How to find the right chord changes for Real Book tunes
I recently read a forum post where someone wrote that, as a professional pianist, he uses The Real Book on recording sessions because he “want to make sure he’s playing the original chords to jazz standards.” Well, everyone’s entitled to their own opinion, but the fact is that The Real Book, while a valuable resource, doesn’t always have the original chords. Indeed, the book was originally conceived as a way to show the chords that jazz musicians actually played, rather than the “sheet music” chords the composers sometimes wrote. And taking this line of thought further, the original Real Book [...]