New Spiro DVD released, "Introduction To The Conga Drum"!

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

"Best Of Sher Music Co. Real Books" just released!

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!

Sher Music Co. releases "The Serious Jazz Book II"!

Following on the success of guitar legend Barry Finnerty's first book, "The Serious Jazz Practice Book", Sher Music Co. has released the second volume in this series of woodshed classics.

Like the first volume, "The Serious Jazz Book II" has garnered rave reviews from the jazz community, including endorsements by Joe Lovano, Mark Levine and Hubert Laws. World-renowned jazz educator Jamey Aebersold says, "This is an extremely thorough book. The exercises are concise, challenging and very much worth the effort. Highly recommended!"

In this book, Barry (who recorded with Miles Davis, the Brecker Bros. and the Crusaders, among others) shows how to become a better soloist by melodically mastering the individual chords used in jazz, how they connect with each other, and how they are used in various song forms.

The retail price is $32 for this 200 page book that will keep your chops up for a lifetime. Sample pages and more information is available at www.shermusic.com. Sold at better music stores world-wide or directly from our website.

Real Easy Vol. 3 transposed versions available

Just a note to let you know that "The Real Easy Book - Vol. 3: A Short History Of Jazz" is now available in Bb, Eb and Bass Clef, as well as the original C version. We have had nothing but positive feedback about this book since it came out in January and look forward to many schools adopting it starting in September of this year.

Also, it was my great pleasure to help bring David Berkman and his trio out to the West Coast for their first tour here. I caught them three nights in a row and have rarely enjoyed listening to music as much as I did those nights. David himself (the author of our book, "The Jazz Musician's Guide To Creative Practicing") has gotten several times better than he was even a year ago, and in my mind now stands up there with the very best of modern jazz pianists. His bassist, Joe Martin, is also a very accomplished player, a wonderful soloist and a complete professional, handing everything thrown at him without breaking a sweat. 25-year-old drummer Ted Poor is, to my ears, one of the most creative drummers on the planet, able to take the music to any rhythmic zone imaginable at the drop of the hat. Hopefully they will be recording this trio soon, and if a CD is released, don't miss it! Check David's website www.davidberkman.com for future gigs.

Speaking of great piano players, don't miss Enrico Pieranunzi's new duo CD with Marc Johnson, "Yellow And Blue Suites". Enrico at his best, and that's saying something. Not to mention the fabulous Marc Johnson, co-author of our book, "Concepts For Bass Soloing." So far, this CD is only available at www.rhapsody.com, the hippest music site on the internet that I know of, where for a low monthly fee you can listen to the entire track of songs on hundreds of thousands of CDs.

And to mention one more genius pianist, I was fortunate enough to catch the Keith Jarrett Trio performing at the SF Jazz Festival recently and all I have to say is, catch them while you can. Keith is at the height of his powers, as you can tell from his last CD, "My Foolish Heart."

Finally, do yourself a favor and check out Clare Fischer's CD "After The Rain". Not jazz in any sense, this is, IMHO, one of the most beautiful contemporary classical CDs ever recorded. Like Bartok, but without the angst. Just exquisite, and congratulations to Clare for writing such amazing music!

Keep your ears, and your mind, and your heart open and many beautiful things will come your way, even on this bizarre planet. Peace - Chuck

Chuck's Cool CDs List - 2/1/08

My wonderful web expert, Bob Afifi, talked me into starting a blog, so I hope all you Sher Music fans out there find it useful. If you have any thoughts on what shows up in this blog, please comment.

One of my jobs as a jazz publisher (not to mention as a musician myself) is to keep my ears open to the latest developments in jazz, or at least those aspects of jazz that I find personally appealing. So below please find a list of some of the coolest music I've heard lately. I'll probably be doing this monthly to correspond with my monthly jazz show on KRCB. You can hear many of these songs on the show by going to http://www.krcb.org and hitting the "Listen" button the first Saturday of each month from 8 pm to 12 am, Pacific time. Or check out rhapsody.com, where I found most of these CDs and where, for a relatively low monthly fee, you can listen to the entire track (not just 30 seconds) of songs on many thousands of jazz CDs, and other kinds of music too, of course. Enjoy! - Chuck

1. Chris Minh Doky's "Cinematic", featuring Joey Calderazzo, Tain Watts, and other great players. The first tune, "James Bond" is contemporary jazz at its finest.
2. New York Voices' "A Day Like This". I haven't hear the whole CD but Heads Up put out a promotional sampler with tracks from various CDs including a very beautiful tune from this CD entitled, "The World Keeps You Waiting" - very cool lyric for these stressed-out times.
3. George Colligan's "Desire", and "Como La Vida Puede Ser", featuring alto player Perico Sambeat, has some world-class playing and writing on it. Check out the title tune of the 2nd CD. Perico is one of the most mature saxophone voices on the planet.
4. Julian Arguelles' "Scapes". Not all of this CD is to my personal taste, but some of it is just gorgeous to my ears, and one has to commend Julian for being completely creative in following his musical vision.
5. Marcus Tardelli's "Interpreta Guinga". My man Barry Finnerty hipped me to this great musician, playing state-of-the-art acoustic guitar versions of the great Brazilian composer Guinga's compositions. Uncle Chuck says check it out.
6. Perico Sambeat's "Jindungo". See #3 above for comments on Perico.
7. Ali Akbar Khan's "Raga Chandranandan", from the '60s. To my ears, one of the greatest solos on any instrument, from any country, anytime.
8. Kenny Werner/Roseanna Vitro's: "Serve Or Suffer: The Delirium Blues Project". All I have heard is their very interesting version of Tower of Power's classic, "What Is Hip?", which they totally re-invigorate. CD won't be released until next month, evidently.
9. Kenny Wheeler's "It Takes Two", featuring guitarists John Abercrombie and John Parricelli, and bassist Anders Jormin. Great music from everybody on this CD.
10. Morrie Louden's "Time Piece". One of the best bassists and composers I have heard in many a year, including some of the best Bob Sheppard sax playing on record, which is saying a lot. Very highly recommended.
11. Kasper Villaume's "Hands" - Along with Michael Brecker's "Pilgrimage", this CD is the best overall record I've heard in the last year or so. The rhythm section of pianist Kasper Villaume, bassist Chris Minh Doky and drummer Ali Jackson is simply superb, and they create the perfect setting for some of the greatest Chris Potter solos ever recorded. Don't miss it!

On Piracy by Chuck Sher

As you might be aware, in recent years many music books, including all of Sher Music books, have been uploaded onto file-sharing, "torrent" sites, all over the internet. This was done without our permission and is illegal as well as just plain wrong. We understand that the temptation to get "something for nothing" might be hard to resist in these economic times, but here's why we believe you should boycott these pirated versions of our books.

Sher Music Co. remains what it was when it started in 1979---a small business by musicians, for musicians. Putting together a legal, accurate, high-quality fake book (such as The New Real Books) takes us about two years of intense effort and expense: countless hours of finding and listening to records to discover the best tunes to include, then tracking down the publishers, doing all the business negotiations, meticulously transcribing the tunes, and re-working each chart until it is the most complete and useful version of the tune possible. Then we painstakingly copy them, proofread them, and road-test them with our musician friends at jam sessions and rehearsals. We often consult with the composers to get any feedback they might have, then revise them, re-copy them, paste them up in book form, and proofread them over and over until they are perfect. And that doesn't include producing book covers, promoting the books after they are out, and the daily hassles and expenses of running a business. There are blood, sweat and tears on every page. (And great joy too, of course. We love what we do!)

If you produce, copy or download a pirated version of our fakebooks, you are stealing the fruits of years of effort that went into creating them. You are also stealing money from your favorite jazz artists. Every six months we faithfully send fair royalty payments to all the publishers and composers of the tunes in our books. By downloading these pirated copies, you are stealing from Wayne Shorter, Chick Corea, Richie Beirach, McCoy Tyner and hundreds of other less-well-known composers who count on these royalties to pay their bills. You wouldn't walk into Wayne's living room and take his stereo, even if you knew you could get away with it, right? Well, these illegal downloads are just as much an act of theft as any street crime.

The same is true for our educational books. Mark Levine, for example, has written the most important jazz theory book ever published. It took him years to put it all down on paper (not to mention the decades of studying, transcribing, practicing and gigging that the book is based on) and he deserves to reap some reward for that effort. Downloading illegal, free versions of his books is nothing more or less than stealing.

The effect of this is not hard to imagine. Our ability to produce new publications has been seriously compromised by the thousands and thousands of our books that have been downloaded for free. Among other things that means that we cannot afford to produce any more big fake books, since the odds of our being able to recoup our expenses is now slim to none. So it is not only Sher Music Co. that is losing, but also every musician who is now missing out on what could have been published if people had simply boycotted illegal downloads.

How can you tell if a book on the internet is illegal? Simple---if the download is free, it is by definition illegal since we obviously aren't going to get paid for it. We do now have digital versions of 16 of our books available for sale through Amazon, the iTunes bookstore, etc. but any free downloads are simply theft. (See the ebook page at www.shermusic.com for details.)

Piracy of musicians' recorded efforts are, of course, also widespread on the internet. But here too, you have legal, moral alternatives. For example, for about $13 a month, you can be a subscriber to Rhapsody, an online music service, where you will be able to listen to thousands of CDs at the push of a button. Rhapsody, of course, pays royalties for every use of every tune, eliminating the moral dilemma of using illegal download sites. (See www.listen.com for details.)

These are perilous times on our beautiful planet. The forces of greed and indifference to human suffering are increasingly powerful, and the only countervailing force is the basic goodness inherent in each of us. So we would encourage you to exercise your better nature: work for a more just and peaceful world, be kind in all your dealings with people, and use your purchasing power to support honest, life-affirming products, like the ones produced at Sher Music Co. You'll feel better. (Revised 4/3/11)

Chuck Sher is a jazz bassist, author of several bass instruction books and the owner of Sher Music Co., publisher of high-quality jazz and Latin music books (www.shermusic.com).