Moment’s Notice Chord Progression & Harmonic Analysis

Chord progression

Analyzed excerpt

Bars 1–7

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.

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Start here Project 03 · Harmony

Play Moment’s Notice 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.

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Harmonic analysis

Key

E♭ major

Tonal center

Eb

Confidence

Low

Chords analysed

12

Read in E♭ major, the key of the tune. Taken on its own, with nothing around it, this excerpt is just as easy to hear in D♭ 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
Em7	bii	Other	Em7 does not take a functional role in Eb. It sits on bII and is best heard as colour, or as a sign that the tonal center has moved.	Low
A7	subV7/IV	Dominant	A7 is a tritone substitute — subV7/IV. It carries the same tritone as Eb7, the real dominant of Ab, but resolves down a semitone instead of down a fifth.	Low
Fm7	ii	Predominant	Fm7 is the ii chord of Eb: the classic predominant. It prepares the dominant and almost always moves to it.	High
Bb7	V7	Dominant	Bb7 is the dominant of Eb. Its third and seventh form a tritone, and that tritone is what makes the tonic feel due.	High
Ebmaj7	I	Tonic	Ebmaj7 is the tonic of Eb. It is where the progression is at rest.	High
Abm7	iv	Predominant	Abm7 is a minor iv in a major key, borrowed from the parallel minor. Its b6 pulls down into the third of the tonic — one of the most recognisable sounds in the repertoire. Also readable as ii/bIII.	Medium
Db7	bVII7	Modal interchange	Db7 is bVII7 — the backdoor dominant. It comes from the parallel minor and resolves up a whole tone to the tonic instead of down a fifth. Also readable as V7/bIII.	Medium
Dm7	ii/vi	Predominant	Dm7 is the ii of a secondary ii-V. Together with G7 it prepares C, so the pair tonicizes vi without leaving the key.	Medium
G7	V7/vi	Dominant	G7 is functioning as V7/vi: 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 vi instead.	Low
Ebm7	ii	Predominant	Ebm7 is the ii chord of Db: the classic predominant. It prepares the dominant and almost always moves to it.	High
Ab7	V7	Dominant	Ab7 is the dominant of Db. Its third and seventh form a tritone, and that tritone is what makes the tonic feel due.	High
Dbmaj7	I	Tonic	Dbmaj7 is the tonic of Db. It is where the progression is at rest.	High

What the analyzer found in it

ModulationD♭ major

Bars 6-7 are heard in D♭ major: the harmony cadences there and stays long enough to become a key.

ii - V7 - IFm7 - Bb7 - Ebmaj7

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

iv - bVII7Abm7 - Db7

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

ii/vi - V7/viDm7 - G7

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

ii - V7 - IEbm7 - Ab7 - Dbmaj7

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

modal interchangeDb7

Modal interchange: Db7 come from the parallel mode of Eb, not from the key itself.

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 Moment’s Notice — 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

In E♭ major the excerpt reads bii – subV7/IV – ii – V7 – I – iv – bVII7 – ii/vi – V7/vi. Inside those 12 chords there is a complete ii-V-I, at least one secondary dominant, a tritone substitute and a chord borrowed from the parallel mode. Play it slowly with only two voices — the third and seventh of each chord. In A7 those are Db and G, and watching where that pair goes next tells you more about the progression than the root movement does. The same device turns up in Autumn Leaves, All The Things You Are and Tune Up, in other keys and at other tempos.

How the rest of Moment’s Notice goes

An irregular form of about thirty-eight bars, with an ending section in which chords move over a B♭ pedal. The body of the tune is a continuous chain of ii–Vs, most of them a half step or a whole step from the previous one, landing in E♭, D♭, A♭ and G♭ in quick succession. At the usual fast tempo there is barely a beat to recognise each new key before it is gone.

Moment’s Notice on record

From John Coltrane’s Blue Train, recorded for Blue Note in 1957 with Lee Morgan, Curtis Fuller, Kenny Drew, Paul Chambers and Philly Joe Jones. It is often cited as a step on the way to Giant Steps: the same idea of passing through keys, still built from ordinary ii–Vs rather than from his later major-third cycles.

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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Moment’s Notice — Chord Progression & Harmonic Analysis

Chord progression

The books behind this page

Jazz Harmony

The Jazz Guitar Shortcut

Harmonic Narrative

The Jazz Roadmap Lite

Play Moment’s Notice in JamShed

Harmonic analysis

What the analyzer found in it

Why this example matters

How the rest of Moment’s Notice goes

Moment’s Notice on record

Analyze this progression

Related

Modal interchange

ii-V-I

Secondary dominants

Tritone substitution

Autumn Leaves

All The Things You Are

Tune Up

Jazz chord progressions