Footprints Chord Progression & Harmonic Analysis

Chord progression

Analyzed excerpt

Form: 12-bar minor blues in 6/4 · Bars 1–8

Cm7 | Cm7 | Cm7 | Cm7 | Fm7 | Fm7 | Cm7 | Cm7

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

C minor

Tonal center

C

Confidence

High

Chords analysed

8

Chord	Roman numeral	Function	What it is doing	Confidence
Cm7	i	Tonic	Cm7 is the tonic of Cm. It is where the progression is at rest.	High
Cm7	i	Tonic	Cm7 is the tonic of Cm. It is where the progression is at rest.	High
Cm7	i	Tonic	Cm7 is the tonic of Cm. It is where the progression is at rest.	High
Cm7	i	Tonic	Cm7 is the tonic of Cm. It is where the progression is at rest.	High
Fm7	iv	Predominant	Fm7 is the iv chord of Cm: the minor subdominant.	High
Fm7	iv	Predominant	Fm7 is the iv chord of Cm: the minor subdominant.	High
Cm7	i	Tonic	Cm7 is the tonic of Cm. It is where the progression is at rest.	High
Cm7	i	Tonic	Cm7 is the tonic of Cm. It is where the progression is at rest.	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

Numbered against C minor, the excerpt is i – iv. Inside those 8 chords there is a chord borrowed from the parallel mode. There is no dominant to lean on, so the phrase is carried by whichever note refuses to settle. Sustain each chord long enough to hear which one that is before moving on. Blues for Alice, All Blues and So What use the same device, which is the argument for learning it once properly rather than three times by accident.

How the rest of Footprints goes

A minor blues in six, and the metre is the composition. The twelve-bar frame is intact underneath, but the bass figure divides each bar in a way that lets the rhythm section imply both a slow three and a fast two at once, so the pulse is genuinely ambiguous rather than merely syncopated. The harmony holds still for long stretches and then moves suddenly, and the famous performance takes liberties with the bar count that have never been standardised — which means the tune is one of the few where a working group has to agree in advance on what the form even is.

Footprints on record

Wayne Shorter recorded it in 1966 on his own Adam’s Apple, but the version that fixed it in the repertoire came the same year on the Miles Davis Quintet’s Miles Smiles, where the rhythm section treats the metre as material to be reshaped rather than kept. That recording is why the tune is considered difficult; the composition on paper is not.

Analyze this progression

Open these chords in the analyzer and change them. Move one chord, substitute a dominant, take the ii away — the reading updates and tells you what you just did.

Open in Jazz Harmony Analyzer →

Footprints — 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 Footprints goes

Footprints on record

Analyze this progression

Related

Modal interchange

Blues for Alice

All Blues

So What

Jazz chord progressions