Solar Chord Progression & Harmonic Analysis

Chord progression

Analyzed excerpt

Form: 12 bars · Bars 1–9 · each symbol lasts two bars

Cm | Gm7 C7 | Fmaj7 | Fm7 Bb7 | Ebmaj7

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

Low

Chords analysed

7

Read in C minor, the key of the tune. Taken on its own, with nothing around it, this excerpt is just as easy to hear in Eb 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
Cm	i	Tonic	Cm is the tonic of Cm. It is where the progression is at rest.	High
Gm7	ii	Predominant	Gm7 is the ii chord of F: the classic predominant. It prepares the dominant and almost always moves to it.	High
C7	V7	Dominant	C7 is the dominant of F. Its third and seventh form a tritone, and that tritone is what makes the tonic feel due.	High
Fmaj7	I	Tonic	Fmaj7 is the tonic of F. It is where the progression is at rest.	High
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

What the analyzer found in it

ModulationF major

Bars 2-3 are heard in F major: the harmony cadences there and stays long enough to become a key.

Relative keyEb major

Bars 4-5 are in Eb major, the relative key. The notes are the same; the center is not.

ii - V7 - IGm7 - C7 - Fmaj7

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

ii - V7 - IFm7 - Bb7 - Ebmaj7

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

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

Against a tonic of C minor the passage numbers as i – ii – V7 – I. Inside those 7 chords there is a complete ii-V-I. Strip it to two notes per chord, the third and the seventh, and play it under tempo. C7 gives you E and Bb; 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 Autumn Leaves, All The Things You Are and Tune Up.

How the rest of Solar goes

Twelve bars, and not one of them is a blues bar. The tonic is minor and the harmony leaves it immediately, descending in ii-V pairs that each land a whole tone below the last, so the form is a cycle that happens to close. Because it is twelve bars rather than the usual sixteen or thirty-two, the turnaround comes sooner than the ear expects, and the tune restarts before the last resolution has settled — which is the reason it works so well at medium-up tempo and sounds oddly abrupt when played slow.

Solar on record

Miles Davis recorded it in 1954 on the session released as Walkin’ and registered the copyright, but the guitarist Chuck Wayne is widely held to have written it — his tune “Sonny” carries essentially the same melody and predates the recording. The dispute has never stopped anyone playing it. Bill Evans made it a trio vehicle and returned to it throughout his career, and the tune is engraved on Miles Davis’s headstone, which has done more for its permanence than any single recording.

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.

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Solar — 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 Solar goes

Solar on record

Analyze this progression

Related

ii-V-I

Autumn Leaves

All The Things You Are

Tune Up

Jazz chord progressions