‘Autumn Leaves’ Improvisation

‘Autumn Leaves’ Improvisation Masterclass

Autumn Leaves is one of the most important jazz standards for developing your improvisation skills. Its clear form, memorable melody, and repeating major and minor 2-5-1 progressions make it the perfect tune for beginner jazz piano improvisers.

The Essential Building Blocks Of Improvisation

In this in-depth improvisation course, we break down the essential building blocks of soloing over Autumn Leaves. You will start by learning the form, harmony, and rootless left-hand voicings needed to navigate the tune confidently.

From there, we explore chord tone targeting, single and double enclosures, non-symmetrical enclosures, arpeggio pathways, landing zone phrases, and major and minor 2-5-1 jazz vocabulary.

The goal of this course is not simply to memorise licks, but to understand how jazz improvisation works from the inside out. You will learn how to build phrases, target chord tones, create forward motion, resolve into the harmony, vary your melodic ideas, and develop a deeper connection with the form and harmony of Autumn Leaves.

By the end of the course, you will have a complete toolkit for improvising over Autumn Leaves and a practical framework that can be applied to many other jazz standards.

Upcoming Lessons

As the course develops, we will move into more advanced improvisation topics including diminished licks and patterns, blues scales, diminished scales, triad-based improvisation, advanced left-hand voicings, locked hands technique, melodic embellishment, and play-along lessons where you trade 8s and develop your own improvised ideas in real time.