How to Read a Lead Sheet

5 minute read

A lead sheet is what sheet music in jazz looks like. It consists of the melody and the name of the chords that make up the harmony. Sometimes there are lyrics too. This article won’t be about how to read music notes, but about how to interpret a lead sheet. We’ll be using the standard “All The Things You Are” for examples in this article.

all-the-things-you-are.pdf

A jazz standard is a well-known tune among jazz musicians, hence the name “standard.” There isn’t a definitive list of what’s considered a jazz standard, but the tunes found in the Real Book series are more or less what jazz musicians consider standards.

• Melody and Harmony
• Embellishing the Melody
• Performing the Lead Sheet with a Band
• Common Symbols or Notations
• Final Note

Melody and Harmony

At first glance, you can tell that the lead sheet just gives you instructions for the melody and harmony. The melody is the notes written on the page, and the harmony is denoted through the chord names. If you have seen sheet music before, this might look different than other sheet music you have seen. In most sheet music, the composer tells you exactly what they want to play: the right hand and left hand are both written down and specific dynamics are spelled out as well. A lead sheet doesn’t give you that kind of precise instruction; lead sheets serve more as guidelines.

In a group situation, you’ll have the single note instruments playing the melody and the rhythm section working the harmony and rhythm (drums + chordal instruments like piano and guitar + bass). In the case of solo piano, you’ll have to do this all yourself! A good starting point is to play the melody with the right hand and shell chords with the left hand. If you’re unfamiliar with chords, check out Basics of Triads and Seventh Chords.

Here are some examples with the right hand playing the melody and the left hand comping (playing harmony and rhythm).

This is level 1 (whole note shell chords):

This is level 2 (shell chords with interesting rhythms):

You’ll see that in level 2 I’m also changing the melody a bit by adding some repetition and changing the rhythm (so this is actually more like level 2.5). This brings me to my next point: in lead sheets, the written melody is also just a guideline.

Embellishing the Melody

You can embellish or spice up the melody as long as it follows the same spirit of the original melody. You’ll rarely hear a performer play the melody of the tune as it is written on the lead sheet. Ideas for embellishing the melody include changing up the rhythm, improvising along the chord tones and available scales, and using approach notes.

Here are the first 8 measures of “All The Things You Are” with the melody embellished.

If you play this version, you’ll hear that even though we added a lot of notes and spiced up the rhythms, you can still hear the original tune throughout. This is because in our embellished version we are still targeting the notes that outline the original melody. You get a better feel for how to do this after listening to more recordings and trying it out on your own.

If you can embellish the melody and comp along with the left hand, you’re already going to be sounding pretty good.

Performing the Lead Sheet with a Band

In a band you usually perform a lead sheet as follows: you first play through the lead sheet once with the single note instruments playing the melody and the rhythm section comping, then instruments take turns soloing (improvising) over the chord changes, and finally the band plays through the lead sheet together one more time.

The last measure of the lead sheet usually consists of a progression of chords to help you get back to the first chord of the song for when you take turns soloing. This chord progression to help you get back to the beginning is called the turnaround. When you play through the lead sheet the last time, you don’t play the turnaround. In the case of “All the Things You Are,” this means that the last time through you don’t play the G7 C7 at the end.

Common Symbols or Notations

% - You might see this in place of a chord name. This just means play the same chord as the previous measure.

Ballad - You might find this notation on the top left of the lead sheet. This means that you want to play this song like a ballad, which basically means slower-paced, rubato, expressively, and without swing.

Swing - This is also found on the top left. It means play the tune with swing. Swing is implied if you don’t see any notation on the top left; you can think of this as the default style of play.

Medium Swing - Swing with a medium tempo.

Fast Swing/Up Swing/Up - Swing with a fast tempo.

Latin/Bossa/Samba - Straight eighths. Rhythm section should have a respective bossa nova/samba feel. Bossa nova and samba are two different styles of Latin jazz, so if the notation says Latin you can probably just take your pick.

Final Note

This is all you need to know to start playing through a lead sheet. Once you’re comfortable with playing through the lead sheet, you can spice it up some more by applying reharmonizations; like the melody, the harmony is also a guideline.

Written on June 6th, 2020 by Chris Cheung