Latin Frequency

I’m a bass player, so I don’t generally indulge in “tooting my own horn,” but I thought that fans of Sher Music Co. might be interested in an interview that Jazz Inside magazine did with me in their latest issue. The link to it on my website is
http://www.shermusic.com/chuck_sher_interview.html. Hope you enjoy it! – Chuck

Over the last few years I have been very fortunate to play music on a pretty regular basis with one of the most advanced guitar players I’ve ever heard – Randy Vincent (who has recorded &/or toured with Dizzy Gillespie, Bobby Hutcherson, Joe Henderson, etc.). I’ve been amazed sometimes just watching chorus after chorus of brilliant, spontaneous music come out of him, and have asked him more than once if he’d be interested in writing a book for Sher Music Co. Finally, given the task of applying Mark Levine’s Drop 2 Book to guitar, Randy agreed to share his many decades of musical knowledge with the world, and the results have been well worth waiting for! I will let its web page describe the contents, but I was not surprised when glowing endorsements by Vic Juris, Steve Maskowski, Larry Koonse, John Stowell and others started coming in. And before the ink was even dry at the printer’s on this book, Randy sent me the beginning of Volume 2! Randy is a very dedicated musician and his love of exploring the way music works comes through in this book, just as much as the practical information itself. If you are a jazz guitar player (or have one on your Holiday gift list), don’t miss Jazz Guitar Voicings, Vol.1: The Drop 2 Book!

After pouring over the text a thousand times, adding new exercises after every bass lesson I gave for months, getting very useful feedback from dozens of musicians, and putting all the conscious energy I could muster into making my new book as good as possible—Foundation Exercises For Bass, by yours truly, is finally out! As far as I’m concerned, this is the crowning achievement of my thirty years in music publishing and I hope all you bass players (and bass teachers) out there find it to be most useful, comprehensive and even inspiring!
I’ll leave its web page to describe the contents for you, but my general intent was to create a method book that contained all the information anyone would need in order to successfully play bass with others, regardless of the style of music they were interested in, or how long they have been playing. At the same time, my goal was to give people a sense of how to practice so that the process of learning becomes an enjoyable, creative experience in itself. If people have half the fun using it that I had creating it, then it will be a big hit! Music is a beautiful thing and I hope this new book helps people feel what a great gift playing music can be. Enjoy! – Chuck

For those of you not familiar with David Berkman, he is first of all one of the best jazz pianists of the post-Herbie generation. His records are great and he has developed far past them in the last few years. In short, he’s the real deal, jazzwise. In addition, he is a very funny guy, a deep thinker and a great teacher, as those of you who have read his first book, “The Jazz Musician’s Guide To Creative Practicing” know full well.
So when he told me he wanted to do a second book to help singers learn to become real musicians instead of just entertainers, I was thrilled to hear it. There are some good books for jazz singers already on the market, but nothing with the depth that David’s book possesses. Any singer who goes through the program that David lays out here will be as well trained in the language of jazz as nine-tenths of the instrumentalists out there. Let’s hope that it is a big success in that regard!
“The Jazz Singer’s Guidebook” takes singers from step one, showing them basic jazz harmony on the keyboard, how to voice chords in several different ways, and how to use that knowledge to get inside their songs so that they can hear what changes should be on their lead sheets. It has them practicing singing lines using arpeggios and pieces of scales, practicing scatting using chromatic approach notes, practicing singing hip intervals, etc., etc. David told me that the course laid out in this book is in reality exactly the things every jazz player should know, since being able to sing a solo in your head is the first step to being able to create it on your instrument. A brilliant book from start to finish.
So if you are a jazz singer, or work with one, I highly recommend that you check “The Jazz Singer’s Guidebook” out. Another classic from Sher Music Co.!

We are happy to announce the release of Michael Spiro’s new instructional DVD, “Introduction To The Conga Drum”. Running almost 2 hours in length, “Introduction To The Conga Drum” is Sher Music Co.’s first venture into producing a DVD, but it will not be the last!
The video is a masterpiece of clear, patient and comprehensive teaching, not surprising since Michael has been teaching conga drums for many decades now, including his current position as an Assistant Professor at Indiana University’s percussion department.
The DVD is designed for beginners, or anyone needing a solid foundation in good conga drum technique, and Spiro starts right at the beginning with cogent information on how to hold the drum, the proper bodily posture to maintain while playing, and the correct hand and arm movements needed to produce the 5 or 6 basic sounds on the drum. Interspersed with cool footage of Michael playing solo drums, and also bits of funny, down-home humor (“Don’t hold you elbows up in the air. It’s not a chicken wing thing”), this DVD kept me riveted to my seat, even though I’ll never be a conga drummer myself.
It was shot from three different camera angles and has a warm, inviting atmosphere throughout. Part I gives you all the basic strokes and how to produce them. Part II gives you exercises for combining the basic strokes into usable patterns. And Part III gives you three basic Afro-Cuban rhythms to work on, so that the rudiments learned earlier are applied to the music right away.
At $26, this makes a wonderful Holiday present for your favorite percussionist. Enjoy! – Chuck Sher

Over the decades since Sher Music Co. first started publishing world-class jazz fake books, one of the few complaints I have received is that there is just too much material in our books to “shlep” all of them to every gig. So my brother Norm had a good idea: to put a bunch of the more widely-known tunes in a single volume that would give a representative sampling of the songs in our books.

Included are standards, classic jazz tunes, and contemporary jazz compositions that are all part of the jazz canon at this point in time. And as a special bonus, we have included a gorgeous song from Michael Brecker’s final CD, Pilgrimage, entitled “Half Moon Lane”, seen here for the first time in print (although it will also be included in our online collection, The Digital Real Book).

It has been a real honor for me to be associated with the high level of musical talent represented in our various fake books, and to do my part in helping jazz and Latin music flourish by providing good lead sheets for bands to work off of. But please remember that only so much information can be conveyed on a piece of paper. There is no substitute for listening deeply to the recordings of these songs, and figuring out how the masters of the music took these structures and created fresh, spontaneous music using these tunes as springboards.

Please see the back of the book for a list of the previous Sher Music Co. books that each one of these songs appeared in. And in the back of each one of those books there are complete discographies of the albums we used in order to create the charts. But these days all you have to do is to ask iTunes or Rhapsody or any other internet music provider to bring up the various recordings available for each song. I have found www.rhapsody.com to be especially valuable since, for a relatively low monthly fee, you get to listen to the entire track of any song on many thousands of CDs, without any additional cost (unless you want to download a particular track, which costs about a dollar each). Happy listening!

My heartfelt thanks goes out to all the publishers of these songs for their cooperation; to Chuck Stewart, Chuck Gee, Jos. L. Knaepen and Patrick Hinely for the use of their beautiful photos; to the Sher Music team—Larry Dunlap (musical editor), Chuck Gee (music engraving), Bob Afifi (proofreading) and Attila Nagy (cover art & graphics)—for another great job accomplished; and to the composers and recording artists for each song, whose talent and genius have enriched all our lives so much.

Needless to say, if you don’t have the complete set of Sher Music Co. Real Books, then we suggest that you add them to your library in the near future. They are all unique collections of songs, and are all done with the same attention to detail, easy-to-read manuscript, and complete accuracy that you will find in this volume. They are available in better music stores world-wide, or online at www.shermusic.com. Please see the Store Locator on our website to find a Sher Music Co. dealer near you. In the meantime, this book should be invaluable to you at gigs, rehearsals and jam sessions. Enjoy, and long live jazz!