louis
Band in a Box Songs

hindustanAmerican Popular Songs ... ! Lead Sheets !

To learn to play jazz you need to know the songs, inside out, upside down and every which way ... !

Wonderful American Popular Songs from the first half of the twentieth century have become established as the indispensable framework for jazz. They have a structure and characteristics immediately identifiable as 'Our Kind Of Music', they all go 'the same old way'!

note stave Our collection of 'Dixieland Standards' in 'Band-in-a-Box' format which are part of the tradition of early jazz is here  We've reached another milestone there are now over 4,000 songs!! ... but there are still many missing gems ... [and there are also a few you might not expect!]

note stave  Songs associated with some individual early jazz pioneers are here

Have a look and let me know which of these great songs you're interested in learning to play and we will e-mail the lead sheets to you ... hoping for swaps in return ... 

Send me a listing the songs you want ... here

NB 1  Our songs are all in 'Band-in-a-Box' format and have been collected as simple lead sheets giving the chord sequence and straight melody line aimed at teaching the basic structure, they are not musical 'arrangements'.

NB 2  This growing data base is incomplete and needs your contribution!

NB 3  The songs are not directly downloadable because we want to respect copyrights of the 'songsters' and we also want to encourage 'swaps'. But all is not lost we will happily email any songs you want to learn !!

dixieland bandThe 'toon' challenge !  

What are they playing ?

The song you are looking for is not listed?

 

We may be able to find it for you ... email me ... here

 

Simple lead sheets ... but with the application of a little magic, wizards like Alan Marchand can transform a simple 'Band-in-a-Box' lead sheet into a musical wow! ... have a listen to this arrangement of Maceo Pinkard's song livin high ...

band in a box banner    Reminder - our songs are stored for retrieval and study in the excellent 'Band-in-a-Box' format which provides -

visual and aural playback with scope for endless analysis and experimentation with tempos, keys, harmonies, solo lines   

endless realistic musical styles generating backing tracks for practice and rehearsal

printable lead sheets with key, transposition and clef change options for all the band

thriving internet community with small files for easy communication

and much more to help with -

learning songs and learning instrument parts

song writing and transcriptions

discovering better chords, better harmonies, better melodies and improvised lines

audio recording track

dumping to midi sequencers or audio recording

enhancing live performance

jamming and fun !!

   If you are not an enthusiastic owner of this unbelievable software then get it now from -   pg music logo here

Then try this !!

trumpet playerGet a bunch of 'Band-in-a-Box' songs which you think might be fun to play ... select the 'Juke Box' and a suitable Dixieland 'style' and go !! ... listen while you're washing and for any toon you like there will be an instantly available lead sheet to get you started ... !!  

Many many books have been written about these songs and the song writers ... details of some of the best are here