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Hi all,

As I work my way through online Jazz Tutorials I am also trying to work on creating my own arrangements. I like the online lessons but I think learning this is like math, you learn it better doing practice problems than just watching someone else solve the problem. So I started with Autumn Leaves awhile ago with block chords and with help from people here moved on to inversions and voice leading.

Now I am just off a online course on taking a lead sheet and playing it in a ballad style using stride piano in the left hand. The basic idea was to play the root note and then a shell. So for example the version of Autumn Leaves I have is from the 6th edition of the real book in G major. The chords for the most part cover whole measure. In the 2nd measure the chord is A -7 so I play A then G-C with each being a half note. This is slow especially when the melody is a whole note. I tried using quarter notes and repeating so it would be root, 7-3, root, 7-3. Still a bit slow and boring. Any ideas, keeping it simple. to use stride left hand to fill an entire measure where it doesn't sound so chunky? This becomes even more of a challenge when the chord covers 2 measures.

Thanks in advance for any help.

Maybe a 5 on the third beat?

Yes you need the 5 on beat 3 like this:



or you could do a more flexible ballad accompaniment like this using shell and rootless voicings:



Rhythms don't have to be all half notes, they can vary. Right hand would play melody and guide tones.

Thanks for the quick replies. Bill, I am not understanding the voicing on beats 2 and 4 in the first example. Is that an inversion of the A -7 chord with the A dropped and the 9th added in?

Yes

As a lover of stride, and of Autumn Leaves, I would not recommend mixing the two, no matter the tempo.

And as a sentimental gentleman, I would not do Autumn Leaves uptempo, tho plenty do.

The 2nd example above is the more appropriate.

If you want to learn stride, there are plenty other songs that need it.

OTOH, if you want to do Autumn Leaves, this is an opportunity for you to develop a melodic left hand, always a worthy goal.

BUT--you do you.

Why is that? In the original, the pianist plays a stride piano.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JWfsp8kwJto&feature=emb_logo

The real goal is a not so much that I need to do Autumn Leaves in stride but Autumn Leaves has become a learning exercise. At some point in the future you will probably see a post from me asking about walking bass and Autumn leaves. Do you have any suggestions on lead sheets from The Real Book that are relatively simple but would be more situated to stride? I had a bit of a handle on doing stride with a root note and chord shells, Bills post on the other hand has shown me that I have a long way to go. Hadn't thought about inversions adding a note and dropping the root. Just working through this at the piano for the first part of Autumn Leaves is a challenge.

Nahum--actually, this here is the original, from the movie Les Portes de la Nuit:

https://youtu.be/B4CcWlQNCKo

no piano at all. Also, no strongly outlined rhythm.

To be fair, I have a somewhat "constricted" view as to what stride piano is. To me, once it falls below a certain tempo it no longer fulfills the purpose of stride, to wit: a substitute for a rhythm section. Also in my opinion, using the oom pah lh in a slow tender song makes it sound clumsy, and certainly less tender, wistful and emotional than it might be using a more Chopin- or Rachmaninoff-esque lh (tho perhaps less florid and virtuosic).

Peddler100--I repeat, Bill's 2nd example is much more appropriate for this song.

I do not own a Real Book, but I would restrict my stride practice to songs written with it in mind--namely, MOSTLY songs from the 1920s to the middle/late 1930s--that is, if you want to find out how it sounds and functions in its original incarnation.

There are also many retro songs that you could use--

Lazy Hazy Crazy Days of Summer
Music, Music, Music
When I'm 64

and more.

I would not use it in "In the Wee Small Hours of the Morning".

Hi

BTW you can also use octaves or 10ths in the LH.

I'd have a listen to the Pianists who created the style to find out what to play. Of course that's at quite a high level. James P Johnson, Willy The Lion Smith and Fats Waller were the founding fathers of this style.

Carolina Shout (transcriptions of which are freely available online) by James P Johnson is a good one.

I wouldn't worry about what song/tune is appropriate for this style. That's highly subjective, and unless you are planning to do gigs to a knowledgeable audience virtually irrelevant. If you like playing something in a stride style, play it.

I have some great stride recordings of very unlikely songs and tunes, for example Coltrane's "Giant Steps".

Cheers

Yes, there was such a version of young Makoto Ozone.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6BXVdtOaBJM

So, I like if you are on a 7th., you can see if you can substitute with a 9th., on the 2nd measure. Or, if on a major 7th., moving to a 6th. on the 2nd measure. Once you know what works here you could reverse and mix up the order, for these measures or perhaps a subsequent verse.

To make it less choppy, you want to keep the top of the stride in a close range to the previous chord. For example, if every chord were played reading up from the root, you would be bouncing around too much and it would sound choppy. By using inversions you can keep the range of where you play the tops of the stride, fairly tight. The bass note establishes the root anyway, so you're free to use any inversion for the top of the stride and you should strive to keep the next chord nearly on top of where you played the last chord. This will help provide a smoother feel to it.