Difference between "traid" realization and jazz fakebook playing?

[Bob]

Bad title, but I'm not sure what to call this.

This is true, isn't it?  There's a difference between realizing a basic melody with chords from a fakebook in a jazz style compared with... (not sure what to call it) ... with a more triadic style?


And I'm thinking it's easier to get the basic, triadic style down, true?  It's just triads, voicing might be a little simpler.... I don't think chords are going to get very much beyond diatonic... 

So if someone was to learn to play from a fakebook, it might make sense to start with the easier stuff, i.e. the traidic stuff?

Agree?  Disagree?  Thoughts?


I hadn't really thought much about this like this before.  I guess I was assuming if it was from a fakebook, it was jazzier.  Maybe it's true that it's more "pop style" but even that I'm wondering about. 

[nystul]

Fake books cover just about any style imaginable, as long as it has a melody and a chord progression and someone might want to hear it.  Jazzy voicings may not always be really true to the original style of the song.  I'm not very good at this.  I think step one is to be able to recognize all of the chords on the fly and play them accurately in whatever simple way you can.  For a nice ballad, that might be enough anyway.  But for a lot of songs to sound good, you need *rhythm*.  A lot of times it would sound better maybe to have a walking bass line in the left hand and fill out some harmony in the alto.  Or maybe your left hand plays open fifths in a pattern like a shuffle or a rhythm guitar sort of thing.  Maybe that slow 6/8 ballad should have an arpeggio in the left hand.  I suppose the more cliche ways you can think of to make an instant harmony out of chord symbol, the better.  Jazz teaches a lot of tools for just that task, but again not every piece in a fake book is meant to be jazzy.