Autumn Leaves - Solo Jazz Piano with Guided Score (Sheet Music Download)

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Autumn Leaves by Joseph Kosma - a hugely popular jazz standard played as a Solo Jazz Piano performance.

Sheet Music Download: https://www.musicnotes.com/l/LKtMw

1-to-1 Piano Lessons: www.alphapianostudio.com

Notes for those having an interest in learning jazz improvisation techniques
1) The basic building blocks of an improvised accompaniment part are shell voicings, guide tone voicings, and a combination of them.

Shell voicings are one of the following:
- 1st and 3rd of a chord
- 1st and 7th of a chord (eg. 0:01, C-7 in the first measure of the displayed score)
Occasionally, I would use a 1st and 5th in place of a traditional shell voicing. An example of this would be at 0:06, Eb∆7 in the 4th measure of the displayed score. The rationale behind using the 5th instead of 3rd or 7th on the Eb∆7 is, in that range of the piano, the 3rd or 7th would sound too muddy. And at the same time, I don’t want to resolve this problem by playing an octave higher because the chord would sound ‘thin’. Generally speaking, open 5th intervals have a better tolerance for the low range on the piano, and if you want the warmth and grandness of the lower range of the piano without the muddiness, use the 5th in place of the 3rd or 7th in a traditional shell voicing

Guide tone voicings are: 3rd and 7th of a chord
- An example of this would be at 0:03, F7 in the 2nd measure of the displayed score. Notice the LH playing the guide tone voicing (Eb and A) of F7.
- Another example of this would be at 0:01, C-7 in the first measure of the displayed score. Notice how the Guide tone voicing is shared between the hands, with the 3rd (Eb) played by the right hand, and the 7th (Bb) played by the left hand.

This improvised accompaniment style continues for the first head and first chorus of solo.

2) The accompaniment style switches to a 4-feel walking bass style, played by the LH. Switching up the accompaniment style can help to create a sense of development in the improvisation. This takes place 1:34.

What is 4-feel walking bass? A 4-feel walking bass means that the every bar of music will have 4 bass notes. You can see this from the LH part at 1:34

How do you know which notes to play for the walking bass? The basic concept of constructing walking bass lines is as follows:

For chords that are one-measure long, play Root-CT-CT-Chromatic.
*CT stands for chord tones
* Chromatic refers to a note that is a half-step above or half-step below the root of the next chord

An example of this would be at 1:35, F7 on the 2nd measure of the displayed score. Notice the LH plays F-C-F-Cb
The first note, F, is Root
The 2nd and 3rd notes (C and F) are chord tones of the F7 chord
The last note, Cb, is a chromatic note. It is a half-step above the root note (Eb) of the next chord (Eb∆7)