my foolish heart chords bill evans transcription

In bar 7 of the B section he does tonicise the modulation to V and lands on an F6, unlike most jazz charts for this song that I have seen that typically follow C7 with C-7 F7. He breaks them down into II-V pairs to allow himself to milk the voice-leading to the max. In the B section, Evans changes very little of the harmony because it already contains secondary dominants to IV and VI. Either secondary dominants or chromatic from above dominants (tritone subs). To reach the total progression for the A section used by Evans, just insert passing chords as described before. The replaces the regular turnaround in the original by simply replacing I with its diatonic sub, III, which the preceding A7 leads us to expect. The second four bars are a III VI II V turnaround. And on the A7 chord he often played diminished scale movements. And it goes some way to explain why he tends not to play the E-7 chord but plays A7sus to A7b9. Once you know this, the chords that Evans used seem somewhat less unnatural.

The beboppers would often covert the dim7 chords to dominant 7 chords and precede them with their associated II chords. This is sometimes used as a substitution for a I VI II V turnaround, specially on I Got Rhythm changes. ➡️ I call this the “ItCHY Opening” in my book⬅️. There is a common chord sequence that is used in standards such as It Could Happen To You (ItCHY). The following diagram shows how this is transformed into what Evans played. The original changes for the A section open with a four-bar turnaround, one chord per bar. But if we step back, we can see what is going on as I’ll explain below. While we can justify this as leading to the D-7 in the next bar, it seems odd and potentially difficult to memorise and play in any key. After the II chord (C-7) we are expecting a V chord (F7), but instead Evans gives us V7/III (A7). It starts in a conventional manner: I IV III VI II. You may be wondering about the first four bars of chords that Evans played. Not every chord will be played every chorus, for example, chord IV might not be played in bar 1 every time. I’ve listened to the recordings on the playlist above and captured the harmonic moves I hear in the various choruses. You are welcome to listen to my ➡️ playlist⬅️ of recordings of this song by Evans. When he recorded the same tune without bass in duet with Tony Bennett, the key was Bb, which seems to support the story since ➡️ the singer would not likely mind which of the two adjacent keys were chosen. You can listen to their rehearsal tape on which they try various keys. One theory is that he chose this key to allow the bass to use open strings thereby creating a more resonant sound, but I don’t know whether this was the reason. It stayed in his repertoire a long time.īill Evans chose to play this tune with his trio in the unusual key of A major. Versions by Bill Evansīill Evans recorded it in 1961 with his trio and later with Tony Bennett in 1975. These moves above seem to be the only harmonic interest in the original song and both might go unnoticed without the finesse of Evans described below. Another song that uses bVI7 is Out of Nowhere.Īs shown by the Roman numerals and arrows, secondary dominants are used to propel us to II, IV, V and VI. In the original 1950 Jenkins recording, one chorus uses Gb7 (from Cb major, Bb Locrian) and another uses Gbmaj7 (from either Bb harmonic minor or Bb natural minor, Aeolian). This can be viewed as modal interchange (M.I.), being borrowed from another mode rooted on Bb. At bar 26 (second bar of the C section) there is a bVI (Gb) chord.This modulation is not common one of the few other standards I can think of that do this is Stella by Starlight, also by Victor Young. The difference is so subtle that many might not notice it. In bars 13-15 there is a genuine modulation to key V.In my opinion, the only two interesting things about the original harmony are also both quite weak: The harmony is conventional, even boring, in the main, but we need to know it so that we can understand the magic that Evans performed in his arrangement. If you are new to harmonic analysis, read my overview article which explains the techniques and gives a further reading list. I’m going to put all changes in the key of Bb for ease of comparison, though the recording is in E and Ab.

It’s a song of two halves, the form is ABAC (8-8-8-8). I don’t have the original sheet music and Real Books are notoriously prone to ‘group think’, so I went to the most successful early recording by the Gordon Jenkins Orchestra in 1950 and transcribed the chords. Bill Evans replaced the boring harmony to make it a jazz standard to die for. My Foolish Heart was written by Victor Young in 1949.

My foolish heart chords bill evans transcription