Why so many realbooks?

[Elow]

My mom is the manager at a resort down here in florida, so i get to have a couple gigs with a few high school friends. I usually just go to musescore to find some christmas songs for jazz combos, but musescore isnt exactly filled with accomplished arrangers. So i was going to order a real book to mainly get some chord changes that i like but also to just mess around with some standards that i like and then i realised theres like 10 different realbooks. So i was wondering how to choose on or should i just get them all and empty my bank account.

[BGuttman]

If all you want are Christmas songs, I don't think there's a Real Book for that. Real Books contain the melody and chords for songs. Mostly popular songs, but also sometimes ethnic. Never saw a Christmas one (but I could be wrong).

If you want a few popular songs to fill in with your Christmas stuff and you all can work from lead lines and chords, then just get ONE. You'll need 3 copies at least: in Bb treble, Eb treble, C treble. Bass clef if you need it (but not too many come in bass clef). Note that the Hal Leonard Real Book follows the Copyright rules. Many others do not.

If you need full arrangements, forget the Real Books and find some arranged music.

[Doug Elliott]

Elow, I checked out your charts on Musescore... You write some pretty interesting stuff. Keep it up.

[Elow]

Elow, I checked out your charts on Musescore... You write some pretty interesting stuff. Keep it up.

Wow thanks

[boneapart]

Hal Leonard publishes The Real Christmas Fake Book--about 150 pages.