A real book gives you the melody and the chords. What it can’t give you is a band. On Realbook.site every chart now comes with one — bass, drums and piano that follow the changes — and it plays in your key, for your instrument, in the style you pick. Here is the whole thing in three and a half minutes, on Autumn Leaves.
What you see in the video
- Pick your instrument. The instrument menu at the top of the chart rewrites it for C, B♭ (trumpet, tenor sax, clarinet), E♭ (alto and baritone sax) or bass clef. In the video it’s alto sax, so the chart moves from F to E♭ notation.
- Choose the key. The − and + buttons move the tune a semitone at a time — the notes, the chord symbols and the band all follow.
- Open the Band menu. Set the feel — swing, bossa nova, ballad or straight eighths — and the tempo. The rhythm section is a walking or two-feel double bass, drums and piano comping, and you can switch any of them off: drop the piano if you are the piano player.
- Play. With Solo choruses on, the band plays the head with the melody, then a chorus with the melody out — that one is yours to improvise over — then the head again.
Any tune, not just this one
Nothing here was prepared for Autumn Leaves. The band reads the chord symbols of whatever chart is open, so the same works on every standard in the catalog — 2,408 of them and counting. Open a tune you are learning, set it to your horn and a tempo you can manage, and play it through until it sits under your fingers. Then speed it up.
It’s free and runs in the browser: no account, nothing to install. If you’d rather practise on the go, the same backing tracks are on our YouTube channel.
New charts announced first on our Telegram channel
