Blue Monk Chord Progression & Harmonic Analysis

Chord progression

Analyzed excerpt

Form: 12-bar blues · Bars 1–12

Bb7 | Eb7 | Bb7 | Bb7 | Eb7 | Edim7 | Bb7 | G7 | Cm7 | F7 | Bb7 G7 | Cm7 F7

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

Bb major

Tonal center

Bb

Confidence

High

Chords analysed

14

Chord	Roman numeral	Function	What it is doing	Confidence
Bb7	I7	Tonic	Bb7 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
Eb7	IV7	Predominant	Eb7 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
Bb7	I7	Tonic	Bb7 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
Bb7	I7	Tonic	Bb7 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
Eb7	IV7	Predominant	Eb7 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
Edim7	#iv°7	Other	Edim7 does not take a functional role in Bb. It sits on #IV and is best heard as colour, or as a sign that the tonal center has moved.	Low
Bb7	I7	Tonic	Bb7 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	V7/ii	Dominant	G7 is functioning as V7/ii: a secondary dominant. It is the dominant of C, not of the home key, so it borrows the pull of a V-I and points it at ii instead.	High
Cm7	ii	Predominant	Cm7 is the ii chord of Bb: the classic predominant. It prepares the dominant and almost always moves to it.	High
F7	V7	Dominant	F7 is the dominant of Bb. Its third and seventh form a tritone, and that tritone is what makes the tonic feel due.	High
Bb7	I7	Tonic	Bb7 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	V7/ii	Dominant	G7 is functioning as V7/ii: a secondary dominant. It is the dominant of C, not of the home key, so it borrows the pull of a V-I and points it at ii instead.	High
Cm7	ii	Predominant	Cm7 is the ii chord of Bb: the classic predominant. It prepares the dominant and almost always moves to it.	High
F7	V7	Dominant	F7 is the dominant of Bb. Its third and seventh form a tritone, and that tritone is what makes the tonic feel due.	High

What the analyzer found in it

ii - V7 - I7Cm7 - F7 - Bb7

A complete ii-V-I in Bb. Predominant, dominant, tonic: the sentence jazz harmony is built out of.

ii - V7Cm7 - F7

A ii-V pointing at Bb, which never arrives. The preparation is complete, the resolution is not.

half cadenceF7

The progression stops on the dominant of Bb — a half cadence. It is unfinished on purpose.

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

In Bb major the excerpt reads I7 – IV7 – #iv°7 – V7/ii – ii – V7. Inside those 14 chords there is a complete ii-V-I and at least one secondary dominant. Play it slowly with only two voices — the third and seventh of each chord. In Bb7 those are D and Ab, and watching where that pair goes next tells you more about the progression than the root movement does. The same device turns up in Now’s the Time, Billie’s Bounce and Straight, No Chaser, in other keys and at other tempos.

How the rest of Blue Monk goes

A twelve-bar blues whose head walks up chromatically rather than outlining the chords, so the melody and the harmony are doing different things from the first bar — the line moves by semitone while the chords move by fourths underneath. Played slowly, as it usually is, that mismatch is audible as a kind of drag, and it is the tune’s entire character. The form itself holds no surprises, which is deliberate: the interest is placed entirely in the melody’s relationship to a chart everyone already knows.

Blue Monk on record

Monk recorded it in 1954 and it is probably his most-played composition, partly because it is his most approachable — a student who cannot yet handle ’Round Midnight can play this one on the day they meet it. It appears in his duo and trio recordings throughout the following decades, usually slower each time, and the very slow readings are the ones that make the chromatic melody hardest to place and most rewarding to hear.

Analyze this progression

Take these bars into the analyzer and interfere with them. The fastest way to learn what a chord was doing is to remove it and read what the analysis says instead.

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Blue Monk — Chord Progression & Harmonic Analysis

Chord progression

The books behind this page

Jazz Harmony

Harmonic Narrative

Jazz Guitar Comping

Harmonic analysis

What the analyzer found in it

Why this example matters

How the rest of Blue Monk goes

Blue Monk on record

Analyze this progression

Related

ii-V-I

Secondary dominants

Roman numeral analysis

Now’s the Time

Billie’s Bounce

Straight, No Chaser

Jazz chord progressions