Part of our glossary of music notation terms.
A fake book is a thick collection of songs written as lead sheets, one tune per page, with just the melody and chord symbols (and lyrics if there are any). The name comes from the idea that the skeleton is enough for a working musician to "fake" a full performance. Hand a player a fake book and a gig, and that single volume can carry them through hundreds of songs.
It is less a music book than a working tool. The point is not a polished arrangement of any one song, it is having a huge repertoire condensed into something you can actually hold on a music stand.
What a Fake Book Is
A fake book is a bound book of lead sheets. Each page holds one song reduced to its two essentials, the melody written on a single staff and the chord symbols above it, plus lyrics where a song has them. A single fake book typically covers hundreds of songs, and that breadth is the whole reason it exists.
It is built for gigging musicians who need a lot of repertoire in one place. A pianist taking requests, a jazz group calling standards, a singer with an accompanist: none of them can carry a separate full arrangement for every song someone might ask for, but all of them can carry one fake book. Because each entry is just a lead sheet, the player supplies the accompaniment themselves. If you want the format itself broken down, see what a lead sheet is, and for the even more stripped-back cousin, what a chord chart is.
The Real Book
The most famous fake book by far is the Real Book, a large collection of jazz standards that nearly every jazz musician has handled at some point. Its name is a deliberate pun on "fake book."
The history is worth getting right. The Real Book started in the 1970s as an unauthorized bootleg, compiled by students at the Berklee College of Music who wanted accurate charts for the tunes they were learning. It circulated for years with no licensing and no royalties to the composers, which is part of why it and books like it were called "fake" in the first place, they were unofficial. That era is over: legal, licensed editions of the Real Book are now published by Hal Leonard, with the rights properly cleared.
Fake Book vs Songbook
A fake book and a songbook can sit side by side on a shelf and look similar, but they hand you very different things.
- Fake book: the lead-sheet skeleton of each song, melody and chords only. You read the tune and build the accompaniment yourself.
- Songbook: full, written-out arrangements, often piano-vocal, with the accompaniment notated note for note. You play what is on the page.
The trade-off is breadth and flexibility against detail. A fake book fits hundreds of songs in one volume and lets you interpret each one freely, but it asks you to know your chords and supply the rest. A songbook gives you a complete, repeatable arrangement of each song, but covers far fewer of them and locks you into one way of playing it. Neither is better, they answer different needs.
Build Your Own Fake Book
You do not have to buy a fake book to have one. You can build your own from the songs you actually play, which is often more useful than a generic collection because every page earns its place. The job is to turn each song into a lead sheet, melody and chords, and collect them.
The slow part is working out the melody and the chords for each tune. Transcribing the recording handles that step: Songscription can pull the melody along with its chords from a recording through its arrangement offerings, and you can export the result to MusicXML and open it in a notation editor to format it as a clean lead sheet. Do that for each song you want and you have a fake book made of exactly your repertoire. Our walkthrough on transcribing a lead sheet from a recording covers that workflow end to end.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is a fake book?
A fake book is a collection of lead sheets, melody and chords only, with one song per page. It packs hundreds of songs into a single volume so a working musician can carry a whole repertoire at once and fill in the accompaniment themselves.
Why is it called a fake book?
Because the bare melody and chords are enough for a player to "fake" a full arrangement on the spot. The early fake books were also unofficial, unlicensed compilations, which gave the name a second meaning.
What is the Real Book?
The Real Book is the best-known fake book, a large collection of jazz standards as lead sheets. It began in the 1970s as a Berklee student bootleg and is now available in legal, licensed editions published by Hal Leonard.
How do you make your own fake book?
Transcribe the songs you play into lead sheets and collect them into one book. You can work each tune out by ear, or let AI pull the melody and chords from a recording, then export to MusicXML and lay each one out as a lead sheet.
