hand to play along with the melody in your right hand. Looking at his video, I can see that you can play the chord in full with your left hand or each notes by themselves in a row or just the root note or the bottom root note and the top note. With these option, a person should be able to jazz up the music a little bite. I will have to watch his video a few more times and then come back to his book.

Alle Songs wurden nach C transponiert (oder entsprechend ausgewählt), so dass z.B. im ganzen Buch kein einziger Eb- oder Ab-Akkord vorkommt. Wenn man die Songs um der Songs willen spielen will ist das okay. Ich hatte es mir jedoch gekauft um Akkorde und Comping über alle Tonarten hinweg zu üben, dafür ist es auf Anhieb nicht geeignet.

Scott has produced two collections in book one and two where no song is duplicated across both books. That means a total of 160 different songs which all seem to be of my era and all arranged in a way that allows for different levels of piano skill. I’m in my 70’s and still a beginner after five years of lessons but these work just fine for me. Familiar enough tunes to encourage me to try them and clear arrangements that I can follow and develop as I get better.

Just the right book for progress with learning chords at differing levels. Simple version given and easy to move on to alternative/expanded chords. SO useful to have the chords printed out with each tune. Cannot recommend highly enough!!!

Easy to play with this method. I like that there is no page turning, the entire Song is within 2 pages.

great book, great value, having fun using it. would highly recommend it. great resource for all levels from beginner to advanced.