Scott the Piano Guy's Favorite Piano Fake Book | 74 Popular Songs for Piano and Keyboard | Easy Chord Sheet Music Arrangements for Beginners and Adults | Piano Songbook with Simple Chord Frames

Scott Houston is a talented piano teacher. This fake book is one of his best! Recommended!

As an intermediate keyboardist, I really have to say that this is one of those "gotta' buy" books, both for advanced beginner/intermediate pianists and electronic keyboardists alike. Scott Houston, the Piano Guy (a.k.a. public television's video tutorial guy) must have figuratively scratched his head on what to call this book of his. On the one hand it's a fake book in the traditional sense - this one a book of songs in Cmajor (or transposed to Cmajor) along with their lead sheets. Then on the other hand, since in the Piano Guy's video tutorials he teaches "fun!" playing using Cmajor's three primary triads, I, IV, and V (C, F, G) and their supporting chords, and a minimum of black keys, then this book of his is really a lot more like workbook for his method than just a plain ordinary old fake book. The tip off to what the Piano Guy's book really is, that it's a workbook, can be seen in the composers and types of music he includes in his book. The composers are all notable jazz, blues, C&W, rock and roll, and ballad master greats, both of this and earlier generations. The music included in the Piano Guy's fake book are all absolute classics in those genres, all either in their original key of Cmajor or transposed to Cmajor for ease and fun of playing. The Piano Guy is big on improvising, the key to playing blues and jazz. So, unlike traditional fake books, he includes alternate chords, jazz and blues chords if you will, that you can substitute to vary the sound and feeling of the music you're having fun playing. But it's when you use this book with corresponding YouTube videos and CDs that the book's value doubles and triples, not only for pianists, but especially for electronic keyboardists! All of the songs in this book can be found on YouTube ("YouTube (dot) com"), most in both classic and contemporary videos. From those videos (and YouTube audio clips where a video isn't available) not only can you follow this book's lead, but you can also see/hear the melody played in a huge variety of voicings, rhythms and styles. Not only that, but with some of the videos and most of the CDs you can also follow along with vocalists singing the song's lyrics. Listening to vocalists and following the lyrics in this book as a very good help in learning to read and follow sheet music's standard sequence notations. And in many of the commercial-style videos you'll find in YouTube, you can often see the melodies in this book being played by the composers themselves, as Earl Garner does with "Misty", Bill Evans does with "Waltz for Debby", Paul McCartney does with "Hey Jude", Elton John does with "Can You Feel the Love Tonight", and Sarah McLachlan does with "I Will Remember You". And since the Piano Guy also includes movies in the credits line of the songs of many of the songs in this book you can enter "G.I.Blues" in YouTube and watch a young Elvis Presley in a rock'em, sock'em, walloping video clip of his "Blue Suede Shoes" (page 9 in this book). If you want to advance in your keyboard and music knowledge and technique you'll really want to think about buying two of these outstanding books, one (new, or used but good) for permanent reference, and another (used, for lower cost) to use as an actual workbook, taking pages out, marking up the music, the chord designations, and inserting measures as you learn more about the style of music you're playing, or would like to play. A box of Ticonderoga's 2HB soft lead pencils with their equally soft non-smudge erasers (Ticonderoga type number 13882, available at Staples, Office Depot, etc.) will let you do this very easily. Now a word about transposing the music in this book to some other key than Cmajor. It can (and should be) done as a continuing learning exercise with this book, e.g., transposing from Cmajor to the equally common Fmajor and Gmajor keys and their associated chords. And the transpositions can be done easily enough using the Internet. You'll be able to find lead sheets for almost all of the songs in this book in the song database at "Wikifonia (dot) org". Transposing one of the songs in that database to any other key is virtually instantaneous. A nice feature of the site is that you can save to a file and/or print out a lead sheet for a selected song in both it's original key and the transposed key. So the bottom line is this: If you like what you've read in this review, then by all means buy this book!! (And don't forget an inexpensive, used, second book too if you want to have a copy of the book to use as a mark-up workbook.)

First of all, let me say that if you're relatively new to piano and want to pound out a few songs in the shortest time possible, fake books are a way to go. You will NEED to learn how to read notes (just the melody line) as slow as cumbersome as that may be. ... I'm very slow at it and I still end up marking the book with the notes instead of having to decipher each note (those dots with tails on them LOL!). So, you'll often see my books marked something like this: G C F E C G C F E C D ...etc. (LOL!) But it's easier than trying to decipher notes on the fly!The reason why only FOUR stars is because I have all the other Hal Leonard simplified Fake Books written in the key of C, plus the three huge volumes of Pop Rock, Country and Ultimate Fake Books. And most of the songs in this book are in the Hal Leonard simplified Fake Books. I would have given it 4 1/2 stars if I could because of my next paragraph.From looking at all my music books, you'd think I'm a pro at it. But I'm an ADVANCED BEGINNER at best and looks can be deceiving! I'm like those people who come to a Tennis Court all decked out with an expensive racket, tennis outfit, expensive and REAL Tennis shoes, arm and head bands but can barely play tennis. OH WELL, maybe Karma will take over and make us play better!What separates this book from the others (which is the best feature of this book) are the picture of the Piano Chords above each song. Chords that will be used in the song, plus some harder substitute chords which in most cases enhances the music once you've learned the basics.It really makes it handy when you're trying to play a tune and all of a sudden you run into a chord you're unfamiliar with. You just have to look at the top of the page instead of having to stop in the middle of your playing and have look it up somewhere in your multitude of notes, which you can never find when you need it most. It's disruptive and frustrating ... So, let's play already and so you try and skip it or find a substitute .. but it doesn't sound right.NOTE: If you find a very difficult chord to play due to the position of the fingers, learn to do some inversions and it may help. However, NOT all inversions sound right, but for the most part will sound OK. But do try to play the correct way if possible.The bottom line is that I DO RECOMMEND this book if you don't already have the other Hal Leonard books. You will learn from it! Enjoy!

I'll speak for myself, a beginner who can't read music, has no talent, and no experience; this book is great. It may well be great for those more advanced with talent too. I got Scott's DVD at the library and this technique opens up a whole new world for anyone interested in the piano. His Play The Piano in a Flash is a great reference book and addition to this Fake Book. I bought a competing piano lesson book at the same time and it is nearly useless because of the way it deals with chords. Scott's book gives the chords for each song as a PATTERN RECOGNITION KEYBOARD PICTURE and all of the tutorial chords are based on that. For a novice like me, I care NOT that a C chord is made up of CEG, all I need to know is where to place my left fingers based on the chord pattern not on the notes of that chord. I have learned 7 chords in 1 hour over 2 evenings as part of learning "The Girl From Ipanema" and I can't tell you what those chords are made of but I know where to place my fingers. Scott goes over this in his TV series. The fake book by BN is a fine book but the chords are made up of notes that are meaningless to me. According to Scott, and I fully agree, Chord patterns are key to learning to play by ear. All of the chord patterns are detailed on EVERY PAGE of a song. You don't have to go to the back of the book to find and study the chord, and then flip back to the song to try to play it. You learn the chords using pattern recognition (not notes) for the songs you want to play as you are studying melody notes for the right hand. I can't imagine a simpler method. If you ask me what makes up a C#min, A7, or Dmin chord I'll say "I don't have any idea but give me a piano and I'll show you how to play it". I can actually do that after two 30 min sessions.

Just the right book for progress with learning chords at differing levels. Simple version given and easy to move on to alternative/expanded chords. SO useful to have the chords printed out with each tune. Cannot recommend highly enough!!!

All songs are in the key of C, but this is not the original key of many of the songs. This is fine for less experienced pianists. However it is good that it shows some more advanced chords that can be substituted by more advanced players. There is a good variety of songs. My general view is favourable.

A bit disappointed, not enough instructions ( after watching the video) not much different than other fake guitar/ buskers books and also no thought given to keeping the book open to read the music

This book became by best friend when I was trying to teach myself the keyboard. I even took it on holiday with me plus keyboard of course.

Thises are lead sheets as specified by Scott Houston The piano guy.Easy to follow for individual entertainment