A II V Progression

This is a II V progression jam with Count Vlad on the guitar. If you are a guitarist, you'll see a lot of this progression in Latin songs. The Count is playing with people he didn't know, as what happens at blues jams. If you like the music, give it a thumbs up and subscribe.

Rather than a II V in the key of A, I would rather call it a V I in the key of E, since the B resolves to the E.

If it was a II V, the first chord, a B, would the II, and the second chord, the E, would be the V, making the I chord an A.

But since the progression never resolves to the A, I find it hard to think of the A being the I.

Another reason is that you can noodle around with E blues scale or E Mixolydian scale and it sounds right, whereas the A scales don’t sound right at all.

Or it could be a I IV with the Bm being the I chord, and the E being the IV.. this makes even more sense, since the Bm blues scale sounds wonderful over these chords.

Just like Oya Como Va by Santana - Am to D7 - which I would always consider to be in the key of Am, since it never resolved to G.

You are right that it could be a V I, however, in that case, the V chord is a minor chord, and it defies traditional harmony in a major key. You can have a minor as a V chord in a minor key, but in this case the minor is resolving to a major chord (E9) rather than a minor I (Em). Though there is the case of minor V resolving to a minor I and then the minor I become a major I (Picardy cadence).

There is a lot to play on top of this progression. I don’t mind notes in the key of A even though the A chord is never heard. That is what modes do — they shift the tonal center away from I chord. As well, you can play major and minor pentatonic in E, and some outside stuff like a diminished scale, Lydian Dominant mode etc. It’s kind of wide open.

Yeah, you’re right about Santana. That would be a I chord to a major IV chord in the key of A minor (Am — D). However, the IV is a minor chord in the minor Key. So technically it would be Am to Dm. And there are songs that have the IV chord as a minor. “Baby Please Don’t Go” is an example of having a minor IV chord. And minor blues also have a minor IV chord (The Thrill is Gone).

The song you linked and the Santana song are identical - except in different keys. The first chord of both songs, which I’m calling the I chord (B and A, respectively), is a minor chord in both songs, and the second chord of both songs (which I’m calling the IV chord (E and D, respectively), is a dominant major chord.

One could call the Santana tune any of the following and be technically correct:
- a I IV in the key of A
- a II V in the key of G (which never resolves to G),
- a V I in the key of D.

Same with the example you linked, except with everything shifted up a whole tone.

The fact that the chords in those progressions are typically major or minor does not determine which of the three progressions one chooses to name the chord sequence - that determination is usually made based on what key the song is considered to be in - which bass note is the fundamental to which the other notes resolve.

I have read some heated disagreements about what key a song is in - so it’s not an exact science - mileage can vary.

“The fact that the chords in those progressions are typically major or minor does not determine which of the three progressions one chooses to name the chord sequence”

Music is quite flexible and there are all kinds of notation and interpretations. I’m just talking about traditional western harmony.

— a V I in the key of D major would be A7 to D. There is no minor chord.

— a I IV in the key of A major would be A to D. Again, there is no minor chord.

The quality of the chord (whether major or minor) determines a lot of the way harmony and key is understood.

If you just want to talk about bass notes then, yes, it could be all three examples that you propose.

There is no minor chord in a progression until someone writes a song with a minor chord in that progression.

The only absolute requirement for a II V I is that there is a II a V and a I in that order.

Another thing that makes it impossible to set rules is that a 6251 is ascending fourths or descending fifths. A 2 is sometimes referred to as the 5 of the 5, and a 6 could be thought if we the 5 of the 2, etc..

I had a music instructor ask me how many 251s I could find in some jazz standard - probably Autumn Leaves. I came up with all I could identify - he came up with twice as many by including tritone and other substitutions, which were not strictly a 2 or a 5 or a 1, but were serving the same function.

The old saw that “rules were made to be broken” is as true in music as in anything.

I agree. But there are set rules that these chord progressions deviate from. For example, II is minor according to traditional principles. However, in jazz they will make that II into a dominant 7 so that it becomes a V chord. Then that V will resolve to usually a major chord, which is now the new I.

But there is the original configuration, and they get that by playing around with the major scale. They take the first note of the scale, skip the 2, get the 3, skip the 4 and take the 5th. Then you get the notes 1,3,5 from the scale which is a major triad.

Then they will use the same procedure of “take a note skip a note” starting on the 2 note of the major scale, and it creates a minor chord. So the chord based on the 2 note of the scale is minor.

They do that procedure to all the notes of the major scale. The ordering of chords created will be:

I will be major
II is minor
III is minor
IV is major
V is major
VI is minor
VII is diminished

You will also see II written as ii. That means it is minor. Three will be written as iii which means that it is minor too. As well, they will use this procedure “take a note, skip a note” on minor scales too and that creates a whole set of chords based on the minor scale.

This is the basic foundation from which music deviates from with different types of chord progressions. You can do anything you want with chord ordering, but you will be surprised how much music conforms to this ordering.

“Then they will use the same procedure of “take a note skip a note” starting on the 2 note of the major scale, and it creates a minor chord. So the chord based on the 2 note of the scale is minor.”

Right, you are talking about the “scale of chords” for the major scale. You can walk up the scale with triads. The scale you are using determines whether each triad will be major, minor, diminished, etc.. An Ionian scale will produce slightly different triads than a Mixolydian scale, for example.

The reason there are no “rules” for whether a II chord is major or minor, is that the scale might be a different mode of the major scale.. such as Lydian, which has a sharp 4, making the II chord a major.

To complicate things further, the scales are not limited to the 7 church modes of the major scale, or the modes derived from the melodic minor scale, such as the Altered scale or the Lydian Dominant scale. The scale could be Diminished, Whole Tone, or anything that “works” according to the composer or the listening audience.

Absolutely. Whatever works, works. And there is no shortage of scales to try out. It can get more crazy where you are not even basing notes on scale choices. You can have a nonmusical means to determine note choices, e.g., serialism. You can have randomness, chance, or accident determining note choices. The sky is the limit.

Whin I was puzzling out Stevie Wonder tunes, I worked out EXACTLY what he was doing, but I could make no sense of it - just that it sounded great.

Then I learned about tritone subs and figured maybe that was his basis. Then I decided maybe it was a random fistful of notes from one of the whole tone scales. Or maybe the top half of an Alt scale or the bottom half of a Lydian Dominant which are basically whole tones. To this day I go back and forth in the way I think of those notes. I wish I could ask him: “Hey Mr Wonder, at 1:09 of Don’t You Worry ‘bout a Thing, what exactly are you doing?”

Or, rather, “I know exactly what you did, but what was your thinking? How did you come up with that?”

It’s what I live about music - thanks for the conversation

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