The Folksong Fake Book: (Fake Books)

I chose this anthology over the other popular one because I read music and am able to learn a song from the music. This book presents the songs in a traditional and easy on the eyes format and in alphabetical order. The book itself appears to be well constructed and durable and I have no problem getting it to open and lie flat. It is very heavy, however. There's an alphabetical table of contents and an index of country of origin. I wish there was an index by category, by first line (as many songs have different titles), and author. The songs are given credit by category and country, but rarely a specific composer.

I thought I knew every old folk song there was. But there is more to learn! I wish the book had included alternate chords for autoharp. I live in the high desert and sing songs in the starlight with my autoharp because I cant play guitar or fiddle due to arthritis. Alternate chords would be appreciated.

It is a great addition to my music shelf and for me and my guitar.

The book is comprehensive. It has many folk songs from around the world, all with a melody line and guitar chords. For many of the songs it includes all of the verses (up to 12).I did have one problem. The GBC that bound the book was not wide enough to allow me to open up the book and not put the pages at risk. I recommend that when you purchase this book, you purchase additional GBCs and then split up the book and rebind it using the extra GBCs. Once this is done, the book lies flat. I had to remove about 200 pages to accomplish this.

I didn't know such a fat book with so many songs (aka fake book) existed. I like the fact no song goes over one page, which means you can sing a song without flipping pages. When you put this on a music score stand, the most typical page contains 4 songs. You will need a firm music stand as the book is heavy. It is fun to identify a song that looks good in this book and find it on youtube too to study it along with this book.

This is a great resource. There is a ton of great music all in one book. I plan to order the Irish fake book in the near future.

Naturally, you will be totally uninterested in most of the tunes herein, but I think you will find many, and in good versions, that you will want to play or sing. Someone else will feel the same way, naturally, but about a different subset...This book is titled to go along with Hal Leonard's "Fake" book series for, primarily, composed and copyrighted songs. But these are folk songs: some have a known composer, but all are in the public domain. Nevertheless, this is not some careless collection of picked-over trash; for whatever reason, the editors felt they should do a good job on these humble tunes of the people. They went to the original versions as they could find them, and included all the known verses (unless there were more than twelve...). Good show!

There are songs in this book that one can play after learning just a few chords. As you progress in your playing, add embellishments to the songs and play those that use more complicated chords or add different strumming. Some of these songs are widely-known, others will be new. Many are public domain, but having them all in one place is worth the cost. If you want to be able to play and sing with friends, this is a good starting point for building your musical repertoire.

Liked content but print very small

Wonderful assortment of folk songs. A lot of variety.

This is a really great resource for anyone wanting to lead or participate in group singing, or just enjoy playing and singing for their own enjoyment. Easy to use and great for a "memory refresher".

I LOVE THIS BOOK. As a music educator, having 1000 songs plus chord changes is a great way to get everyone playing melodies, arrange small ensemble rep, and introduce chord construction.

as expected