These Foolish Things Tutorial
These Foolish Things is a well-known jazz ballad written in the key of Eb Major. The tune has an up-beat and bouncy vibe which can also be played at faster tempos using the same chord voicings.
The tonality is primarily major and it follows an A1 – A2 – B – A2 form. The A sections are relatively straight forward to play and there are some more challenging chords and changes in the B section.
There are a few big jumps in the melody and so it’s important to get the correct fingering in order to play the changes smoothly. We’re going to jump straight in with some two handed voicings and then add in some upper structures and chord substitutions here and there.
The arrangement I’ve put together is quite accessible and then we will revisit the tune at a later date to incorporate block chord harmony which can be used throughout the tune.
Related Lessons
Now you have an understanding of a basic improvised line, we will now take it a step further with non diatonic passing tones and chromaticism.
In this lesson we explore some advanced applications of upper structure triads in context of jazz standards we have covered.
We start the lesson by recapping the basic theory behind sus chords and then explore them in context of major and minor 251s
Fantastic lesson. I greatly appreciate what you do at Piano Groove!
Thanks Adam! We will be exploring block chords in more detail in upcoming lessons. Cheers, Hayden
On the iReal Pro app the turnaround at the end is a 2-5 with the chords listed as C7 and F7sus. The recommended chords sound real cheesy. Can you give me a couple of voicings for these chords that transition to the beginning?