Fakebooks and Lead Sheets: Why You and Your Students Should Know How to Use Them
- Music Room
- Apr 25
- 4 min read
As a music teacher, one of the most powerful tools available for a single song is a lead sheet. One of the most well-loved books in my music library is my Broadway Fakebook. It’s literally falling apart and the table of contents pages have been stapled together because they’re falling apart from the binding also.
Fakebooks have been the go-to resources for every performance I’ve ever put together, beginning with my Glee Club (“Sonic Phenomenon” forever!) and choir days, to both Christmas recitals we do every year, do every other student performance our studio hosts, to the additional performing opportunities my students find themselves in.
It’s a skill I require of every piano student past method books, to be able to read them and build chords to accompany a melody at the very least. Knowing this skill has gotten some of my pianists out of trouble when they suddenly got the opportunity to perform at a mass the following week. It has been helpful for guitarists that are looking for chords and melody. It has been the source for most harmony part projects, and accompaniment projects for students that want to accompany their singer friends, or singers that have guitar friends that they want to duet with.
The bottom line is that once students get to a point where they are at least partially responsible for choosing their own performance ideas (annual talent show- I’m looking at you!), fakebooks and lead sheets save the day for what can seem impossible to get.
Not sure what I’m talking about?
A lead sheet can be found using a quick Google search. Musescore is getting quite the collection of them. A lead sheet contains a melody, words and chord symbols, and that’s about it! But to any music teacher that knows even basic music theory, you know that you can create literally anything from this, even a full orchestra score.
A Fakebook is a thick, usually plastic comb-bound book that has sometimes several hundred of these lead sheets in one volume. They’re often organized by genre.
Let me take you through one such example of how one single fakebook makes my day easier, every day for two months leading up to our two Christmas recitals. May I suggest the Christmas Fakebook? There are so many songs in here that I keep a post-it note in the Table of Contents titled “Songs NOT in this book”. It has five titles.
How has this helped me?
It has given me automatic accompaniments for my singers.
It has provided inspiration for every student that has no idea what to pick.
It gives me the information to create duets for multi-family-member performances.
It’s the only thing I use to lead the Christmas caroling segment at the end of each recital.
It gives me what I need to create an arrangement for a song that doesn’t have the right difficulty for a student- with ease.
It gives me what I need to create an arrangement in a better key for a student with a limited range or knowledge of key signatures to play, or to arrange in a different clef.
More uses I’m sure
How has this helped my students?
It has allowed students not out of method books more accessibility in repertoire (even if they aren’t playing the full chords yet).
It is the perfect resource for students that want their own identity on their performance, meaning, those that want to arrange their own songs.
It allows students to save time learning something that sounds sophisticated, without it being tough to read (especially bass clef).
It allows them to remain engaged in repertoire prep because I didn’t have to say no to a request.
It gives them the opportunity to learn a concept by creation. A blank arrangement can be a teachable moment for a lesson concept. They can help you write in fingerings, breath marks, dynamics, articulation, bowings, stylistic markings, etc.
More On the Use of Fakebooks and Lead Sheets
I’ve been asked how soon is too soon for people to learn to play out of a fakebook. My answer is that they need to know their major scales first. It’s a big help and definitely prevents frustration when remembering what notes are in chords. That’s about it. The end product can be as easy or as difficult as the student can handle or wants to handle.
Need some help putting together a plan on how to work on this with students? Uplevel U: Music now has a free (for a limited time) resource called Teaching Your Students to Use Fakebooks and Lead Sheets. Check it out! It has resources that you can give your students, plenty of ideas on how to use these amazing resources with your students and how to implement their use in your instructional time.
This article was written by Music Room/Uplevel U: Music's owner and creator, Karen (Kay) Janiszewski.
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