Darn That Dream Chord Progression & Harmonic Analysis

Chord progression

Analyzed excerpt

Section: A1 · Bars 1–2

G6 Bbm7 Eb7 | Am7 B7

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.

See all the books

Start here Project 03 · Harmony

Play Darn That Dream in JamShed

The whole form, not just these bars: JamShed’s trio — double bass, drums and piano — plays it with you at the tempo and in the key you choose. Loop the bars that trip you up, mute the instrument you play, share the link.

▶ Open in JamShed

Harmonic analysis

Key

G major

Tonal center

G

Confidence

Low

Chords analysed

5

Read in G major, the key of the tune. Taken on its own, with nothing around it, this excerpt is just as easy to hear in E major — a few bars are often not enough to fix a tonic, and that ambiguity is a real property of the music rather than a gap in the analysis.

Chord	Roman numeral	Function	What it is doing	Confidence
G6	I	Tonic	G6 is the tonic of G. It is where the progression is at rest.	High
Bbm7	biii	Other	Bbm7 does not take a functional role in G. It sits on bIII and is best heard as colour, or as a sign that the tonal center has moved.	Low
Eb7	subV7/V	Dominant	Eb7 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.	Low
Am7	ii	Predominant	Am7 is the ii chord of G: the classic predominant. It prepares the dominant and almost always moves to it.	High
B7	V7/vi	Dominant	B7 is functioning as V7/vi: a secondary dominant. It is the dominant of E, not of the home key, so it borrows the pull of a V-I and points it at vi instead.	Medium

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 →

The complete analysis of Darn That Dream — every chord of the whole form, with its Roman numeral and its ii–V–Is marked on the chart — is in JamShed with the Practice Pass, ready to print. Open it in JamShed →

Why this example matters

Against a tonic of G major the passage numbers as I – biii – subV7/V – ii – V7/vi. Inside those 5 chords there is at least one secondary dominant and a tritone substitute. Strip it to two notes per chord, the third and the seventh, and play it under tempo. Eb7 gives you G and C#; 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, All Blues and So What.

How the rest of Darn That Dream goes

Thirty-two bars, AABA, with a new chord almost every two beats in the A sections — the excerpt’s side-slipped ii–V, a slash chord descending in the bass, a minor ii–V to the relative minor and a chromatic return. The bridge moves to E♭ major, a key a major third away, and comes back through G minor. It rewards a slow tempo; at speed the harmony blurs.

Darn That Dream on record

Jimmy Van Heusen and Eddie DeLange wrote it for the 1939 Broadway show Swingin’ the Dream, a jazz version of A Midsummer Night’s Dream that closed within weeks. The song survived: Benny Goodman recorded it in 1940, and Miles Davis included it, with a vocal by Kenny Hagood, in the 1950 nonet sessions later issued as Birth of the Cool.

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 →

Darn That Dream — Chord Progression & Harmonic Analysis

Chord progression

The books behind this page

Jazz Harmony

The Jazz Guitar Shortcut

Harmonic Narrative

The Jazz Roadmap Lite

Play Darn That Dream in JamShed

Harmonic analysis

Why this example matters

How the rest of Darn That Dream goes

Darn That Dream on record

Analyze this progression

Related

Secondary dominants

Tritone substitution

Blues for Alice

All Blues

So What

Jazz chord progressions