Pop Lead Sheets

[mcpepe]

Can you recomend me where to obtain Pop Lead Sheets?

 

I use to play jazz songs from lead sheets from the Real Books. But when I look in the web for Pop lead sheets, what I usually find is scores of 5 or 6 pages, for piano and voice. This kind of scores are very long to me, I prefer lead sheets of 1 or 2 pages.

 

 

[WesG]

Get the Hal Leonard Pop/Rock Fake Book.

 

Assuming you don't mean modern pop, in which case you should buy a clothes dryer and some pots and pans.

[bourniplus]

Sometimes I have luck googling "song title" "pdf" in google images. Or "song title" "lead sheet".

 

If you're looking for a few specific songs, maybe you could ask here and one of us might have a lead sheet or score they'd be willing to share.

 

[Bobadohshe]

Music Notes Dot Com has lead sheets for lots of pop tunes. They cost less than a normal sheet too. They format with big generous spacing though so unfortunately what could be a 2 page chart ends up being 3 or 4.

[ElmerJFudd]

Can you recomend me where to obtain Pop Lead Sheets?

 

I use to play jazz songs from lead sheets from the Real Books. But when I look in the web for Pop lead sheets, what I usually find is scores of 5 or 6 pages, for piano and voice. This kind of scores are very long to me, I prefer lead sheets of 1 or 2 pages.

 

 

If you are ok good with crop, copy, paste on your computer... find the more common piano/vocal score you want. Then just snip the vocal staff and chord changes and paste them into a word doc. You can resize to fit onto one page. Export as picture file like a PDF or high quality JPEG and you can drop them into an app like ForScore on your iPad or whatever tablet as well.

 

Lead sheets and piano vocal scores are still really useful when time is tight and when you need to work with traditional players like strings, reed, brass. Example: I took a gig over the weekend. Booking agent sent me and a violinist the same ForeScore setlist file with lead sheets for the night. Showed up and played the gig. No time invested in transcribing, no figuring out what tunes we both know on the spot - and in what keys, etc. Easiest gig ever.

[Daniel Heslop]

I've been using MuseScore. There is a associated website where users can upload their work, and often I can find decent pop lead sheets, or full notation I can then edit into lead sheets. It will also read midi files, so when I couldn't find specific muse score versions I could find midi files and edit them into lead sheets.

I try to keep everything to 2 pages for a lounge piano gig I have.

[timwat]

I suggest iReal Pro.

 

It's an app for iOS and Android devices, displays chord charts (no melodies).

 

It installs with access to 1000's of tunes (mixture of genres), you can upload your own, and the user community contributes all sorts of popular tunes as well, of generally good accuracy.

 

I use it on both my iPad and iPhone as a handy source for tunes I don't have immediately under my fingertips, the obscure request I haven't played in years, the "bride's request" tune that I'll never play again in my lifetime. It's one of the important tools that helps me hold down a "no set list" band with 100's of possible tunes.

[eric]

 

[SkiGuy777]

You can Advanced Search google for FTP sites. Go here.

https://www.google.com/advanced_search

 

In the box that says "All These Words" type the song title or "Fake Book"

Where it says "This Exact Word or Phrase" type "Parent Directory"

Where it says "Any of These Words" type "PDF" If you are looking for Songs to listen too, type "MP3"

Where it says "None of These Words" type "Cd Debian Linux"

 

Click the search box. You'll see web site links come up. A few at the top will be fake and any link you click will take you to a pay to download site. Keep trying the links until you find one that gives you a directory listing. Right click the file names and "Save As" to your computer. Or left click on them and see if the PDF file appears.

 

I have my own way of charting songs. If you'd like to see it go here.

http://www.quatraine3.com/charts/

I've charted many pop songs over the years. When I'm in a band I memorize them, not using the charts on the gig. Eventually I forget them, but I can re-learn any of the tunes quickly if needed.

[Bobadohshe]

Music Notes Dot Com has lead sheets for lots of pop tunes. They cost less than a normal sheet too. They format with big generous spacing though so unfortunately what could be a 2 page chart ends up being 3 or 4.

 

Not to be a diva quoting myself, but seriously, if you are looking to spend a couple bucks on a legal lead sheet, try this. They have many of the very latest songs.

[DulceLabs.com]

Can you recomend me where to obtain Pop Lead Sheets?

 

What decades are you looking for?

[pjd]

I've been using books in the Hal Leonard "The Real XXX Book" series. The charts are mostly one or two pages, the changes are faithful, and the chart often includes a crucial riff or two.

 

One of the books is "The Real Pop Book Volume 1." You might also want to look at the two "Real Rock Books."

 

Take care -- pj

 

[SkiGuy777]

Aimee Nolte had an interesting video about putting away your fake books. I watched it and agree with her comments.

 

 

Watch the whole video and come back here. Subscribe to her channel and this channel as well. Rick Beato, amazing lessons.

 

 

She basically thought she would learn 3 Jazz Fake Books and be a star of the music world. Nope. The flaw is she was going to sight read the books on the spot. This is similar to what I did with my charts. She then learned to memorize the tunes and throw away the fake books. Now she has all the tunes memorized and can play any tune on the spot. Me? Most of the songs are "in my hands" but I still have to look up songs I haven't played in a while. That's the thing you are looking for. Practice the songs enough and they will eventually be "in your hands" and you won't have to think about it. This is called muscle memory.

 

Here, watch this recent video by Aimee and she's going from song to song on the fly. The video cuts out at times but it gets better as the video goes on. Watch the whole thing and subscribe. Aimee has the gift of not missing any notes. Very hard to describe this. Some people don't miss, I do. I'd say I'm about 90%. People like Aimee are 99.9%. That would be an interesting poll, rate your miss rate on a 100% scale. People like Aimee are from another planet.

 

 

You want another guy who never misses? Here, an old skool channel. Even has an 01W/FD. Amazing.

 

 

Here's a tune he did with a modular wall. Doesn't miss.

 

 

Subscribe to all these channels. Yes, I know, they may miss and then edit the video, but my gosh, they're pretty good. I've watched a ton of their videos and they don't miss. It's like their perception of time is slower than most. Like a basketball star shooting a jump shot and saying the rim is huge. These people can hit the keys without slipping or missing, like it's in slow motion.

 

[chas50]

+1 for Aimee. agree wholeheartedly with everything you said about her

she is phenomenal beyond words.

[mcpepe]

Great info! Thanks everybody for the help!