Jazz Standards

Standard repertoire of tunes performed by Jazz musicians.

HOT TIPS: Buying yourself a Realbook is the way to learn a lot of standards. But automatic accompaniment software like Band-in-a box and Impro-Visor comes with a lot of standard. Impro-Visor comes with chords changes for about 2500 tunes. For Band-in-a-box you’ll find a lot of songs with melodies. For links see below.

• “A Night in Tunisia“, composed by Dizzy Gillespie and Frank Paparelli
• “Ain't Misbehavin'” , written by Fats Waller and Harry Brooks in 1929.
• “All Or Nothing At All“, composed by Arthur Altman
• “All the Things You Are“, composed by Jerome Kern
• “As Time Goes By“, composed by Herman Hupfeld
• “Autumn Leaves” (”Les Feuilles Mortes”), composed by Joseph Kosma
• ““Blue bossa“, composed by Kenny Dorham
• ““Blue Moon“, written Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart in 1934
• “Body and Soul“, composed by Frank Eyton, Johnny Green, Edward Heyman and Robert Sour
• “Caravan“, composed by Duke Ellington and Juan Tizol
• “Donna Lee“, composed by Miles Davis
• “Embraceable You“, composed by George Gershwin
• “Giant Steps“, composed by John Coltrane
• “Groovin' High“, composed by Dizzy Gillespie
• “Honeysuckle Rose“, composed by Fats Waller
• “How High The Moon“, composed by Morgan Lewis
• “In the Mood“, composed by Joe Garland and Andy Razaf
• “Israel“, composed by John Carisi
• “Laura“, Music by David Raskin, 1945.
• “Love For Sale“, composed by Cole Porter
• “Lover Man“, composed by Jimmie Davis, Roger Ramirez and Jimmy Sherman
• “Milestones“, composed by Miles Davis
• “Misty“, composed by Erroll Garner, and Johnny Burke
• “My Funny Valentine”
• “Nature Boy“, Eden Ahbez
• “Night And Day“, Cole Porter
• “Oleo“, composed by Sonny Rollins
• “'Round Midnight“, composed by Thelonious Monk
• “Satin Doll“, composed by Duke Ellington
• “Scrapple from the Apple“, composed by Charlie Parker
• “Skylark“, composed by Hoagy Carmichael
• “So What“, composed by Miles Davis
• “Stardust“, composed by Hoagy Carmichael
• “Stella By Starlight“, composed by Ned Washington and Victor Young
• “Stomping at the Savoy“, composed by Edgar Sampson
• “Summertime“, composed by George Gershwin
• “Sweet Georgia Brown“, composed by Ben Bernie
• “Take Five“, composed by Paul Desmond
• “Take the A Train“, Billy Strayhorn
• “The Girl from Ipanema“, composed by Antonio Jobim. Original title (Garota de Ipanema)
• “The Thrill is Gone“, composed by Lew Brown and Ray Henderson
• “When The Saints Go Marching In”
• “Willow Weep for Me” by Ann Ronnell

Dancing in the Dark

• The Vanilla Book - Ralph Patt’s online reference of chord changes to over 400 of the most commonly played jazz “standards”.
• Brent Stuntzner's Transcriptions - free jazz transcriptions of jazz Greats include music by Grant Green, Kenny Burrell, John Coltrane, Wes Montgomery, Johnny Griffin, Jimmy Bruno, Joe Pass, Charlie Parker, Jim Hall, Pat Metheny, John Scofield, Django Reinhardt, Pat Martino, Jimmy Smith, George Benson and others. Offered in standard notation and guitar TAB, with MIDI representations (for learning by ear) and Jam Tracks (for practice).
• Jazz Standards with keys, start note and first chord by Robert M. Keller - the developer of the leadsheet music notation program Impro-Visor that comes with “The Imaginary Book” with over 2100 lead sheets for jazz standard, and some pop tunes! See below.
• Aebersold Play-A-Long Series Rapid Reference (PDF) - FREE Song Index for Volumes 1 thru 106.
• The First 100 Tunes Every Jazz Musician Should Learn @ The PlayJazzGuitar.com Forum

• Impro-Visor (Jazz Improvisation Advisor) is a leadsheet music notation and auto accompaniment software designed to help jazz musicians compose and hear solos similar to ones that might be improvised. Impro-Visor is for jazz musicians and song-writers who wish to create tunes, improvised solos, transcriptions, or bass lines in the form of lead sheets (chord symbols with melody). Impro-Visor also functions as an auto-accompaniment program, generating styled accompaniment automatically from chord progressions. Solos and/or accompaniment can be exported as MIDI files. The objective is to improve understanding of solo construction and tune chord changes. You can input chord progressions like in Band-in-a-Box, generates solos, use it to transcribe, create accompaniment backing tracks, print out lead sheets, do exercises... It comes with chord files to over 1500 jazz tunes! Impro-Visor is freeware and runs on MacOSX, Windows XP, and Linux.
• Band-in-a-Box (Biab) by PG Music (Developed by the brother of the distinguished canadian jazz guitarist Oliver Gannon). Just type in the chords for any song using standard chord symbols (like C, Fm7 or C13b9), choose the style you’d like, and Band-in-a-Box automatically generates a complete professional quality arrangement of piano, bass, drums, guitar and strings in a wide variety of popular styles.
  • Yahoo Band-In-A-Box Files Group - large collections of songs with melodies | Yahoo Band-In-A-Box Files2 Group - Large collection of song for Biab songs without melodies. To be able to download these files, you’ll need a Yahoo account.