This is yet another look at the progression from the jazz standard Autumn Leaves. this time with one of my heavy brass slides hanging off my pinkie.

It wasn't until I did a fingerstyle lesson on this old tune that I realized what an important piece it is among jazz aficionados. The tune is based around a ii -V - I progression in both the major key and its relative minor key. If you're not sure what I'm talking about I'll explain it at the bottom of the page. Suffice it to say that it's one of the most well known and well-loved chord progressions of all time. Yes, the 'twelve bar blues' progression is also extremely familiar, but it's just 3 dominant chords. The Autumn Leaves progression is much longer and consists of minor 7ths, major 7ths and a half-diminished. Nor is Autumn Leaves the first iteration of it. It was commonly used in classical music written way back when, in fact I recently attended a ballet show that my daughter Georgia took part in and there it was, clear as a bell, in one of the orchestral pieces that came on. Johann Sebastian Bach used it -- listen here at the 1:17 mark -- Santana's Europa uses it. Lionel Richie uses it. Gary Moore uses it. Elton John uses it. Gary Moore used it.

 Like I say: well-loved. There is something about the way each chord leads to the next, and then comes home, that is extremely pleasing the to ear.

Anyway ... I've been a little obsessed with it for a while now (this probably won't be the last time you hear about it from my end!) and I found a nice backing track for it the other day. My Strat was out and plugged in and I started fiddling around with it playing slide and decided to video a pass through it.

I tried to make my Stratocaster sound like a french horn -- something jazzy -- and turned all the treble off. One commentator at YouTube said it sounded like a 'love-sick moose' but I kind of like it.

So ... you'll hear the actual melody to start off with -- that goes for 32 bars -- then I continue on improvising lines ad nauseum.

If you're into slide, know that I'm in Standard Tuning and that I use a hybrid style that has evolved over the years where I blend normal and slide together. It's about as fun as it gets when it comes to playing guitar, I reckon. The countless ways you can combine the two is a never-ending joy to explore once you get the basics down. I quickly slip into a very pleasant brainwave form where time seems to disappear and I could sit there all day looking for new pathways.

The lines I play are all based on knowing the chords. To put it another way: I create my phrase, lines and melodies from the notes that make up each chord as it comes and goes in the timeline. This has been my mindset for decades now and the subject of my signature course PlaneTalk Online. If you truly know the chords, and you can see the entire fretboard as the chord, you automatically have everything else at your disposal ... melodies, voicings, harmony. It's the easiest and most failsafe way of negotiating any piece of music, in my opinion. No scales, no modes, no 'boxes' ... just a constant view of the strongest notes for any given moment.

I'm using one of my heavy brass slides. They're beautiful, with lots of mass, and mass = sustain and tone.

Some links:

• PlaneTalk Online - my course on how to see the guitar fingerboard as one long chord, the 'trick' to improvising without juggling all those scales and modes.
• How To Play Slide Guitar In Standard Tuning - if you'd like to learn more about this wonderful way of playing guitar, I have a course on the subject.
• Heavy Brass Slides - The slide I use in the video is one of my own custom-made slides machined from solid brass. They come in two lengths. Read more here.
• Another look at this Autumn Leaves Progression with a cool twist at the end.
• Autumn Leaves Free Fingerstyle lesson.

A bit of theory:

A very useful and common way of a chord progression resolving back to the root chord is to get there via the ii and the V chords. The ii chord (Two Chord) in a major key is the chord built on the second note of the scale and the V chord (Five Chord) is the chord built off the fifth note of the scale. The I chord is the chord built of the root of the scale, the first note (One Chord).

It can apply to either major or minor keys. In this tune, there are both the major and minor versions.

Am - D7 - Gmaj7 is a ii--V-I in the key of G major.

F#half-diminished - B7 - Em is a ii-V-i in the relative minor of G, namely the key of E minor.

So, this may well be the reason it's so widely used and such a well-studied progression. It has all flavors: minor, major 7th, maj7th and half-diminished and requires a certain amount of skill to play over if you're thinking scales and modes. Each favor requires a different scale. I guess that's why when you're learning jazz it's the one to nail.

If you're thinking chord tones, however -- à la PlaneTalk mindset -- it's just another progression, another set of chords, Scales and modes don't come into it.

So, there you go ... the old ii-V-I.