Jazz Standard
Autumn Leaves chords
Autumn Leaves by Jazz Standard is an intermediate song in Gm, played with no capo. The whole sheet is 7 chords (Cm7, F7, Bbmaj7, Ebmaj7, Am7b5, D7, Gm7) across 4 sections: A1 → A2 → B → A3. 2 of the 7 shapes are open chords and Am7b5 is the one that needs a barre. It sits at roughly 130 BPM.
By Chiye · Updated
Hardest change in the sheet: Cm7 → F7, 4 times.
- Difficulty
- Intermediateno barre needed
- Key
- Gmwith no capo
- Tempo
- 130BPM
- Tuning
- Standard (E A D G B E)low to high
- Chords
- 72 open, 5 with a barre
- Sections
- 4each with its own progression
Chords in Autumn Leaves
Frets read low E to high E, x means leave that string out.
Chord sheet
One chord per bar, four beats to the bar: the shape lands on beat one and the dots mark the beats after it, so you can see where the change falls without any lyrics. Where a section has no strumming pattern written, play one chord per bar. Tap a bar to hear it.
Lyrics are not reproduced for this song: they are still in copyright and this site has no licence to publish them. The chords, structure, strumming and sing-along timing are all here. Songs whose words are public domain →
A1♩=130
A2♩=130
B♩=130
A3♩=130
Printable one-page chord chart
How to play Autumn Leaves
Autumn Leaves in G minor is the key jazz players read it in, and it is also the friendliest way into jazz harmony on guitar, because every chord comes from the key and every shape is movable. The first eight bars are one idea: a minor two-five into the relative major, then down through the half-diminished chord to the tonic minor. Practise Cm7 to F7 first — one shape sliding up two frets — and your hand has learned the whole tune.
The half-diminished chord stands in bar 5 of each A section, not at the end: Am7b5, then D7, then Gm7 as home. That is the minor two-five-one, the most useful cadence in jazz, and it is the same cadence that opens the B section. Play the four-string version on the middle strings and skip the root; the D7 that follows already supplies the bass note you are missing.
Comp with short, damped chords on beats two and four, nothing more. Set the metronome to 100 and loop Cm7, F7 and Bbmaj7 for a few minutes, then add the turnaround and let the D7 resolution teach your ear where home is. Only once the form is memorised should you add rootless voicings or melodic playing on top. Play the form from memory, not from paper, or the four-bar phrases never sink in.
How to practise Autumn Leaves
Four steps computed from this sheet: the order the shapes are easiest to learn in, the changes that really occur in the progressions above, where each chord turns up, and the tempo ladder up to the recorded speed.
Learn the shapes easiest first
D7 (x-x-0-2-1-2, beginner) → Cm7 (x-3-5-3-4-3, intermediate, needs a barre) → F7 (1-3-1-2-1-1, intermediate, needs a barre) → Bbmaj7 (x-1-3-2-3-1, intermediate, needs a barre) → Ebmaj7 (x-6-8-7-8-6, intermediate, needs a barre) → Gm7 (3-5-3-3-3-3, intermediate, needs a barre) → Am7b5 (x-0-1-0-1-x, advanced)
2 of the 7 shapes are open chords, so start there and leave Am7b5 until the others change cleanly.
Drill the changes this sheet actually uses
Am7b5 → D74×Cm7 → F74×D7 → Gm74×F7 → Bbmaj74×
These counts come from the progressions on this page, so they are the changes you will actually play, not a generic list of pairs to practise.
Know where each chord turns up
- Cm7every section
- F7every section
- Bbmaj7every section
- Ebmaj7A1, A2, A3
- Am7b5every section
- D7every section
- Gm7every section
Climb the tempo ladder
Start at 78 BPM and move up only when a full pass is clean: 78 → 98 → 117 → 130 BPM. The recorded feel is around 130 BPM, and the last step is the one that always feels like a jump. Stay at 117 for longer than feels necessary.
Every section here uses the same set of shapes, so there is no section to single out. Whatever you can play once, you can play all the way through.
Playing Autumn Leaves with a capo
This sheet needs no capo. Each card shows what you would finger at that capo position so the song still sounds exactly as written. Useful when the shapes above are awkward, or when you want to sing it higher without learning new chords.
No capoas written
Cm7 F7 Bbmaj7 Ebmaj7 Am7b5 D7 Gm7
2 of 7 stay open
Fret 3
Am7 D7 Gmaj7 Cmaj7 F#m7b5 B7 Em7
7 of 7 stay open
Fret 5
Gm7 C7 Fmaj7 Bbmaj7 Em7b5 A7 Dm7
3 of 7 stay open
Fret 7
Fm7 Bb7 Ebmaj7 Abmaj7 Dm7b5 G7 Cm7
1 of 7 stay open
Working out a different key? The capo calculatordoes the same arithmetic for any chord set.
More songs built on the same chords
If Autumn Leaves clicks, these use the closest set of shapes, so the chords you just learned keep working.
More intermediate songs to learn after this one: Hotel California, Wish You Were Here, The Weight, Blackbird.
These chords across the songbookHow often each chord in Autumn Leaves turns up across all 80 songs on this site, and what it most often moves to next. The counts come from the sheet library itself, not from theory.
4bars of this chord across the songbook
1songs use this shape
Most often followed by F7, 4×.
5bars of this chord across the songbook
2songs use this shape
Most often followed by Bbmaj7, 4×.
5bars of this chord across the songbook
1songs use this shape
Most often followed by Ebmaj7, 3×.
10bars of this chord across the songbook
3songs use this shape
Most often followed by Bb7, 1×.
4bars of this chord across the songbook
1songs use this shape
Most often followed by D7, 4×.
44bars of this chord across the songbook
12songs use this shape
Most often followed by G, 20×.
13bars of this chord across the songbook
4songs use this shape
Most often followed by A7, 1×.