What is a fake book?

A fake book contains songs written in a concise format that includes only the melody and chord names, letting you interpret the song's performance as you feel is appropriate. This is great for quickly learning songs by yourself or with an ensemble.

Each song in a fake book has only a single melody, usually the vocal or lead melody, actually written out in notes. This melody will have the lyrics written beneath the notes, with each word aligned to its corresponding note. Above the notes of the melody will appear the names of the appropriate chords to play - for example, a "C minor" chord would be written as "Cmin" or Cm", rather than writing out all of the notes in those chords as they appeared in the original version of the song.