Anybody wanna learn Autumn Leaves/jazz standard?

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Boudoir Guitar

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Have made a couple of false starts towards learning how to play a few jazz standards, with the goal being to increase facility playing with playing over a series of chords rather than focusing mostly on tone-center playing with an occasional nod to the IV chord when it pops up. I know at least @Jarick has shown similar interest in the past. And that at least @Stratzrus @AFKAEjay and maybe @jay mitchell could play circles around the tune and possibly have some tips.

If interested, reply, and I'll throw in some resources.
 
Boudoir Guitar said:
Have made a couple of false starts towards learning how to play a few jazz standards, with the goal being to increase facility playing with playing over a series of chords rather than focusing mostly on tone-center playing with an occasional nod to the IV chord when it pops up. I know at least @Jarick has shown similar interest in the past. And that at least @Stratzrus @AFKAEjay and maybe @jay mitchell could play circles around the tune and possibly have some tips.

If interested, reply, and I'll throw in some resources.
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Yeah I’d totally be interested! I’ve tried a few ways to figure out how to get into jazz and can’t get any deeper than some chords. Learning a song would be great.
 
Boudoir Guitar said:
Have made a couple of false starts towards learning how to play a few jazz standards, with the goal being to increase facility playing with playing over a series of chords rather than focusing mostly on tone-center playing with an occasional nod to the IV chord when it pops up. I know at least @Jarick has shown similar interest in the past. And that at least @Stratzrus @AFKAEjay and maybe @jay mitchell could play circles around the tune and possibly have some tips.

If interested, reply, and I'll throw in some resources.
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I'm definitely interested. Looking forward to anything you think is worth sharing.
 
SKU said:
I bet @Sascha Franck knows a thing or two about jazz...
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Yes and no. I studied it, so I know the "rules". I also kinda apply those very rules to plenty of things. But still, I'm not exactly a jazz player.
Besides, I know @Boudoir Guitar has me on ignore, so it'd be pointless and possibly against any netiquette (which I actually know some things about, even if people tend to not believe that...) to post here.
 
Sascha Franck said:
Yes and no. I studied it, so I know the "rules". I also kinda apply those very rules to plenty of things. But still, I'm not exactly a jazz player.
Besides, I know @Boudoir Guitar has me on ignore, so it'd be pointless and possibly against any netiquette (which I actually know some things about, even if people tend to not believe that...) to post here.
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I've got both you and SKU on ignore, mostly as a "me" thing. If either want to take part in this thread, feel free -- I'm an asshole when talking about gear for all sorts of reasons. Don't tend to be that when actually talking about music. The only thing I wouldn't abide by is anyone commenting on anything posted in here as not having musical merit.
 
Okay, I took a very half-hearted stab at this tune (and the general goals of this thread) a couple years ago. I'd say the best starting place for anyone wanting to learn the tune is -- listen to lots of examples of it; find a couple that make the most sense from "I dig it; I could possibly see wrapping my head around at least part of it and stealing some bits from it."

For me, I found the Chet Baker version to be an easy one for learning the head melody by ear. Overall, its a little quicker in tempo than I wanna start, but I dig his playing and overall find his stuff relatively easy-ish to snag by ear so will probably return to it for other ideas:



The version off Cannonball Adderley's "Something' Else" is the kinda vibe I'd ideally love to shoot for eventually and has absolute "life goals" playing in it:



One thing to keep in mind is that you will find some versions in e-minor, and others in g-minor.

If you wanna skip straight to "watching a dude play the head on a guitar with tabs at the bottom, you've got a bunch of options. This one is my favorite from a beginner perspective, and I like that he shows the head in two octaves/positions:

And this is a pretty solid "learn to comp the tune" vid:

Jazz Guitar with Andy has at least two videos -- in terms of just "learning the song", this one is solid:

LearnJazzStandards has a bit of a dive on the chord progression that is useful:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aaY5-YFXKrc

Getting the melody and chords under my fingers is gonna take a week at least, so will leave it here for a bit. Other useful exercises at this stage are to listen to various versions of the tune and (i) without your guitar, keep track of what chord is playing at the moment or (ii) hearing the head melody in your head as the soloists take a few choruses - both to kind of hear what they're playing relative to the head melody and to work on being able to keep up with where you are in the chord sequence.
 
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Sascha Franck said:
Yes and no. I studied it, so I know the "rules". I also kinda apply those very rules to plenty of things. But still, I'm not exactly a jazz player.
Besides, I know @Boudoir Guitar has me on ignore, so it'd be pointless and possibly against any netiquette (which I actually know some things about, even if people tend to not believe that...) to post here.
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Actually IMO the main benefit of learning some jazz theory like chord tones, chord melodies, substitutions, more exotic usages of scales has most benefit in all other genres besides jazz for the regular guy...
Whenever I see someone solos using the right notes ( aka notes that fit and follow the progression not just random blabber ) I assume there's at least some jazz or classical training behind or that he was classically trained on some other instrument.
 
SKU said:
Whenever I see someone solos using the right notes ( aka notes that fit and follow the progression not just random blabber ) I assume there's at least some jazz or classical training behind or that he was classically trained on some other instrument.
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Well, country players usually follow chord changes pretty well. Interestingly enough, many decent country players are also able to sit in a jazz jam or so (even if their roots are all in country), but slap a jazz player into a country session and he'd likely be completely lost.
IMO there's good reasons for it to be that way, too (which I could try to explain in case anyone's interested).

Otherwise, at least for my own use cases, I agree. If anything, having to learn some jazz helped me to improve a lot in other styles.
 
I'm the last one to be off-topic-police, but given the very specific purpose of this thread being a place for folks that are trying to learn a song, can we maybe move the ancillary discussions elsewhere?
 
Boudoir Guitar said:
Okay, I took a very half-hearted stab at this tune (and the general goals of this thread) a couple years ago. I'd say the best starting place for anyone wanting to learn the tune is -- listen to lots of examples of it; find a couple that make the most sense from "I dig it; I could possibly see wrapping my head around at least part of it and stealing some bits from it."

For me, I found the Chet Baker version to be an easy one for learning the head melody by ear. Overall, its a little quicker in tempo than I wanna start, but I dig his playing and overall find his stuff relatively easy-ish to snag by ear so will probably return to it for other ideas:



The version off Cannonball Adderley's "Something' Else" is the kinda vibe I'd ideally love to shoot for eventually and has absolute "life goals" playing in it:



One thing to keep in mind is that you will find some versions in e-minor, and others in g-minor.

If you wanna skip straight to "watching a dude play the head on a guitar with tabs at the bottom, you've got a bunch of options. This one is my favorite from a beginner perspective, and I like that he shows the head in two octaves/positions:

And this is a pretty solid "learn to comp the tune" vid:

Jazz Guitar with Andy has at least two videos -- in terms of just "learning the song", this one is solid:

LearnJazzStandards has a bit of a dive on the chord progression that is useful:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aaY5-YFXKrc

Getting the melody and chords under my fingers is gonna take a week at least, so will leave it here for a bit. Other useful exercises at this stage are to listen to various versions of the tune and (i) without your guitar, keep track of what chord is playing at the moment or (ii) hearing the head melody in your head as the soloists take a few choruses - both to kind of hear what they're playing relative to the head melody and to work on being able to keep up with where you are in the chord sequence.
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Good videos, thanks for posting.
 
Short tip: Being able to play the melodies of whatever tunes is an important thing in general, but learning the melody of this particular tune is even more beneficial as all the target notes are the thirds of the underlying chords, hence they're already leading you through the song a great deal.
 
I’m getting flashbacks of high school jazz ensemble and my teacher dreading my solo spot, where I inevitably went for Vai techniques with absolutely zero theory knowledge or understanding how to play over the chords.

“Remember, if you hit a wrong note, you’re only a half-step away. Unless you’re Andy, who somehow ends up 10 miles away from the right notes”
 
Nice that you dive into this stuff! It’s a nice tune to start with.
Tip 1: Also play the melody of M.A.S.H. over the chords…and the theme of “still got the blues”.

Not sure how I can be of help…I’ll throw in some generics:

- Note that the melody of this tune..the phrases start on 123 of the current chord…and end on the 3rd of the new chord. Try to memorize it that way…so not as frets/shapes…but in relation to the chords..and key. So first phrase is 123 of Em…and lands on the 3rd of Am…which is the b6 of the key. Why do it like this? It trains your ear, cause you will connect sounds to those numbers and…it will enable you to transpose to any key. It will take you 10x the time to learn it today maybe…next tune 9x…but it will pay off big time. Once you hear a melody like this..you never have to relearn it..not 10 years from now.

- Remember the chords as functions (II V etc)…and actively play the tune in different keys using that… that really grinds in that way of thinking. Why…again you build a relation between sound and numbers…also you will store chord changes in your brain as bigger chunks instead of individual chords. 2 5 in G and then to Em is less info then 7 chords ;). Also it will set conditions to make sense of more complicated changes and the scales they come from.

- If you can…figure out a simple way to combine chords and the melody. Copy one is cool…but when you figure out one yourself..you will learn a lot about chords / guitar neck.

- get Ireal and improvise over it

- Obviously somewhere down the line you will want to see all the chord notes on the neck while you are playing the tune…and fiddle with/around those….maybe that’s a different subject then learning a tune ;)

Anyway…good luck all!
 
IMO it's a good idea to get the harmonic material sorted at least a bit before you start to fool around. No idea about how much general scale/chord relationship knowledge exists round these parts, also no idea how much of it is covered in the videos posted above, so I'll try to keep it short-ish (uhm...).

General formula of 7th chords (which is what most jazz is kinda based on) building up on any major scale (using roman numbers for scale degrees is a common thing for that sort of stuff):
I maj7
II min7
III min7
IV maj7
V 7
VI min7
VII min7/b5

In C major (typical key for this to get explained - but fortunately "Autumn Leaves" isn't in C, so we need to deviate from that quickly, which is a good thing), the scale notes are C, D, E, F, G, A, B, so our chords are:
Cmaj7
Dmin7
Emin7
Fmaj7
G7
Amin7
Bmin7/b5

Now, "Autumn Leaves" (at least the Realbook version) is in Bb major or G minor (we will for a while ignore the "specialty" of G minor, namely the D7 dominant chord).
Scale notes of the Bb major scale are: Bb, C, D, Eb, F, G, A. Hence our 7 chords are:
Bbmaj7
Cmin7
Dmin7
Ebmaj7
F7
Gmin7
Amin7/b5

That's pretty much the basic harmonic stuff the tune is building up upon.

Next step would be to find some decent ways to play these chords - and I think there's at least one pretty easy method that I'd happily explain in case anyone's interested, but before doing so, I'd like to know whether everybody's more or less fine with the above or whether anything needs some more explanation.
 
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AutomationBias said:
I feel attacked
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Sascha Franck said:
IMO it's a good idea to get the harmonic material sorted at least a bit before you start to fool around. No idea about how much general scale/chord relationship knowledge exists round these parts, also no idea how much of it is covered in the videos posted above, so I'll try to keep it short-ish (uhm...).

General formula of 7th chords (which is what most jazz is kinda based on) building up on any major scale (using roman numbers for scale degrees is a common thing for that sort of stuff):
I maj7
II min7
III min7
IV maj7
V 7
VI min7
VII min7/b5

In C major (typical key for this to get explained - but fortunately "Autumn Leaves" isn't in C, so we need to deviate from that quickly, which is a good thing), the scale notes are C, D, E, F, G, A, B, so our chords are:
Cmaj7
Dmin7
Emin7
Fmaj7
G7
Amin7
Bmin7/b5

Now, "Autumn Leaves" (at least the Realbook version) is in Bb major or G minor (we will for a while ignore the "specialty" of G minor, namely the D7 dominant chord).
Scale notes of the Bb major scale are: Bb, C, D, Eb, F, G, A. Hence our 7 chords are:
Bbmaj7
Cmin7
Dmin7
Ebmaj7
F7
Gmin7
Amin7/b5

That's pretty much the basic harmonic stuff the tune is building up upon.

Next step would be to find some decent ways to play these chords - and I think there's at least one pretty easy method that I'd happily explain in case anyone's interested, but before doing so, I'd like to know whether everybody's more or less fine with the above or whether anything needs some more explanation.
Click to expand...
This is covered in the videos above (jazz guitar with Andy is a pretty great channel). Not attempting to tell you not to post info at all, just letting you know. Most of the chord voicing a shown are root-3rd-7th 3-note chords played with root in the bass. Most of the above examples are dealing with it in e-minor rather than g-minor because guitar players love e-minor.

Have no idea where others are coming from. The theory is not the issue for me. My issue is finding the stuff on the fretboard in real time and keeping track with where I am in the song,
 
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