Triste Chord Progression & Harmonic Analysis

Chord progression

Analyzed excerpt

Bars 1–4

Amaj7 | Amaj7 | Fmaj7#11 | Fmaj7#11

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.

See all the books

Start here Project 03 · Harmony

Play Triste 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

A major

Tonal center

A

Confidence

Low

Chords analysed

4

Read in A major, the key of the tune. Taken on its own, with nothing around it, this excerpt is just as easy to hear in F 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
Amaj7	I	Tonic	Amaj7 is the tonic of A. It is where the progression is at rest.	High
Amaj7	I	Tonic	Amaj7 is the tonic of A. It is where the progression is at rest.	High
Fmaj7#11	bVI	Modal interchange	Fmaj7#11 is bVI, borrowed from the parallel minor. It is the most common modal interchange chord in the repertoire after minor iv.	Medium
Fmaj7#11	bVI	Modal interchange	Fmaj7#11 is bVI, borrowed from the parallel minor. It is the most common modal interchange chord in the repertoire after minor iv.	Medium

What the analyzer found in it

modal interchangeFmaj7#11, Fmaj7#11

Modal interchange: Fmaj7#11, Fmaj7#11 come from the parallel mode of A, 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 Triste — 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

Against a tonic of A major the passage numbers as I – bVI. 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. Once you can hear it here, it is hard to miss in Blues for Alice, All Blues and So What.

How the rest of Triste goes

About thirty-two bars and a tag, in two halves. The first alternates the A major tonic with the lydian F major seventh, then works through a ii–V into C♯ major, a key a major third up. The second half returns through a chain of ii–Vs and secondary dominants and ends on a repeated A minor–D7 vamp that keeps the ending open. The melody sits on long notes that make each harmonic shift audible.

Triste on record

From Jobim’s 1967 album Wave, alongside the title track. Despite the name (“sad”), it is one of his brighter melodies, and it entered the jazz repertoire through instrumental versions rather than through a vocal hit.

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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Triste — Chord Progression & Harmonic Analysis

Chord progression

The books behind this page

Jazz Harmony

The Jazz Guitar Shortcut

Harmonic Narrative

The Jazz Roadmap Lite

Play Triste in JamShed

Harmonic analysis

What the analyzer found in it

Why this example matters

How the rest of Triste goes

Triste on record

Analyze this progression

Related

Modal interchange

Blues for Alice

All Blues

So What

Jazz chord progressions