Intermediate

How Chords Work

Chord function, the ii-V-I engine, and the moves that make jazz sound like jazz.

By the end You'll be able to analyze a progression, hear why it resolves, and recognize the ii-V-I at the heart of the music.

Begin with “Diatonic Harmony” →

1 Diatonic Harmony Diatonic harmony is what happens when you build chords using only the notes that already belong to a key. Pick a scale, stack thirds on top of every scale degree, and you get a fam… foundations tier 1 →
2 Roman Numeral Analysis Roman numeral analysis names a chord by its scale-degree role — I, ii, V — instead of its absolute letter name. That single move is why it exists: Dm7–G7–Cmaj7 and Fm7–B♭7–E♭maj7 a… foundations tier 1 →
3 Functional Harmony Functional harmony is the idea that every chord in a key plays one of three roles — home, setup, or tension — and that music makes sense because it moves predictably between them.… harmony tier 2 →
4 Dominant Resolution Take a G7 chord and resolve it to C. Something in your ear relaxes — a held breath let go. That feeling is dominant resolution, and it's the single strongest piece of motion in ton… foundations tier 1 →
5 The ii-V-I Progression The ii-V-I is the molecule jazz harmony is built from. Every chord walks its root down a perfect fifth into the next — the strongest bass motion in tonal music — while a pair of in… harmony tier 2 →
6 Cadences in Jazz A cadence is the harmonic punctuation mark of a phrase — the chord move that tells your ear "this is a comma" or "this is a period." Every style of tonal music leans on cadences to… harmony tier 2 →
7 Turnarounds A turnaround is a short chord progression, usually just two bars, that sits at the end of a section and turns the harmony back around to the top of the form. Instead of letting the… harmony tier 2 →
8 Secondary Dominants A secondary dominant is a Dominant Seventh Chord built on the fifth degree of a chord other than the tonic, borrowed for a bar or two to give that chord its own miniature "V7→I" pu… harmony tier 2 →
9 Tritone Substitution Tritone substitution swaps a Dominant Seventh Chord for another dominant seventh a tritone away, and the two chords sound almost interchangeable because they share the exact same G… harmony tier 2 →
10 The Minor ii-V-i The minor ii-V-i is what happens when you take jazz's most common cadence — The ii-V-I Progression — and run it through the darker gravity of a minor key. Every chord gets heavier:… harmony tier 2 →
11 Modal Interchange Modal interchange is the trick of reaching into the parallel minor — same root, different mode — and pulling out a chord that doesn't belong to your major key, then dropping it int… harmony tier 2 →

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