’Round Midnight Chord Progression & Harmonic Analysis

Chord progression

Analyzed excerpt

Section: A1 · Bars 1–4

Ebm7 | Bbm7b5 Eb7 | Abm7 | Db7

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

D# minor

Tonal center

D#

Confidence

Low

Chords analysed

5

Read in D# minor, the key of the tune. Taken on its own, with nothing around it, this excerpt is just as easy to hear in G# minor — 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
Ebm7	i	Tonic	Ebm7 is the tonic of D#m. It is where the progression is at rest.	High
Bbm7b5	iiø/iv	Predominant	Bbm7b5 is the ii of a secondary ii-V. Together with Eb7 it prepares G#, so the pair tonicizes iv without leaving the key.	High
Eb7	I7	Tonic	Eb7 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
Abm7	iv	Predominant	Abm7 is the iv chord of D#m: the minor subdominant. Also readable as ii/bIII.	High
Db7	bVII7	Other	Db7 is bVII7: the subtonic as a dominant seventh. It usually moves to bIII or steps down to the tonic. Also readable as V7/bIII.	Medium

What the analyzer found in it

iiø/iv - I7 - ivBbm7b5 - Eb7 - Abm7

A complete minor ii-V-i in G#m, with the half-diminished ii and a dominant that borrows its leading tone from harmonic minor.

iv - bVII7Abm7 - Db7

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

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

Read in D# minor, these bars come out as i – iiø/iv – I7 – iv – bVII7. Inside those 5 chords there is a complete ii-V-I and a chord borrowed from the parallel mode. The shortest way in is a two-voice reduction: third and seventh only, slowly. Eb7 contributes G and C#, and where that pair resolves is the whole story of the passage. You will meet the same move again in Blues for Alice, All Blues and So What, transposed and at a different pace.

How the rest of ’Round Midnight goes

The most harmonically dense ballad in the common repertoire. It is in a remote minor key, almost every bar carries a different chord, and a large share of them are approached chromatically or by substitution rather than by cadence, so the piece never settles for long enough to be predicted. There is also a written introduction and an ending tag that are effectively part of the composition, and versions that omit them sound truncated. This is the tune where most players discover that knowing the chords and being able to play them are different achievements.

’Round Midnight on record

Monk wrote it in the early 1940s and it is the most recorded composition by any jazz musician. Cootie Williams recorded it first and holds a co-credit; Miles Davis’s 1955 Newport performance is generally described as the moment that restored his career. The proliferation of versions has left the harmony genuinely unsettled — several widely used charts disagree, and Monk’s own playing does not match any of them exactly.

Analyze this progression

The excerpt is loaded and editable. Swap a chord for its tritone substitute, delete the preparation, borrow one from the parallel minor, and watch which numerals change and which do not.

Open in Jazz Harmony Analyzer →

’Round Midnight — 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 ’Round Midnight goes

’Round Midnight on record

Analyze this progression

Related

ii-V-I

Secondary dominants

Modal interchange

Blues for Alice

All Blues

So What

Jazz chord progressions