Join the Songwriting Workshop: Music Theory Basics for Beginners! So if it’s a Bb chord, I would play a Bb in the left hand. For this example, F7 is the first chord of the scale, otherwise called the tonic. It is a way of writing music that is especially common on guitar, but also widely used for keyboard instruments. When a lead sheet does contain lyrics, most will detail the words for the song’s main melody or “hook” as a guide. However, even without a key signature or transposition we can still easily change the chords while maintaining the overall intervals of the song. The song we’ll be using today as our example is Gershwin’s “They Can’t Take That Away From Me”. It’s a good way to get your ear working, and to have a mini-jam with yourself. Sure your chord is “Fm7”, and there are 4 notes in that chord. The bass notes are going to be the letter names of the chords. When we’re talking about how to read a lead sheet, there are two ways you can go with this. But a recipe card is very different from an internet recipe. Most of us had – or have – a grandma, or parents, who have recipes written on little recipe cards stashed away in the kitchen somewhere. Lead sheets, also sometimes called “fake sheets,” typically contain only the partial lyrics, chord symbols and the melody line of a song, and they are rarely more than one page in length. We’ll get groovy with the 1-page arrangement for Herbie Hancock’s “Watermelon Man,” a lead sheet for instrument and chords. Interesting Piano Arrangements of Pachelbel’s Canon, How To Improve Your Piano Technique So You Can Play Faster, Destination: Music! As all of these chords are major, we know that they are built upon a Major Triad (1-3-5). [embedyt] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ExmoiGZuiFQ[/embedyt]. This same method is also seen in instrumental lead sheets where only the main “lick” may be written out. How big are they? “Real books” are actually the same thing. F7 contains the notes F (root), A (the major third), C (the fifth), and finally Eb (the flat-seventh). I think – and correct me if I’m wrong – they’re just called “real books” as a joke – as a spin on the whole “fake book” thing. Really low chords tend to not sound very pleasant. Since the notes are different, it too is written out to let us know. I like building songs in layers – start from the simplest, most essential pieces (like bass and melody) before filling in the chords and harmonies. So it’ll have a melody, sometimes lyrics, and the chord symbols above – and that’s it. We must remember to include the quality of the chord as well when using our scale degree system. I picked this one because a lot of people know it, the chords aren’t TOO wild (no 9ths or 13ths or anything), and because it’s fairly slow, which makes it more manageable. The instrumentalist must rely on his or her own musical knowledge to perform the rest. Since we’ve covered chords more in-depth in other videos, we’ll just briefly touch on these. Looking at the chords shown in this piece, we have F7, C11, Bb7, and C7. Here you'll find all collections you've created before. Let’s say we wanted to start the song on an ‘A’ chord. How to Practice Drums Effectively – Top 6 Tips. Many times, instant transpositions of your favorite lead sheets will already be available from Musicnotes.com. A lead sheet is like Grandma’s recipe card – all that’s on there is the bare essentials. If you’re not going to be singing along, you can use the same strategy on the piano. Let’s take a moment to look at the F Major scale. Whereas the humble recipe card has no pictures, and next to no detail. Music is made up of a variety of symbols, the most basic of which are the staff, the clefs, and the notes. I’m lucky in that I have an electric piano with drum presets, but drum loops are pretty easy to find online nowadays. Well what kind of cookies are they? This leaves only one other chord which isn’t a ‘C’ or an ‘F’ chord in the song: the Bb chord. Because of copyright laws I can’t play you the audio, but I’ll leave the video below for you to check out. Next, let’s consider each note for each of these chords. Now that you know a little more about how to read lead sheets and chord charts, it’s time to talk about style. If it has a little “m” in front of it, then it’s minor (Cm). This map will be the beginning of your guide when vamping, improvising and soloing over the chord changes! The actual notes from measures 1-4 in the treble clef show us the rhythm that underlines the chord change. They may only be a page or two, but their uses are many! The Staff They are so-called because they allow a Jazz musician to ‘fake it’ even if he/she doesn’t know a song. The easiest way to start that is to ONLY play the bass note in the left hand, while figuring out the melody. The best analogy I’ve got for you is this. Thanks, and I hope you enjoyed this video on how to read a lead sheet! Shop the best selection of professionally notated, instantly downloadable lead sheets at musicnotes.com, and get practicing! Which number corresponds with ‘C’ in our Major scale? Notice the chord above the measures change to C7 at measure 13 and to Bb7 at 14. Enter your account data and we will send you a link to reset your password. For reference, a major scale can be determined by using this formula of steps: Whole, Whole, Half, Whole, Whole, Whole, Half, (Refer to our “How to Read Sheet Music” primer for a review of major scales.). The other way to interpret how to read a lead sheet is to do the melody and harmony ALL on the piano. Surely you’ve seen them before – generally the style of the sheet music is handwritten like this: Oftentimes they’re put in books called “Fake Books” or “Real Books”. At measure 9 we see the melody return with a slight modification from the iteration before it. Likewise, C7 builds the chord in a very similar way but beginning on C (the bass/root), E (the major third), G (the fifth) and Bb (the flat-seventh). Have fun playing around with the Gershwin sheet – be creative and go with your muse. This song has a lot of breaks from the melody, which is a perfect opportunity to do little fills and frills. In this blog, we’ll go over some of the advantages of using lead sheets versus traditional piano/vocal/guitar arrangements, discuss what other useful information a lead sheet provides and find out how using a bit of music theory can open up new doors for our playing. First of all, fake and real books are a collection of lead sheets, generally jazz standards. A Fake Book (also called a Real Book) is a collection of lead sheets used by Jazz musicians. This doesn’t mean that they should be played in C Major. (In case you were wondering why I use so many food analogies on this channel, fun fact, I went to culinary school). “Comping” is what you call playing the chords more than once to create rhythmic texture. So to fill in more chords, relocate your right hand an octave higher if need be, so your left hand has more space. The recipe card in your Grandma’s kitchen will just say “flour”, unless for some very specific reason you need to use whole wheat flour, or self-raising flour.