From under the counter to play-along app!
In the old days, you’d have to buy the Real Book under the counter at music shops.
Born in 1975 by a group of Berkeley students who wished to remain anonymous, The Real Book was partly an attempt to gather all standards into one book and partly a way for the students to finance their studies.
The book was an immediate success, and the students did try to get it published legally but ran into red tape and decided to move away from the concept.
Having been copied thousands of times, the Real Book spread across the world into the hands of jazz musicians and became the bible from which last-minute jazz ensembles played gigs.
Since then, many publishers have tried to make a legal version; none have succeeded, as the original was based on the best tunes, while the legal copies were based on what could be published legally in the same book.
You can get the complete story about the original Real Book at Officialrealbook.com.
Fast forward to the birth of emails and the internet, and you’ll find another attempt to spread the Real Book made using PDFs, spreading over email to everyone who wanted to practice standards.
By now, there were so many versions of the concept that it wasn’t as obvious as in the old days, where if you had the holy grail and knew all the tunes, you could gig.
The time for the Real Book was seemingly over.
iReal Pro Launched in 2013
Dubbed iReal Pro after Apple’s iPhone, the app’s main feature was and is the ability to generate backing tracks using MIDI instruments.
This works best for jazz, but there are other “styles.”
There is no sheet music or lyrics in iReal Pro, which would cause the old copyright problem to resurface. Instead, it’s just chords and play-along.
You can also change the chords and the arrangements. Most importantly, you can write your own chord charts.
This part—writing your own chord charts and exporting them as PDFs or in the iReal Pro format—is what really stuck.
I personally use this to send new tunes to bandmates every week.
I’ve also started the process of making an iReal Pro chart for every song at Spytunes.
It’s pretty expensive at $19.99 for a desktop version of this app, but I feel it’s well worth it.
In the past, I’ve made my own charts in Sibelius, but changing keys on the fly isn’t possible, and having the same tune in lots of different keys is just annoying.
Sure, no melody or TAB is available, but if I’m honest, by the time you’re at the gig, you should know that stuff.
A chord chart is something you glance at, as playing 60+ tunes in a night can get confusing. It’s nice to have that safety blanket and look over at the next tune and go, “Ah, yes, that’s the first chord of the middle 8.”
Or when the singer changes the key at the last minute, it’s easy to switch.
From what I can see, iReal Pro has become the standard among new musicians, and as nice as the whole backing track concept is and perhaps the reason we all came to iReal Pro, we stayed for the chord charts.
iReal Pro | Related Pages
Songbook A-Z
As a guitarist, a repertoire is the greatest asset you can acquire. It is your ticket to playing with other musicians.
To help you, I’ve gathered all the tunes in a Songbook you can play with acoustic duos, Jazz trios, Indie/Rock/Pop bands, and Funk/Soul/Motown ensembles.
About me | Dan Lundholm
This was an article about the iReal Pro app, by Dan Lundholm. Discover more about him and how you can learn guitar with Spytunes.
Most importantly, find out why you should learn guitar through playing tunes, not by practising scales or studying theory in isolation.