Personalizing the Melody in Autumn Leaves

So, if you've played Autumn Leaves, following the solo piano arrangement, you'll notice that from halfway through:

• The bass and drums come in.
• I switch to just playing left hand chords.

I'm doing this in a call and response style, although I didn't play the melody because I'm leaving this open for you. You might want to:

• Take a solo there.
• Play the melody.
• Or do both!

Either way, practice these left hand chords and try improvising in the right hand as well.

Personalizing the Melody

Now, I'm going to talk about personalizing the melody. I've given you a few options so that you can avoid playing everything on the beat as written.

• Instead of coming in on the second beat, come in on one and.

Let's do this with the metronome. Here we are at 120:

• Instead of 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 1 (which is how it's written and might be seen in a lead sheet or on a fake book), no jazz musician would ever play that like that.

Experimenting with Melody Personalization

Let's experiment with a few different ways of personalizing the melody:

1. Push the First Note
   Like in the first example:
   1, 2, 3, 4, 1.
   Everything else is on the beat. Just the first note is played half a beat earlier.

2. Push the Last Note
   In this example, we do the same thing but with the last note:
   Still coming in on the second beat, but the last note will be before the bar line:
   1, 2, 3, 4, 1.
   So, we've put the syncopation in a different place.

3. Combine Both Techniques
   We'll push the first note and anticipate the last note:
   2, 3, 4, 1.
   Of course, you should play shells in the left hand.
   If we put the call and response in, it could sound like this:
   1, 2, 3, 4, 1.

These are three very simple ways of introducing a bit of rhythmic variety and swing to the melody.

Additional Techniques

But that's not all! I've given you three other options which you should experiment with:

• Delay the First Note:
  1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2.

• Add Extra Notes:
  You can get even more ornate:
  3, 4, 1.
  3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 3, 4, 1.

You can include your own little variations if you wish.

Adding Embellishments

Finally, let's put some embellishments in:
2, 3, 4, 1, 2.
That had a more spontaneous feel about it.

And that's part of the essence of jazz: not playing something fixed every time, but leaving it open so that you can experiment and try things out on the spur of the moment.