Rating: 
Summary: Best Fake Book I have found
Review: I hunted all through the Hal Leonard site and I couldn't evencome up with any fake book that had "How Sweet It Is" init. This book has everything from "What a Wonderful World" to "Blue Skies." I have never found such a complete book. If you are looking to find some songs to entertain with, this book has all the songs you'll need. You will recognize more songs in the book then you can memorize. I am excited to have it, and I really can never stop opening it up and playing.
Rating:
Summary: Not for youngsters
Review: I just want to disagree with those reviewers who say that if you are over 40 this book is not for you. I am over 50, and I find the song selection of this book to be outstanding. I am sure my 21 year old son wouldn't identify with it, but I recognized almost all the song titles and found the variety to be outstanding!
Rating: 
Summary: Not for you if you're over 40-
Review: I purchased the Ultimate Fake Book a few months ago and found it to be a great joy with lots of familiar songs and easy-to-read notations. I expected The Best Fake Book Ever to be a continuation of the mixed genre of the first book. What I found, instead, was a book loaded with very unnoteworthy
music - three-fourths of which were unknown to this over-40
player....way too many Top-40 songlists that do not have the "wearability" of the tried and true standards which the Ultimate Fake Book had. I suppose, nevertheless, that the
songs I glean from this book pay for it considering the cost of sheet music this day and age. I would hate to think that Hal Leonard has already run out of songs to include in these
compilations. Perhaps he should "steal" some songs from his other fake books to publish as the "Best Fake Book Ever", 2nd edition. I would much rather see some classical, jazz, religious, Broadway, and standards mixed together than being bombarded with such inane titles as are found in this book!
Rating: 
Summary: Maybe not that great for trumpet...
Review: I'm just getting started playing the trumpet again after a 48 yr. break. I bought this book because of the large number of songs and being written in b flat. True there are a lot of songs that are newer and not so many standard "oldies". However, that's not my main concern. A lot of songs just don't sound that good on the trumpet and some are written with notes so low that they sound terrible. There are some great trumpet pieces such as "When Sunny Gets Blue", "Misty", etc., but you have to wade through a lot of others to get to the good ones. I have some other Leonard fake books for the keyboard and they are just fine but look for some other music for the trumpet.
Rating:
Summary: Super Duper
Review: My hair stood when I played "Just the way you are" with Billy Joels original chords. If you were born in the 60s/70s you will love this book. It contains songs like Honesty, Dont let the sun do down on me, Unchained melody, You decorated my life. If you aint familiar with the song all you have to do is download it from the net, copy it on a floppy and play it on your keyboard. Then you can choose an appropriate beat and bang away. The book is very heavy...litreally.
Rating:
Summary: This is the Best Fake Book ever
Review: Sure, the authors of the book aren't being modest, but they aren't lying. Other books I have looked at contain maybe one good song and a bunch that nobody has heard of. Every page in this book has a recognizable title and they all are contained in the index in the beginning (which lists them alphabetically and by genre). The words and notes are easy to read and the pages stay open because of its strong binding. I believe, and thus I am writing, that this is the best fake book and it is good for beginners and experts.
Rating:
Summary: This is the Best Fake Book ever
Review: Sure, the authors of the book aren't being modest, but they aren't lying. Other books I have looked at contain maybe one good song and a bunch that nobody has heard of. Every page in this book has a recognizable title and they all are contained in the index in the beginning (which lists them alphabetically and by genre). The words and notes are easy to read and the pages stay open because of its strong binding. I believe, and thus I am writing, that this is the best fake book and it is good for beginners and experts.
Rating:
Summary: More a miss than a hit
Review: There are some gems in here for certain, however I agree with the other reviewer who stated that if you're 40+ you won't find a wealth of time tested standards. Also for guitar players the difficulty I would place at intermediate to advanced due to the keys and (perhaps needless)chord complexities (no mini-charts with the chords which would have helped with all of the obscure ones). I have two other fake books from Hal Leaonard ( Christmas guitar and Folksongs )and I can't imagine that this group was gathered by the same team since I really like the other titles. I had several other Hal Leonard fake books on my "wish list" but now that I find the compilations inconsistent in quality I won't buy any more sight unseen.
Rating:
Summary: Guitar players think twice
Review: There are some gems in here, but for the most part I would agree with the reviewer who said that for those over 40 years of age, time tested pieces are scarce. I would also add that although this book claims to be for guitar, the presence of chords ( names but in this case no mini chord charts )over the melody line ( by definition necessary for a fake book ) might be of minimal assistance in this case. Many, if not most, of the songs are in the more "guitar unfriendly" keys. Many ,if not most of the songs, are "incidental heavy" in their chord listings which no doubt preserves the original chord flavoring of the songs well but may require advanced finger gymnastics for the guitar player. Often some accomodation in keys and chords is made when "for guitar" is mentioned, or implied, in a title. So guitar players, despite the cover note that implies some degree of guitar friendliness or accomodation, think twice , or better yet go to a "brick and mortar" store where you can actually look at the keys and chords, before buying.
Rating:
Summary: Guitar players think twice
Review: This book gets 5 stars... If you don't know what a fake book is, it is only going to have the melody line (for the piano part, it will only have the right hand, not the left).The book with the RED cover is for C instruments (piano, guitar, harmonica, violin, flute, recorder, oboe, viola).
The book with the GREEN cover is B-Flat instruments (clarinet, tenor saxophone, soprano saxophone, trumpet, baritone T.C.).
The book with the BLUE cover is for E-Flat instruments (alto saxophone, baritone saxophone). It is about a level 4-5 on a difficulty scale of 1-10 with 1 being the easiest and 10 being the hardest.
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