The idea
You have the chords now. This lesson is about what they are for.
The source course states the problem you already diagnosed in your own writing: most harmony teaching treats chords "as static objects to be identified and cataloged rather than as events in a system of motion," which it compares to "studying a language by memorizing nouns." A chord on its own means nothing. "Dm7 in isolation is nothing," but put it in front of G7 and "it acquires direction."
Roman numerals are how you write that direction down. Function is the name for what each numeral does. And the twelve-bar blues is the smallest complete piece of music that uses all three functions in order, which is why it is the form you learn in every key before you learn anything else.
Watch
The Blues Progression (Greg Spero, Weekly Piano)
- Twelve chords, one per bar, taught in F, framed historically: "this very important progression that dates back to when jazz was being originally formed" [00:16].
- The voicing rule while you are learning it: root in the left hand, 3 and 7 in the right. "Those are the two very important chord tones to define what the quality of that chord is" [01:28].
- The assignment before anything else: the simple form in all twelve keys, moving up by half steps [02:25].
- Then the complex ending at [03:20], which he describes as "a six two five one and then the two five and then another two five one." At [03:58] he points out that the last four chords go twice as fast, with the one on the downbeat and the six, which in F is D7, on the upbeat.
Three Secrets to Hearing Chord Changes
- [02:11] The framing: "there are two disparate elements that need to come together into a center... in this context it's your technicality here and your hearing here and you need both of them to come to the center." You have the second one ahead of the first.
- [02:55] Between the F7 landscape and the B♭7 landscape exactly one note changes, A to A♭, because A♭ is the 3 of the one and the ♭7 of the other. At [03:21] the same note over C7 is the 13, "an upper extension that doesn't really pull in one direction or another it's just a color." At [03:46] he separates chord tone, directional extension, and pure color as three different things.
- [07:55] The tempo doctrine: "you want to go as fast as possible but not faster than possible." Then at [08:22]: "if you repeat it at the edge of your technical limit the edge moves a little bit more and a little bit more."
- The benchmark, which is your target for this lesson: the blues in all the keys at the tempo he just played, "which is 120" [08:43].
Chord progressions with 7th chords
- Progressions that are not ii-V-I, all transposable and re-colorable [00:27]. The first keeps the melody on the major 7 of every chord while the roots move C, E♭, D♭, C [01:38].
- Reharmonizing under a held note [02:19]. Keep the top note, change what is under it, and the same pitch becomes the 7, then the 3, then the ♯11. This is the single most useful compositional device in the video.
- I to minor iv as a tonality shift [03:09], and the D triad over C that produces the ♯11 [03:47].
Left Hand Comping (jazz 2-5-1 progression) and Left Hand Comping
- Both are demonstrations with no spoken instruction. Watch the hand, not for information. His stated rule elsewhere is that a left-hand voicing should be compact and crunchy and should never sit in root position, and each voice moves to its nearest neighbor.
Left Hand Comping
- the general left-hand comping demonstration that the blues form sits on top of
At the piano
Roman numerals. Upper case is major, lower case is minor, a small circle is diminished. Build a seventh chord on every degree and you get, in major:
| Degree | I | ii | iii | IV | V | vi | vii |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Quality | maj7 | min7 | min7 | maj7 | dom7 | min7 | half dim |
| Function | tonic | predominant | tonic | predominant | dominant | tonic | dominant |
In natural minor the same procedure gives i, ii°, ♭III, iv, v, ♭VI, ♭VII. The v is minor, which is why minor keys usually borrow a major V from harmonic minor when they want a real cadence.
The three functions. Tonic is rest. Predominant is the approach. Dominant is tension that has to go somewhere. Almost every progression in tonal music is some path through tonic, predominant, dominant, tonic, and once you hear it that way you stop memorizing progressions and start recognizing them. The ii-V-I is that path in its shortest form.
The twelve-bar blues in F, bare bones, the version to learn first:
| F7 | F7 | F7 | F7 |
| B♭7 | B♭7 | F7 | F7 |
| C7 | B♭7 | F7 | C7 |
Bars 9 to 11 are the V-IV-I turnaround Greg names. The last bar is C7 so the form loops.
The jazz version adds a quick IV in bar 2, a ii-V in bars 9 and 10, and Greg's fast turnaround at the end:
| F7 | B♭7 | F7 | Cm7 F7 |
| B♭7 | B♭7 | F7 | D7 |
| Gm7 | C7 | F7 D7 | Gm7 C7 |
Bar 11 carries the double-time turnaround: the I on the downbeat, then D7 on the upbeat, and bar 12's ii-V pushes back into bar 1. D7 is a dominant, not the minor vi, because it is the secondary dominant that pulls into the Gm7.
Function in rock is a different animal. Biamonte's study of the classic-rock canon names three patterns that will not fit the table above: the double-plagal ♭VII-IV-I, the Aeolian ♭VI-♭VII-I, and pentatonic collections whose members are each doubled into triads. These foreground the flat-side triads ♭III, ♭VI, and ♭VII against a major or minor tonic. Her own caveat is the important half: those chords have no leading tone and no cadential drive, so function there is contextual and statistical rather than the voice-leading obligation it is in Bach. The word survives, the mechanism does not. When you write in that idiom, the chord order is doing the work that a leading tone does in a cadence.
Exercises
1. Number everything
Do. Take four progressions you already play, from Cloud Speak or from anything else, and write each one out in Roman numerals with the function of every chord labeled underneath.
Done when: Four progressions are fully numbered, and you can say which of them never leave tonic function.
2. The blues, all twelve keys
Do. Play the bare-bones form in F, root in the left hand, 3 and 7 in the right, in time, no stopping. Then up by half steps through all twelve keys. Metronome from 60, moving up only when a key is clean.
Done when: All twelve keys are clean at 120 bpm, which is the tempo Greg names at [08:43] as the point where you are solid enough for a jam session.
3. The complex ending
Do. Add the I-vi-ii-V-I turnaround with the vi on the upbeat, then the extra ii-V, in six keys.
Done when: The turnaround holds time at the doubled harmonic rhythm in six keys.
4. Scales through the changes
Do. Exercise 1 from the ear-training video. Play the scale of each chord as it goes by, changing at the bar lines, left hand comping underneath, metronome running. Record one take and listen back specifically for feel. Greg's warning at [05:57]: "notice when your feel sucks because it does for a lot of us a lot of the time."
Done when: Twelve bars clean at 120 with no scramble at any change, and you can name where the feel slipped on playback.
5. The three-and-seven exercise
Do. Play only the 3 and the 7 of each chord as it passes, no other notes, with rhythmic continuity and a question-and-answer shape. Left hand walks a bass line to the metronome. Then transfer it to "Autumn Leaves."
Done when: You can hold it through a full chorus of a tune with faster changes than a blues without losing your place.
6. The octave exercise
Do. Only after Exercise 5. Improvise strictly between the 5 and the 5, which for F means between C and C, changing the scale on every chord. Greg's reason for the order at [11:29]: "you'll need the the harmonic landscape change is already kind of ingrained."
Done when: A full chorus stays inside the octave and every chord change is audible in the line.
7. Reharmonize under a held note
Do. Hold one melody note. Find three different chords under it that make it the 7, then the 3, then the ♯11. Do it on four different held notes in four keys.
Done when: A listener hears the ground shift while the top note never moves.
8. Write a head
Do. Write a twelve-bar blues head, eight to sixteen bars of melody over the form, in any key but F. The melody must land on a chord tone of the arriving chord at bars 5, 9, and 11. At least one phrase must hold a single note across two different chords, as in Exercise 7. The whole thing must be playable by you at 100 bpm with your left hand comping shells. Notate it by hand before you enter it anywhere.
Done when: The head is written by hand, played at 100 bpm with shells, and recorded.
Checkpoint
- Any chord in any key numbered and its function named, on sight.
- Twelve-bar blues, all twelve keys, shell voicings, clean at 120 bpm.
- The fast turnaround in six keys.
- Three-and-seven exercise held through a full chorus of a standard.
- One twelve-bar head written by hand and played.
Read
- Source course, Lesson 11, Exercises 1 and 2. Exercise 1 is the ii-V-I in C followed immediately by a ii-V-I in F, and the point is what happens in your ear at the pivot when C stops being home and becomes the dominant of F. Exercise 2 is the blues with the harmonic rhythm deliberately doubled, then deliberately halved. Both are twenty minutes each and both are worth more than another hour of drilling voicings.
- Biamonte (2010), pages defining the double-plagal and Aeolian progressions and the triad-doubled collections. This is the reference you will come back to any time a rock progression refuses to make sense as a numeral chain.