Great Family Songbook: A Treasury of Favorite Show Tunes, Sing Alongs, Popular Songs, Jazz & Blues, Children's Melodies, International Ballads, Folk ... Jingles, and More for Piano and Guitar Spiral-bound – Illustrated, September 15, 2010

This is THE most awesome book ever if you are looking for traditional and campfire songs. I have bought a lot of music fruitlessly trying to find exactly what is in this book. Songs like "This Land Is Your Land," "Home On the Range," "She'll Be Comin' Round the Mountain," "Old MacDonald," "Bill Bailey," "A Bicycle Built for Two," "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot," "Shenandoah," "I've Been Workin' On the Railroad," and many more. I knew almost every song in the book. An amazing collection I have not been able to find anywhere else. Includes guitar chords, beg/int piano (perfect for sing-alongs), and all the verses. Also has spiral binding, although you can't tell from the front. Excellent!!!!

Wonderfull book !

Many familiar songs, accessible accompaniments, wonderful for family or group sing alongs.

I am having so much with this book! I’m an intermediate adult player with a mostly classical background (from years of lessons when I was a student). I wanted music that I could PLAY that would still sound good and be singable! This book delivers! The arrangements are super accessible for me, sound more complicated than they are, and are easy to sing along with (lyrics included and in singable keys)! I’ve been memorizing some them so that I can build a repertoire of songs to play whenever I come across a piano!Also, the layout is really sweet. The illustrations are cute, the music is well printed and very easy to read, the book lays open flat. Quality book. Very nice to use.My only complaint is that there are a lot of songs here I may never play because they’re pretty old and unfamiliar to me. Some are good and I’m happy to learn them; others just feel outdated. If only this book were a LITTLE more current! Also a few of the arrangements are sort of “meh,” but this book still spends a lot of time on my piano!

This treasury is exactly what I was looking for when I began searching for an accompaniment sing a long book to use with my kids. It has almost every song I wanted, and plenty more I wouldn't have even thought of.The book itself is high quality - heavy card stock pages, spiral bound, beautiful pictures and clear typeset. The arrangements are easy to read and the lyrics are a decent size for most eyes. Each song has a paragraph of history/explanation at the top and these are filled with gems in and of themselves.The quality of the musical arrangements is also top notch - they are simple enough for most pianists to play without much rehearsal (early intermediate in difficulty) but written in such a way that the greater mood of the song is really captured. The harmonies are well selected to deliver maximum musical impact with minimal difficulty. Almost all of these songs are set in very easy keys as well, which is a bonus for sight reading without much preparation.My only criticisms, and they are small, are that there are no suggested fingerings on any of these pieces and that some verses are missing from a few of the songs. With the fingerings, it would do any pianist well to go through the songs before playing and write in a few - a lack of fingerings can unnecessarily stumble sight readers. With the missing verses, all the most popular refrains are represented and most pieces are complete as written (to the best of my knowledge) so this quibble is minor. If I really want the fifth verse of random-patriotic-anthem, I can pull it up on Google easily enough and just play another repeat of the score.For families who want to spend some time singing old favorites together, to charity playing in nursing homes or even as a supplement to a homeschool unit on a historical event, "The Great Family Songbook" is a phenomenal addition to any sheet music library. Our family will be enjoying this for many years to come!

No chord charts. No leading verses, only choruses. An hour or two on the internet would have saved me the price of this book.

The arrangements in this book are really great. I am an intermediate player, and I am able to sight read these songs with just a few errors. With a few run-throughs, I should be quite competent. But even though the arrangements are simple, just the right chords have been selected, that still produce a nice overall song. I don't know how to explain it better, but I'm sure most players have purchased some sheet music and then when the time came to play it, it just never sounded great, even if you were playing it exactly as written. Maybe the arranger decided to get fancy on a few chords (to the point where you do a double check and make sure you didn't miss a note, and then wonder whether or not it might be a typo), or maybe they simplified it too much. This book is the complete opposite- it has just the notes you need to capture the essence of each song, and nothing you don't. I have more use for some sections of the book than others (I have a 2 year old, so I'm already getting pretty good at the children's songs, and I anticipate the patriotic and holiday songs will also be in heavy rotation), but they have made some nice, general selections that will appeal to a wide audience. If you have a crowd who wants to gather around the piano and sing, you will get pretty far with this one book. I would recommend this for any piano library.