These Foolish Things, Melodic Analysis

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Welcome to jazz piano skills. I'm Dr. Bob Lawrence. It's time to discover, learn and play jazz piano. I hope everyone enjoyed this past week exploring the harmonic structure, the great jazz standard from 1935. These foolish things, we certainly tackled many essential jazz panel skills last week, right? We looked at the form of these foolish things, the standard chord changes of these foolish things, the harmonic function of these foolish things, the common harmonic movement found within these foolish things. And of course, last but certainly not least, my suggested voicings for these foolish things. Right without question, this was a ton of information that we processed, and it can feel like we're trying to drink from a fire hose right but, but this is a very big but this process as I mentioned last month will get easier and easier as we continue to march through this year in the years to come. Studying jazz standards every month. I mentioned last week that there is indeed a sequential order to learning how to play jazz piano. There is also a sequential order to learn how to play tunes. Step one is what we tackled last week, right? We tackled the form, changes function, harmonic movement, voicings, right all things harmony. This week, we take step two, and thoroughly study melody. And next week, of course, step three improvisation, harmony, Melody and improvisation, a sequential order allowing us to discover, learn and play a tune.

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Successful successfully. That's the key successfully. Now I have mentioned several times since the start of the year, that if you've been a faithful jazz piano skills listener, for the past four plus years, you have become intimately familiar with the jazz piano skills needed to begin tune study. I also mentioned that if you haven't been grinding along with us over the past four years, well, no worries. This is a great time to jump on board to begin developing enhancing your jazz piano skills, the tune study we are going to be doing every month, we'll help you sift through and prioritize the last four years of podcast episodes so that you can begin to maximize your jazz piano skills, the development of your jazz panel scales immediately. So if you're a jazz piano skills veteran, or a jazz piano skills, rookie makes no difference right, you are in the right place at the right time to begin a jazz piano journey that will have a profound impact on your understanding of music, and of course, on your jazz piano playing as well. So today, you are going to discover a melodic analysis for the jazz standard, these foolish things, you're going to learn melody guide tones, fingerings, phrases, and target notes of these foolish things. And you're gonna play three different melodic treatments of these foolish things. A ballad, Basa and swing. So as I always like to say regardless of where you are, in your jazz journey, a beginner an intermediate player, an advanced player, even if you consider yourself a seasoned and experienced professional. You're gonna find this jazz panel skills podcast lesson exploring these foolish things from a logic analysis to be very beneficial. But before we dig in, before we get started, I want to as I always do welcome first time listeners to jazz piano skills. If you are a new listener to jazz piano skills podcast or if you're just new to jazz panel skills, I want to personally invite you to become a jazz piano skills member. Now your membership grants you access to the premium content for this podcast episode and every weekly podcast episode. premium content will help you thoroughly and correctly discover learn and play the jazz standard we are currently exploring and as the old saying

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owes a whole lot more. For example, as a jazz panel skills member, you will be able to access the past current and future educational weekly podcast packets. Now these are the illustrations the lead sheets the play alongs the backing tracks that I have designed and developed. For every weekly podcast episode to help you get the most out of each weekly jazz piano skills episode, you have access to an addition to that access to his self paced and sequential jazz piano curriculum which is loaded with comprehensive courses containing educational talks. interactive learning media, there are video demonstrations of the jazz piano skills in all 12 keys, and so much more. You also as a jazz panel skills member, you have a reserved seat as I like to say in my online weekly master classes, which are held every Thursday evening. Now if you can't attend no problem, the master classes are recorded. There are videos so that you can watch and rewatch those videos whenever and as often as you wish. You can also access an online interactive fake book containing must know jazz standards. All of them of course, with excellent chord changes, chord scale relationships mapped out for you, harmonic function analysis, listening suggestions and historical insights as well as jazz panel skills. Remember, you can hang out with old friends and make some new jazz friends in the online private jazz piano skills community, which hosts a variety of engaging forums. Now finally, your jazz panel skills membership grants you unlimited, private, personal and professional educational support whenever and as often as you need it. All of these amazing privileges are waiting to help you discover, learn and play jazz piano. So check it out at jazz piano skills.com. And of course, become a member. And doing so you'll enjoy. Like I said all the premium podcast content, plus all the other provision privileges I just mentioned. Of course, once you get to the site, and you poke around a little bit, if you have any questions, please contact me. I'm always happy to spend some time with you answer any questions that you may have and help you in any way that I can. Okay, on to the question of the week and this week's question comes from Mike Parsons living in Chicago, Illinois. Good people up there and an Illinois good folks. That's my getting up there close to my childhood home. So Mike writes, I'm curious as to what jazz skill, you would say is the most important jazz skill to develop? I know this may be a general and difficult question to answer, but I thought I would ask anyway. Thanks for all that you do. I have learned a ton listening to your podcast, and using the jazz panel skills, resources and materials.

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Well, I am happy to hear Mike that you're enjoying the podcast and the jazz panel skills materials. Fantastic. Now your question is actually

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an easy one to answer. At least I think so.

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Now, I'm going to assume that you are asking

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what is the most important jazz skill to develop so that you can improvise? Because that's typically when someone asked this question. That's typically what they're getting at. In other words, how do I begin to improvise? So with that assumption, the answer to your question is your ability to play the 60 chords of music melodically.

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Okay, the most important skill be able to play the 60 chords of music melodically. In other words, your ability to play what I like to call zone one of any sound from the root to the seventh. All right, plus the root first, second and third, inverted shapes of that sound from the root to the seventh, or what I like to call zone one. You must be able to ascend and descend through the chords easily if you want to begin developing your improvisation skills if you want to begin playing chess. Now, I want to ironically just listen to this the other night, and I want to play a clip from a Rick beato interview with the great guitarist Pat Metheny. Now in this clip, Pat is talking about improvising and I want you to listen very, very carefully to how he describes the process and the term

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He uses when doing so, let's listen. And then I'm going to draw your attention

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to a few key statements that actually answer your question, Mike. Okay, so here we go, let's listen. Why is it so difficult to play over these kinds of things, and you're incredibly good at doing this talk about the chord progression first for the bridge? Well, the, you know, most of James is diatonic, to the key, and even the bridge, if you were to play it in the key of C, he'd still be on all white notes, which is, you know, it just kind of came out that way.

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You know, the idea of kind of pushing diatonic harmony, just a step or two along the way, is something that, you know, is interesting and fun. And a lot of standard tunes, do things like that. Yeah.

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But we're, James has a sort of cultural connection is probably much more to, literally James Taylor, who is who I named the tune after, actually, you know, it's this very kind of diatonic thing, meaning it's going to stay kind of within the basic chords that people know that or anything.

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And it basically, is that and why jazz guys have trouble with that. Is that the approach to it, I think that a lot of people do is they kind of do pentatonic stuff. Yeah. Which is a, you know, it's a solution. If you want, you won't offend your neighbors much. And you also won't say too much about the chords, you're gonna be just kind of surviving and playing above it all. Yeah, I mean, the thing for me about playing tunes, in general, whether it's a simple diatonic II kind of thing, or complicated set of changes, is that to me, the idea would be to show people the changes, like, check this out, sure, look how cool it is when this note changes to that note, so I'm always trying to find the places in the chords, where the, you know, activity that's moving the chords along is happening. And at the same time, you know, I think you've done talks about common tones being a really good

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thing to look for, so that you can connect ideas and all that. So sort of a combination of those things is certainly at work. But the key thing for me in any tune is to first of all, be able to just kind of solo playing the notes in the chords, right, which is sort of the way the music developed for a good chunk of its history. I mean, you know, there were major improvisers that were playing more in what we would call it vertical way, meaning up through the chords, as opposed to going across the chords. And the thing is, if you can't really do that, this thing is probably not going to be that deep, you know, it's going to be kind of like I was saying, you're going to be floating above it. So the chords to the bridge Are.

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Still, we've all kind of been in the kiddie Yep. And now we're going to set up a five to yet another part of the D diatonic world. And then we're gonna put kind of, you know, set up chord that's gonna get the second time and now we're back. Yes.

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But describing those chords in while you're improvising, that's the trick. So So tell before we describe, yeah, so So literally, the chords are a, then f sharp seven, and I'm putting in the G. So it's got kind of a flat nine, which is very typical to go to a minor chord.

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Now we're to B minor. And then I'm gonna go to a again, but this time in the first inversion position, or with the C sharp, and then back to the tonic. And now we're gonna go to the D flat over F, which is going to lead us to that F sharp minor, and then to E over G sharp, that first inversion.

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And then we're at the five chord.

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And that's kinda like an E minor inversion.

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And then we're back to the tonic. Again, that's like, B minor. And then I mean, all of those, you can kind of do a lot of different ways of looking at it. I mean, honestly, when I play this tune, now, I don't even know what I'm playing. It's like I'm like, it's just the shapes of the chords that they're moving around. But

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technically, that's what it is. So that's step one, for me would be then to be able to

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You know, and then you're in back in the tune, but being able to then and I'm only playing the roots, the third, you know, the fundamental notes. Yep, to then be able to go

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somebody's open triads, and just arpeggios. And I'm just Yeah, I'm just playing the cord. If somebody did that on the bandstand, they would people go, Yeah, sounds great. And especially if you can do it and you know

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you know, it's really very simple, but it's very effective. So then if you kind of, you know,

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you still have that idea. But you're kind of like thinking of things that are going to outline.

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All of that is just diatonic triads, right. And, you know, it sounds good. And then you're like, in the tune, you're showing the tune, you don't even need a bass player, you know, let alone a piano player. You're, you're illuminating what those chords are. And that's the, that's kind of the thing for me is so like, isn't it cool? How it goes to that D flat, check this out. And where that happens, you know, are these little lines that's right, and I mean, you can even

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this is the baseline

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which kind of says a lot right there. So if you just take the baseline, and add a note on top, that's right.

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Just two notes.

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So it's like understanding again, that's the word that seems to keep coming up in our talk today, understanding kind of opens the doors to things. So, you know, in this case, you know, being able to just in a very simple way, explain what makes stuff happen. Seems to work.

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Okay, so much to unpack.

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So much to unpack. So I'm just gonna go through quickly and then I would encourage you to listen to that segment of the interview over and over again. To catch all of this. In the beginning he mentioned the importance of diatonic diatonic, the diatonic sounds that exist in a lot of terms, not only in the tune, James that he's talking about his composition, named after James Taylor, but in he says diatonic sounds that are found in many standard tones, right. So he also mentioned that he likes to show people the changes when he's playing show people the changes by outlining them by plane, then the notes and the chords, right. He goes on to talk about the importance of common tones, the notes that exist, that are common from one chord, going to the next chord going to the next chord. He said, When he solos, play the notes in the chords, and he's talking about the root, the third, the fifth, and the seventh. He also talked about vertical plane plane up and down the chords again, root, third, fifth and seventh, he mentioned that, historically speaking, many major improvisers utilize this approach. And he also went on to say that if you can't play vertically, through up and down through the changes, playing horizontally, is it's just not gonna happen. But he said, it's not going to be very deep, which isn't always and it's not gonna happen. diatonic sounds good. Right? He says, you're in the tomb. When you're playing these diatonic sounds outlining these chord changes showing the tune

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He used the word of illuminating the chords, illuminating the chords. You also mentioned playing the fundamental core tones. And the catch at the end. He said, if somebody did that on the bandstand, people would go, Yeah, that sounds great. And then the last thing he said, understanding opens the doors to things. Understanding opens the door to things. How many times have you heard me say conceptual understanding, drives physical development. That's exactly what Pat Metheny is saying, understanding opens the doors.

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So all of that, all of that to answer your general question, Mike, which actually leads to a very specific answer, which is, the most important jazz skill to develop? Is your ability to play the chord melodically play chord tones. Great question Mike. And as always, if further clarification is needed, or if you have any additional questions, please do not hesitate to contact me. Again. I'm always happy to help and spend some time with you and again, help you in any way that I can. Okay, let's discover learn and play jazz piano let's discover learn and play these foolish things. Part two, a melodic analysis. I have presented now on many different occasions my outline for studying and learning any tune right any to genre makes no difference right? Whether it's jazz, rock, pop country, folk r&b, makes no difference. Here's a quick refresher. Number one Listen, always listen various artists. I like vocalist first and amount and instrumentalist. And then of course pianist number two, determine the form of the tune is an ABA, ABA B, right. Every tune has a form number three, learn the chord changes and voicings right in and common harmonic progressions right like to 51145 etc. Number four, learn melody. And number five, explore various treatments, plus improvisation. And that's it nothing more, nothing less. Listen, determine form, learn chord changes, voicings, learn melody, explore treatments, and improvisation.

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Wow. So last week, we focused on gaining harmonic familiarity and command of these foolish things. We listened, we determined to form we explored the chord changes harmonic function and voicings. This week we turn our attention to a melodic analysis of these foolish things. And our goal as always, is to keep things very clean to keep things very tidy with our learning approach, again, makes no difference whether it's a scale study or a tune study, right are conceptual understanding of all that we do musically must be structured and simple, so that it can be replicated over and over again, y'all can attest to the fact that I have said it many times over the past four years. If your conceptual understanding of music or any musical skill is not structured in simple then it must be unorganized and confusing. And if it's unorganized and confusing conceptually upstairs, you have no shot of executing it in your hands on the piano downstairs, right? Therefore, we keep our tune steady, structured, simple, and replicatable. So the educational agenda for today is as follows number one, we are going to begin part two of a logic analysis to discover learn and play these foolish things. Number two, we are going to listen to a definitive recording of these foolish things. Number three, we will analyze the melody of these foolish things. Number four, we will discuss the melodic fingerings for these foolish things. And number five, we will discover learn and play the melodic phrases of these foolish things. Number six, we will discover learn to play the melodic target notes of these foolish things. Number seven, we will discover learn and play melody with voicings for these foolish things. And finally, number eight we will discover learn to play three different treatments of these foolish things. Do you think we have enough to do? Yeah, I do. Wow. So if you are

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Free Jazz panel skills member I want you to take a few minutes right now hit the pause button, download and print your podcast packets, the illustrations, the lead sheets the play alongs. Again, your membership grants you access to the premium content for every weekly podcast episode, which includes all of the educational podcast packets. As I mentioned every week, you should be using these broadcast packets when listening to the episode to get the most out of it. And of course, you should be using these podcast packet materials when practicing as well. Now if you're listening to this podcast on any of the popular podcast directories such as Apple, Google, Spotify, I Heart Radio, Amazon Pandora, the list goes on and on and on. Then go directly to jazz piano skills podcast.com And you will find the active download links for each of the podcast packets in the show notes or, or you can log into your jazz piano skills account. And from your Dashboard, navigate to this episode, where you will find one convenient link to download all three podcasts packets in one convenient bundle. Okay, now that you have your podcast packets, I want you to grab your lead sheets, and you should have six of them. Right, I want to go through them very quickly lead sheet one provides you

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fan fantastic template for learning the melody of these foolish things using your ears, right great ear training. Number two lead sheet to provide you with the melody of complete melody of these foolish things. Number three, lead sheet three provides you with the fingerings used with the melody of these folds things that lead sheet for highlights the various phrases found within these foolish things that we're going to use for developing our melody. Okay, lead sheet five illuminates the target notes use for melodic and improvisational development. And lead sheet six combines the melody with the voicings that I introduced last week and her harmonic analysis of these foolish things. So no question about it right some invaluable tools to help you discover, learn and play these formulas things so so let's get busy. What is the very first thing we do when studying and learning a tune? And we do it every week. We do it for every tune. We listen.

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Right we listen I stress all the time that listening to various renditions of a tune is not only the first but probably the most important step in the entire process. And again, I can't even imagine attempt attempting to learn attune before spending time becoming familiar with it, absorbing it by listening to various renditions of the two. Now I typically like to listen to vocal renditions first, followed by instrumentalist, followed by pianist Alright, bottom line I listen. And that is what we're going to do right now. Right last week, we checked out a beautiful ballad rendition of these foolish things.

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Johnny Hartman doesn't get any better than that, right? This week. We're going to enjoy, enjoy the another phenomenal rendition, this one by an instrumentalist saxophonist Scott Hamilton. Right? I love Scott's plane. It's beautiful. So I want to sit back right now. And I want to listen to Scott Hamilton plane, these foolish things So get comfortable. Get your favorite beverage. Sit back and relax and enjoy this gorgeous rendition of these foolish things. Here we go.

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Wow, How gorgeous is that right between last week's rendition Johnny Hartman singing. This week Scott Hamilton blown on the tenor saxophone, two beautiful renditions to listen to, to help you digest the melody of this classic jazz standard. Okay, so now let's explore those lead sheets grab a lead sheet one, let's discover how to properly begin learning the melody for these foolish things, using your

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