is brought to you by the National piano foundation

I'd like you to meet my good friend and a great piano player

Bradley Sowash how are you I'm great today

well I am hoping you're going to be willing to be unselfish enough to

to throw out some of your good ideas as always you're such a good jazz educator

and a good piano player. it's very helpful I think for our viewers to

see what you do and what we want to talk about is the tune autumn leaves

you now it's really a standard it's kind of a jazz standard although i guess it

got really popular originally when Roger Williams recorded it

we were doing some research mid-fifties I think at some point and it

has the distinction of being the the longest-running number-one hit that was

an instrumental

ever so I think it might have some French roots too, I saw in

a lead sheet, fake book

I think that was the lyric and maybe and I guess Johnny Mercer wrote the lyrics

okay but anyway this tune is kinda fun because number one

there's some very identifiable chord changes, it follows going to two fives all the time or the

circle of fifths that we talk about

you can really do it in a couple of different versions you can do it more up like a jazz tune

or more slowly like a ballad.

Let's hear a couple of measures so that

we can be thinking about it.

Then we can start working through it.

Yeah, that is very identifiable yeah I hear that in cocktail clubs and

hot jazz settings and sometimes you hear it in grocery stores. maybe that's the best

way to approach this is by splitting it into two pieces and say let's try it first as

a slow ballad sound that kind of soft you know not soft maybe more

emotional, you know, and then we'll also try to give us give away some tips

that we can do to make it sound a little bit more swinging.

right and maybe I can see that those might even come together.

we can set it up

to perform this in a way that was a ballad first and then swinging in the

end it's a nice way to set up a tune. Maybe we will do it that way

If you're going to do it slow, let's talk about that one first.

at that point you kind of sticking to chords in the left hand and

more noodling in the right-hand. yeah I mean this song has those big

holes in it. If you check it out, nothing

space space space space space what we do with a space well we

tastefully fill it. or in some cases not so tasteful.

I know Roger William's huge hit he had the

Now the signature hook of that tune. He would make this huge run that would come down

yeah I think that was sort of a musical leaves falling off the tree.

clearly I think that was the the allegory there is that you are hearing

leaves coming down but let's give away just one trick

let's get our key together first. Gm

G minor which has the same Black Keys as in Bb

let's just play G minor scale. the other white keys except for Bb and Eb

It is important know that scale if you are going to do that runs because they are solidly within those 7 notes.

you can noodle your way down ...

Let's do the tune

and then we can do some kinda noodle down, I think he did some

thirds ... Let's give that away real slowly right in the middle so we make

sure we get on the camera there. you said minor thirds

so do the tune and play it down low here.

so I'm going to stay in those seven notes and start on the Eb and skip the next note. anything I asked if the next No

and then come down and do it again. So some of them are

minor thirds and some of them are major thirds.

I'm just sticking with the key. Let's say we are in C major. All the white keys.

So you are just following those notes that you gave way the

G minor scale and you are just playing them in thirds.

Do slowly one octave like that.

okay so really it is just a function of

I can't because I don't have good enough chops

You just need to sit there and get good at going ...

but you know it doesn't have to be that complicated any kind of a little scale

passage

if you can play this scale, which isn't hard to finger,

you can just noodle around

that's nice that works nicely for leaves falling

whatever, just play those notes well that sound nice so it happens during the

break of the melody

you know falling leaves, a nice run

Which means you do have to wear multiple personalities, that's tricky you

know you had to be the chord guy

the melody guy and the fill guy - bass player

you know the guitar player and the singer singing now you're the trumpet in between or something.

You have to think in segments like that

okay that brings up a point, people sometimes say that they want to play all really

complicated and big and sound full

what they do is just play too many notes and are trying to do too

much

and it's true that a really full performance has a lot going on

but it's in different roles sure here's the bass, here's the Harmony

here's the melody here are the fills. we are taking advantage of the fact that piano is one of

the only instruments we really have

access to the full orchestra

I think that we are after the sound of imitating a whole band

interesting that is the sound we are after. that's a good way to think

about that mentally

I gotta get a bass player in there you gotta get that stuff in the

middle the harmonic area and you get the melodic line up on top

right and everything in between the melody like this like

four different instruments being imitated you should think that way

that's a good mental approach to take on that.

actually play just a couple measures if you would kinda in tempo with that slower

feel

OK so you really are just taking advantage of the spaces to noodle a little bit and

get in there

It is all right in the scale, those 7 notes. The counterpoint to that would be all right

if we were doing this in a jazz trio are you were doing this yourself

trying to make it swing, which this tune does very well what do you do

differently other than just doing it a little faster

you need to tell us about

sometimes jazz tunes pick up a bit of vocabulary or tradition just by being passed around played by different

guys in there

starts to be a sort of a rendition that is the

definitive way to play it even though that's not the way the original went

okay this is an example of that. there are what we call kicks on this song

where the the chords instead of being in the normal position which is the beginning

of the measure

chord, chord, chord, chord

you hold back a little bit and play this little rhythm

I've heard that a million times. that is a fun way to do it. You hear all the jazz recordings

do that

you get that little kick in there

It is not always the exactly same rhythm.

exactly the same rhythm but you can just hold back on that chord

We changed the melody originally.

We started out swinging.

on that one, it's the fourth kick. it tends to be open like ...

you fill it anyway you want. my version of thinking through it

you hear a bass player walk one measure

then you go back to head. so who knows who first did it that

way but it seems like

you call that on a gig everybody knows how to do that.

that's just for the A section. the second section typically goes into a hard

swing with like a walk

and something

and so there aren't kicks in the second half okay so there aren't kicks in the 2nd half typically.

Let's talk briefly - where we could talk ourselves into a huge black hole here so

we'll try to

to keep it is on top of the water as possible

about the chord changes - the fact that this goes 2 5's or the circle of fifths

all the time

but your ear really follows the chord changes in this tune well

right. It is very logical.

in fact and that logic can inform the way you improvise if you play little

patterns

well let's look at the chords first. okay so here's the roots of the chords first.

So here are the roots of the chords.

the second chord is an F, 4 notes up

and the next chord is a B-flat 4 notes up

and the next chord is 4 notes up

so these are all the roots i am playing. okay this next one ... again you're

talking about the roots of the first four chords which starts on a Cm

Starts on a C minor. again all these chords stick to the keys. There is nothing

surprising about this chord.

The flavor of the chord may be different could be minors or majors, or 7ths

but the roots are all going from C, F, Bb to Eb

exactly so it's moving around the circle here. the next logical one would be a

Ab

but they cheat a little bit and play an A natural to keep us from getting out into outer

space

another fourth and then another fourth and then back home

So it moves right around the circle of fifths okay

and that's what they sometimes people heard about it. but people say that they don't know about the circle the circle of fifths

you spent a lot of time worrying about some other things but

in essence it is a roadmap in the case of a lot of

chord changes that chords have this tendency

to move in those intervals. it makes it easy to memorize

tunes when you realize that. right

It is just a pattern. okay so now putting that into practice with this

you were ... well I was going to say that because that's so patternistic, you can

play patterns

with your solo. I'll just take a C minor 7

Can we take one step backwards to make it clearer for the

viewers

let's just play the chord changes with nothing else. Just the root and a chord in your right hand.

so we will just follow

I'll do them all in root position

F, Bb, EbMaj 7.

Amin7b5

4 up to D,

Then 4 up to G.

those roots just kept going up by fourths. we could do it that way.

my left hand ...

It just moves up by fourths. yeah okay that's a good

visual I think. all right now you are talking about a little pattern well

it is nice to play sequences. you hear this all the time in Bach.

Bach is always doing this

and then in 5 more places

you can borrow from that and do a kind of sequence

just taking the same idea and moving it down, even a really simple idea

just taking patterns and moving them down. speaking of Bach

I had a gig a couple of years ago that where the song came into play

I was suppose to play all Baroque music ok they were in costume and in Renaissance clothes on and

eating turkey legs, and carrying swords and they wanted to

to hear a lot of Baroque music well

jazz guys run out pretty short

and so I just picked songs are paternalistic like this from the world of jazz

and played them in a baroque way so

instead of this I was...

That sounds strangely familiar

well I can show a simple way to to play a bass line on the

second half for this

you don't have to know how to walk to play a nice bass line

this is going to give us an idea for a great bass line to use

so

just playing roots on one

and any other chord tone on beat 3

so we are playing half notes

check it out

So play the root each time on beat one and any other chord tone on the other ones

That's good for

the viewers

so what we're talking about is walking a bass line

getting to a point where you have something interesting to play

It's on your way to a walk

in your left hand. A good stepping stone is to say

you need to play the root when the chord happens. when it on one or whatever

but to get from one to the other just take any note in between those two.

any chord tone - in any note in the chord

That is a nice way to start