Improvisation with Autumn Leaves

Follow the sound of falling leaves to find your own voice.

A Melody is a Story

Songs that speak to us always have that special something that lets us hum to it. It can be a lyric or part that an instrument plays. It’s a little “phrase” that connects us to a song. To help us understand phrasing for a jazz standard I’d like to first point out some great lyrical phrasing from a Houston, Texas rock band.

Many popular songs like ZZ Top’s “La Grange” have multiple elements that we can connect to. The immediate thing that we latch on to is the guitar riff. You can sit in the car and when that song comes on it can be difficult to not hum out the attitude of the guitar as you cruise along the road. Then the lyrics come in, which can cause people to start singing along. You might not know what the singer is saying, but you can still hum to it.

When it comes to phrasing a great melody can be the basis of a phrase. In this case, the soft lyrics of just the intro are great phrases. Listen to each spoken sentence as a melodic phrase. Some are drawn out while others are quick and short. Some phrasing used is almost exactly the same, but with an added note or slight rhythm change. The phrasing that I think works best is at the end of the intro. The phrase, “To that home out on the range,” is drawn out with longer lasting notes and is followed by a contrasting rhythm for, “They got a lot of nice girls.”

When improvising over a song it’s important to let your listener connect to you through your phrases and combinations of phrases just like with the two phrases of, “To that home out on the range. They got a lot of nice girls.” By giving a group of phrases, or sentences, to your listener you can let them understand what you are saying. Else, you would just be playing clusters of notes, which would be like saying partial words in broken sentences.

In this lesson we’ll focus on ways to use phrases that fit a song. There are often popular phrases, or melodies, that are a staple of a song. Instead of reinventing the wheel, we’ll stay true to the main phrases by following the root notes of chords. This lesson is not meant to tell you what to play. Instead, I want you to see where you can explore new ideas and make improvisation tangible.

The Form of Autumn Leaves

We’ll be using the song “Autumn Leaves” which is played in the form A-A-B, which means that the A section is played twice followed by the B section. This pattern repeats until the song is done. Again, please be aware that there are tons of variations of this song on the internet, so you’re going to find inconsistencies as you listen to multiple versions of the song. Check out the version that we will be using in G Natural Minor. If you want a breakdown of both sections, then check out “Autumn Leaves and the Circle of Fifths”.

Other Forms of Autumn Leaves

The chart above sticks to the Circle of Fifths as it moves to and from our tonic chord of Gm. Since this is a “Jazz Standard” we’ll need to accept that there are going to be many versions of this song. Below is a jam track that I like to use because it modifies multiple bars. The biggest change comes in the B section. Instead of playing Gm7, C7, Fm7, Bb7, Am7b5, and D7 we use Gm7, Gb7, Fm7, E7, EbMaj7, D7. Both start and end the same way, but the first version moves mainly in fifths while the second version is a chromatic decent. We still move to D7 because it is the fifth of Gm (or V7/i). The chromatic decent simply uses Gb7 and E7 as tritone substitution chords to help make each root note a half step below the last.

Use Phrasing to Tell YOUR Story

When you improvise to a song you are writing a story. Think of your improvisation as using literal sentences. When we start the A section with Cm7, F, Bb, Eb we have 4 bars that all move in a five-to-one relationship. Let’s treat that as the first paragraph of our story. It doesn’t have to be very long so two phrases/sentences will work just fine.

Breaking this down further we can play one phrase over Cm7 and F7 with the second phrase over Bb and Eb. When I play Autumn Leaves, I like to start with the walk up of G-A-Bb-Eb that you can find in so many versions of this song. I am ending the walk up with Eb so that is the capital letter that starts my next sentence. Bb is a fifth below it and I’ll move towards that note to match the five-to-one movement in the chords. Using Bb in this way makes it the punctuation mark at the end of my sentence.

There are so many ways to go from Eb to Bb using the notes of G Natural Minor, so practice finding a phrase or sentence that follows G-A-Bb-Eb. The reason why we do this is because that the walk up is saying, “(G)The (A)fall-(Bb)ing (Eb)leaves…” This walk up is our first phrase or sentence.

Now we want to say a second phrase of, “…Go by my window” over the chords Bb and Eb. We could say, “(A)Go (F)by (Eb)my (A)win-(Bb)dow” or “(F)Go (D)by (Eb)my (C)win-(Bb)dow”. Both are valid phrases in our story. The difference between them is not only the notes used, but the way the notes are played. They could be played as four quarter notes followed by a whole note to take the easy route. Or we could change up the rhythm and make it our own story.

I suggest playing around with the notes, rhythm, starting note (aka capital letter), and the end note (aka punctuation) so that you can find a few ways to “say” a musical phrase. This way you can play it one way and then a second way when you come back to that part of the song later. This is great for when you have two parts to improvise over that are the same, such as Chorus A of a song and Chorus B.

Another thing to think about in any great story is the beginning, middle, and end. Section A’s beginning can be thought of as Cm7, F, Bb, Eb. The middle can be Am7b5 and D7 with the end being Gm. When we get to the B section we start off with Am7b5, D7, and Gm as the beginning of the next “paragraph”. The middle can be Cm7, F7, Bb, Eb. The last eight bars can then be a long drawn out end to this paragraph.

With some space for sentence and paragraph structure layered over each bar we can now play to the story one phrase at a time. Don’t try to line up each phrase with specific chords. Great phrases often start just before or just after chords. Think of how we started this with “(G)The (A)fall-(Bb)ing (Eb)leaves…” That phrase is followed by the chords Cm7 and F7. Giving space for phrases and chords to be heard helps to also give your listener some separation from those two elements and makes it easier to understand what your phrases are saying.

A Quick Recap and Target Notes

Like any good writer, a story is written and rewritten one sentence at a time. Don’t try to play through a whole song that you want to improvise over. Instead, define the beginning, middle, and end of your improvised story with phrases. You can make remembering phrases easier by focusing on the notes that act at the capital letter and punctuation of your sentence/phrase. Now you can use those two notes and play the same melody & rhythm again with slight adjustments to make it sound fresh. Using the starting note of Eb and ending note of Bb for all phrases over the chords Bb and Eb can make it easier to find what you want to say each time you come around to the A section of Autumn Leaves.

Be sure to also move your phrases towards target notes. These can be your punctuation notes in phrases, but they can also be the tonic. In this song G is the tonic and that chromatic descent leads to Gm. If your phrases target the next phrase, then you can also target the tonic note and end your last phrase on G.

Along the way are other chords that may stand out to you. instead of playing to every chord exactly, try playing towards the root notes of chords you find interesting. You could play phrases that lead to G in the end for Autumn Leaves. Instead of just ending on G for each phrase you could end on the notes of Gm. You could even end some phrases on the note D and when you get to the D7 section end a phrase on F# leading to G. This will allow your phrases to connect to the next chord, sentence, phrase, or idea. Practice connecting your phrases with pauses or sustained notes and you’ll find your own way to tell the story of the song that everyone is playing to.

Thanks for reading and enjoy writing your own improvised stories.