Jazz Harmony Explained — Concepts, With Standards That Use Them | Niels Dalgaard
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Jazz Harmony
Standards Progressions Guitar voicings Guitar scales Arpeggios Triad pairs Harmony Analyzer
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Six concepts · Free

Jazz harmony, explained through real standards

Six devices account for most of what happens in a jazz chord progression. Each one is explained here on its own page, and each page ends with the tunes in the library whose chords actually demonstrate it.

The books behind this page

One device, explained on one page. Jazz Harmony is the whole vocabulary in one place: what each resource is, how it is built, when it is used, why it works — and what it does to what the listener expects.

Start here Project 03 · Harmony

Jazz Harmony

From tradition to the expectation framework · For any instrument Project 05 · Harmony

Harmonic Narrative

A practical method for creating and understanding harmonic progressions through expectation Project 04 · Jazz guitar

Jazz Guitar Comping

Creating direction through harmony, rhythm and the expectation framework

ii-V-I

Three chords that carry almost the whole grammar of jazz harmony — what they do, why that order, and what changes when the key is minor.

Read · 62 standards →

Secondary dominants

A dominant seventh that belongs to no key in the piece, aimed at a chord that does. How the pull of a cadence gets borrowed and pointed somewhere else.

Read · 45 standards →

Tritone substitution

Two dominant chords a tritone apart contain the same tritone. Swap one for the other and the pull survives while the bass line changes completely.

Read · 20 standards →

Modal interchange

Chords taken from the parallel mode and used without changing key. The same tonic, a different set of notes — and one of the strongest colours available in tonal harmony.

Read · 28 standards →

Backdoor progression

iv7 to bVII7 to I. A cadence that reaches the tonic from a whole tone below, with no leading tone anywhere in it — and arrives anyway.

Read · 4 standards →

Roman numeral analysis

What the numerals mean, how the slashed ones work, and where the notation stops being able to describe what you are hearing.

Read · 14 standards →

Where to start

If you are new to this, read ii-V-I first and then Roman numeral analysis: between them they cover the notation and the single progression that most of the repertoire is assembled from. Secondary dominants come next, because they are what turns a diatonic tune into one that travels.

If you came here from a specific tune, the fastest route is the other way round: open that standard’s page, look at which devices its excerpt contains, and follow those links.