By far the most common thing people ask us is some version of the same question: can I read this in my key? The trumpet player wants B♭. The alto player wants E♭. The singer wants it a third lower than whatever the page says. And for years the honest answer on this site was: yes, but you have to find a small grey button marked − 0 + and know how many semitones you need.
That is a bad answer. So we rebuilt the toolbar around the question instead.
The old toolbar assumed you already knew
Here is what a chart page used to greet you with:
− 0 + 𝄢 ▦ 🔊▾ ▶ ◼
Twelve buttons, not one of them labelled. The minus and plus were transposition. The bass-clef glyph switched clef. The grid icon hid the staff and left a chord chart. The speaker held the whole play-along rhythm section. Every one of those is genuinely useful, and every one of them was a guess unless you hovered a mouse over it — which, on a phone, you cannot do at all.
None of that was written down anywhere on the page either. The three things this site is actually for — read it, put it in your key, hear it — were nowhere named in words.
Now you pick an instrument, not a number of semitones
The minus, the plus and the clef button are gone. In their place is one control marked Transpose, and what it asks is what you play:
- Piano, guitar, voice — concert pitch, the chart as written
- Trumpet, tenor sax, clarinet — B♭
- Alto sax, baritone sax — E♭
- Trombone, bass, cello — bass clef
Pick yours and the whole chart is rewritten: every note, every chord symbol, the key signature, correctly spelled. This is the thing printed fake books sell as four separate books. Here it is one menu, and it is free.
Better still, it remembers. Choose B♭ once and every standard you open after that — Autumn Leaves, All The Things You Are, Blue Bossa, all 865 of them — opens in your key without you touching anything.
And if you are not a horn player at all but a singer who needs it down a minor third, the same menu has Any other key at the bottom: a minus and a plus that move the chart one semitone at a time. The difference is that it now shows you the key you have landed in — B♭ / Gm — instead of a number like −2, which never meant anything to anyone.
What do you play?
One tap. It decides what we build next — and you get to see what everyone else answered.
Now try it for real: open a chart, set Transpose to your instrument, and it stays that way for every tune after it.
Open a standard →Score or chords, said in one word
The chord-grid button is now a pair that says what it does: Score and Chords. Chords hides the staff, the clefs and the notes and leaves the bar grid with the chord symbols — the way a rhythm section reads a tune. Score puts it back. You can see which one you are in without clicking to find out.
The whole rhythm section is behind one word: Band
The speaker icon became Band, and the walking bass, drums and comping piano now sit at the top of that menu rather than below the tempo box. Swing, bossa, ballad and straight feels are all there, along with tempo, playback instrument and a metronome click. It is the same play-along that has always been on every chart — it was just hiding behind an icon nobody clicked.
The page now ends where the music ends
Every chart used to be drawn on a full A4 sheet, so a 28-bar tune left you two thirds of a blank white page to scroll past before you reached anything else. Charts now take exactly as much room as they need. On a phone this is the difference between one screen and three.
Downloads are unaffected: a PDF is still a proper A4 page, because that is what you print.
And there is finally a way to ask
Under every chart there is now a short guide that explains the page in plain words, and a first-time strip at the top that names the three things worth knowing before you touch anything. Both are new to visitors who are not signed in — which, until now, was exactly the group that got no explanation at all.
What this costs
Nothing changed about what is free, but it is worth saying plainly, because a lot of people assume the good part is behind a wall:
- Free, no account: reading any of the 865 charts, transposing them to any key or instrument, the chord-grid view, and the full play-along band.
- $1 per score: downloading one chart as PDF, MusicXML, MEI or MIDI.
- Subscription: downloads across the whole catalog (up to 20 a day) plus the notation editor — write your own lead sheets, or edit any chart here and save your own version of it. $10 a month, or paid once at $10 for a month or $100 for a year.
If you have ever fixed a wrong chord on a chart with a pen, the editor is the part worth a look: see what the subscription adds.
Frequently asked questions
Can I read the Real Book in B♭ online for free?
Yes. Open any standard on realbook.site, set Transpose to “Trumpet, tenor sax, clarinet”, and the chart is rewritten into B♭ — notes, chord symbols and key signature. Reading and transposing are free and need no account. Only downloading the file costs anything.
Does the site remember my instrument?
Yes. Your choice is stored in your browser and applied to every chart you open afterwards, so a tenor player sees every tune in B♭ from then on. It is per-browser, so choosing it on your phone does not change it on your laptop.
Can I transpose to a key that is not my instrument’s?
Yes. Any other key at the bottom of the same menu moves the chart one semitone at a time, up or down, and shows you the key you have arrived in. That is the one singers want. The longer guide on how to transpose a lead sheet covers the by-hand methods too.
Do I need an account to use any of this?
No. Reading, transposing, the chord grid and the play-along band all work signed out. An account is needed only for downloading and for the editor.
What is the difference between the C, B♭, E♭ and bass-clef editions?
They are the same tunes written at different pitches, so that transposing instruments sound in tune with everyone else. The dedicated guide on real book editions explains which instrument needs which. On this site you no longer choose an edition — you choose your instrument, once.
The bottom line
Nothing was taken away in this update; everything just says what it is. If you play a horn and had been squinting at a small grey minus sign, the thing you wanted was always there — now it asks which instrument you play, and then it remembers.
New charts announced first on our Telegram channel
