Take Five Chord Progression & Harmonic Analysis

Chord progression

Analyzed excerpt

Section: A / vamp · Bars 1–4

Ebm7 | Bbm7 | Ebm7 | Bbm7

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

4

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 Bb 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
Bbm7	v	Dominant	Bbm7 is a minor v: the fifth degree straight from natural minor, without a leading tone. It colours rather than pulls.	Medium
Ebm7	i	Tonic	Ebm7 is the tonic of D#m. It is where the progression is at rest.	High
Bbm7	v	Dominant	Bbm7 is a minor v: the fifth degree straight from natural minor, without a leading tone. It colours rather than pulls.	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 →

Why this example matters

Numbered against D# minor, the excerpt is i – v. Inside those 4 chords there is a chord borrowed from the parallel mode. With no dominant anywhere in it, nothing is obliged to resolve. Hold each chord until you find the note that still wants to go somewhere — that one is doing the work here. 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 Take Five goes

In five-four throughout, which is the reason anyone knows it, and harmonically almost nothing happens — the main section alternates two chords over a repeating piano figure and never leaves. The bridge introduces movement and then returns. The metre is not a novelty layer on top of a normal tune; the piece was written to demonstrate that an odd metre could swing, and the harmony was kept minimal on purpose so that nothing distracted from the rhythm.

Take Five on record

Paul Desmond wrote it for the Dave Brubeck Quartet’s 1959 album Time Out, a record built entirely around unusual metres and one that the label expected to fail. It became the best-selling jazz single ever released. Desmond left his royalties from it to the American Red Cross, which has received them ever since.

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 →

Take Five — 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 Take Five goes

Take Five on record

Analyze this progression

Related

Modal interchange

Blues for Alice

All Blues

So What

Jazz chord progressions