Autumn Leaves

I have this thing I'm doing on Autumn Leaves. I play a walking bass on the A section for every key, beginning each knew one at the final chord of the last.  So I go 2/5/1/4/7/3/6.  Then the 6 becomes the two of the next transposition.  I work on this every morning, starting at an arbitrary place. This is my summer project. I'm also improvising over "Bemsha Swing" every day.

What this should give me is a good ability to make walking bass lines, plus an intuitive knowledge of the circle of fifths / fourths. 2/5/1 progressions in major and minor in every key.  The next stage would be improvised right hand lines to go along with the walking bass.

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I recently discovered something super obvious that I should have known long ago, and that made an immediate improvement in my improv. This is to make each phrase very purposeful and deliberate, confident sounding, with a clear beginning and end. If you try to do that, you might not be able to.  But if you aren't trying to do this, if you are fine playing tentative sounding things, things that you don't really mean to play, then it will be impossible to achieve that confident sound. Instead of asking whether the phrase is good or bad, ask whether it is what you truly meant to play.

A complex phrase that you don't really mean will sound random to the listener, like running up and down a scale simply because the scale is available for you. That's one thing that people who don't like jazz don't like.

The easiest way to achieve this is to play very simple phrases. You can increase length, speed, or complexity as you progress.