All Blues Chord Progression & Harmonic Analysis

Chord progression

Analyzed excerpt

Form: 12-bar blues in 6/8 · Bars 1–12

G7 | G7 | G7 | G7 | C7 | C7 | G7 | G7 | D7#9 | Eb7#9 D7#9 | G7 | G7

This is a short excerpt quoted for analysis, not the full chart, and this composition is very likely still in copyright. Published versions and recordings disagree with each other about the rest of the tune, and often about these bars too.

The books behind this page

Every one of these tunes is assembled out of the same handful of harmonic resources. Jazz Harmony is those resources, explained in the order in which they build on each other.

Start here Project 03 · Harmony

Harmonic analysis

Key

G major

Tonal center

G

Confidence

High

Chords analysed

13

Chord	Roman numeral	Function	What it is doing	Confidence
G7	I7	Tonic	G7 is the tonic, but built as a dominant seventh — the sound that defines the blues. The tonic keeps a b7 and stays at home anyway.	High
G7	I7	Tonic	G7 is the tonic, but built as a dominant seventh — the sound that defines the blues. The tonic keeps a b7 and stays at home anyway.	High
G7	I7	Tonic	G7 is the tonic, but built as a dominant seventh — the sound that defines the blues. The tonic keeps a b7 and stays at home anyway.	High
G7	I7	Tonic	G7 is the tonic, but built as a dominant seventh — the sound that defines the blues. The tonic keeps a b7 and stays at home anyway. Also readable as V7/IV.	Medium
C7	IV7	Predominant	C7 is the IV of a blues, built as a dominant seventh. In this context that is its normal quality, not a dominant of anything.	High
C7	IV7	Predominant	C7 is the IV of a blues, built as a dominant seventh. In this context that is its normal quality, not a dominant of anything.	High
G7	I7	Tonic	G7 is the tonic, but built as a dominant seventh — the sound that defines the blues. The tonic keeps a b7 and stays at home anyway.	High
G7	I7	Tonic	G7 is the tonic, but built as a dominant seventh — the sound that defines the blues. The tonic keeps a b7 and stays at home anyway.	High
D7#9	V7	Dominant	D7#9 is the dominant of G. Its third and seventh form a tritone, and that tritone is what makes the tonic feel due.	High
Eb7#9	subV7/V	Dominant	Eb7#9 is a tritone substitute — subV7/V. It carries the same tritone as A7, the real dominant of D, but resolves down a semitone instead of down a fifth. Also readable as bVI7.	High
D7#9	V7	Dominant	D7#9 is the dominant of G. Its third and seventh form a tritone, and that tritone is what makes the tonic feel due.	High
G7	I7	Tonic	G7 is the tonic, but built as a dominant seventh — the sound that defines the blues. The tonic keeps a b7 and stays at home anyway.	High
G7	I7	Tonic	G7 is the tonic, but built as a dominant seventh — the sound that defines the blues. The tonic keeps a b7 and stays at home anyway.	High

High, medium and low next to each numeral are judgements about musical context, not probabilities. A low rating marks a bar that can honestly be read more than one way. How the ratings are decided →

Why this example matters

Against a tonic of G major the passage numbers as I7 – IV7 – V7 – subV7/V. Inside those 13 chords there is a tritone substitute and a chord borrowed from the parallel mode. Strip it to two notes per chord, the third and the seventh, and play it under tempo. G7 gives you B and F; follow that pair from chord to chord and the voice leading becomes audible in a way the root motion never makes it. Once you can hear it here, it is hard to miss in Blues for Alice, So What and Impressions.

How the rest of All Blues goes

Twelve bars and a blues by count, but almost nothing else about it behaves like one. It is in 6/8, the tonic is a major chord that sits still for four bars over a rocking figure rather than moving, and the chord that would normally be the dominant arrives altered and does not resolve so much as subside. The famous detail is the pair of chords under the melody’s held notes, which colour the tonic without leaving it. Treating this as a blues to run changes over misses it entirely; the tune is a texture with a blues-shaped floor plan.

All Blues on record

From Kind of Blue, recorded in 1959. It is the track on that album that gets called most often at sessions, and also the one most often played badly, because the 6/8 figure has to be held steady by everyone at once or the whole thing collapses into a shuffle. The recording is the only reliable guide — the printed chart conveys almost none of what makes it work.

Analyze this progression

Load the progression and start altering it. Every edit is re-read from scratch, so you can test a hunch about one chord without rewriting the rest.

Open in Jazz Harmony Analyzer →

All Blues — Chord Progression & Harmonic Analysis

Chord progression

The books behind this page

Jazz Harmony

Harmonic Narrative

Jazz Guitar Comping

Harmonic analysis

Why this example matters

How the rest of All Blues goes

All Blues on record

Analyze this progression

Related

Tritone substitution

Modal interchange

Blues for Alice

So What

Impressions

Jazz chord progressions