99% Invisible

99% Invisible

The Real Book

April 7, 202142 min

0:0041:54

About this episode

Since the mid-1970s, almost every jazz musician has owned a copy of the same book. It has a peach-colored cover, a chunky, 1970s-style logo, and a black plastic binding. It’s delightfully homemade-looking—like it was printed by a bunch of teenagers at a Kinkos. And inside is the sheet music for hundreds of common jazz tunes—also known as jazz “standards”—all meticulously notated by hand. It’s called the Real Book. But if you were going to music school in the 1970s, you couldn’t just buy a copy o

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99% Invisible

Design is everywhere in our lives, perhaps most importantly in the places where we've just stopped noticing. A weekly exploration of the process and power of design and architecture.

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