Autumn Leaves

Most people would probably assume that this a metal only blog, and they have every right to, considering that I have been in a metal mood for the past couple of months. I think that I have stated many times before that I created GuitArticles in order to cover as many different styles of music and guitar playing as possible.

In this lesson we're going to take a look at the famous jazz classic known as Autumn Leaves. If you are so metal that you cannot fathom this, then you can check out the Danish death metal band who went by the name Autumn Leaves here.

The story behind most jazz pieces is that they started out as simple standards and love songs before a lot of true-grit jazz musicians got their hands on them, but once they did, the results were absolutely magical. Autumn Leaves and a lot of other famous jazz standards were written by Johnny Mercer.

I was first introduced to Johnny Mercer after I watched the movie Midnight in the garden of good and evil, and then subsequently read the book. The movie is amazing and the book is even better. I went out and bought the sound track, and if you are looking for an amazing collection of music (all Johnny Mercer's work), I highly recommend the soundtrack. My favorite track off of it is Paula Cole's version of Autumn Leaves, which is also the song that appears at the haunting opening of the movie.

It took me a while but I completely transcribed the song and listed all of the chords. This way you can learn the piece and pick up some new chord structures along the way. Most of the chords are standard 7th chords, and so I thought that this would be a good one to start with. It melodically makes sense, but at the same time it is just challenging enough, to keep the process of learning going.

One more thing that I would like to add. The very last chord is normally supposed to be an Em chord, but I decided to slip in the ever conclusive E6sus2 chord, which is the same chord that concludes the James Bond theme ;)



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