I am new to playing jazz piano. I understand the theory but when I play I tend to overthink what I’m trying to play. I find notes, think of the chord find the intervals and play the chord. By this time I’m 4 measures behind in the song. Any suggestions what is best to think about on the keyboard when playing? Focus on chord shapes, intervals, notes, voicings? I know all these things are important just feeling overwhelmed when trying to get through a lead sheet. Any suggestions would be helpful.
Hey @DrJames 
Great questions here.
Firstly it’s normal find reading lead sheets difficult when starting out with jazz piano. It’s a different skill to reading 2-staff notation and so it’s natural to find this challenging to begin with.
Here are 3 suggestions that I found to be useful for reading and memorising lead sheets:
1) Visualise The Form & Repeating Sections
Jazz standards typically follow a 32 bar form - not always but this is the most common form for jazz standards. This can be broken down into 4 x 8-bar sections which can be useful ‘sign posts’ or ‘mile stones’ to keep track of where you are in the song.
Check out this lesson which explain some of the most common forms and song structures for jazz standards:
For each song that you are playing, always keep the form in mind and recognise the repeating sections. This can greatly speed up the memorisation process and also help to ‘free us from the lead sheet’ so that we start playing sections of the tune from memory instead of laboriously reading each bar.
2) Identify Common Progressions & Memorise 251s in All 12 Keys
The 251 progression is the most common progression in jazz music and so learning and memorising this progression in all 12 keys is an essential step.
If you are not already comfortable playing 251s, and also recognising them on lead sheets, then you should spend some time on this drill each day:
Another useful technique is to annotate the lead sheet in pencil to remind yourself of the 251 relationships. This way instead of seeing single chords we start to visualise related ‘blocks’ or ‘units’ of harmony which makes them easier to navigate and memorise.
If you check out the jazz standard studies in following 3 courses, we break down each 8-bar section of the tune and identify the common progressions such as 251s and 36251s:
The jazz standard studies in these courses will help you to apply the 2 suggestions of memorising the form, and identifying common chord progressions.
3) Lots Of Repetition!
Whilst always keeping in mind the above 2 recommendations, understand that lots of repetition is essential to turn this way of thinking into habits that we follow every time we pick up a lead sheet.
Simply put, the more times that we play through a song or lead sheet, the more comfortable that we will become with the harmony. Repetition is key.
By following my recommendations above and by studying the 3 courses that I outline, you will also start to see that jazz standards are more similar than they are different. They follow very similar harmonic sequences and structures and once we realise this it also makes the process of memorisation easier.
The more tunes that we learn the easier it becomes to learn the next ones, and so set yourself a goal to learn to 10 or 20 tunes and memorise the forms and the common progressions as I outline above.
You can find a full list of the tunes that we cover here:
Start with the Beginner category and gradually build out your repertoire of tunes.
I guarantee that once you have 10 or 20 of these tunes ‘under your belt’ and by following my recommendations above, you will feel a lot more freedom when playing from lead sheets and not getting lost of left behind.
I hope that helps @DrJames and let me know if you have any further questions 
