Related ii chords

In past units we have talked about down a fifth harmonic progressions and secondary dominants. The topic of related ii chords combines these concepts.

Secondary Dominant analysis

The example below shows a progression built on a down a 5th harmonic progression; the roots descend from A through D and G to C.

This progression ends with the most common down a 5th progression in jazz — the ii-V-I (D-G-C) — in the last three chords.

Most of the chords in this progression are diatonic to the key (see analysis below). The only non-diatonic chord is the A7 in m. 2. This dominant 7th chord should be analyzed as a secondary dominant, a V7/ii, since it resolves to the ii chord whose root is a 5th below. The whole progression is analyzed below.

The above is a very typical progression in both Western Art Music and jazz.

Related ii

Since this V7/ii – ii progression acts like a V – i in the key of D minor, we can extend this down a 5th progression backwards by adding a ii before the V (in its implied key of D minor). Therefore, an Em7(b5) – a iiø7 in the key of D minor – can be added before the A7 chord, creating a iiø7-V-i progression in the key of D minor.

This added ii7 chord before the secondary dominant is called the related ii.

Related ii chord: a ii(7) chord that occurs before a secondary dominant and is in the key being tonicized. The inclusion of this chord creates a (ii-V)/x progression.

We could analyze this progression very unconventionally as a ii/ii – V7/ii – ii as shown below.

A better analysis is shown below. This analysis shows the ii7-V relationship (in parentheses to show these chords go together) with an arrow to point to the chord that it resolved to.

Example – Misty

Let’s look an example of a related ii in a piece of music.

Below is the opening A section of the jazz standard “Misty,” written in 1954 by Erroll Garner. (This section is also discussed in the section of this manual on Mixture.)

What we can already analyze is shown in the example below. The chords in the purple and blue boxes are not diatonic to either Eb major or minor.

The chords in the blue boxes form a down a 5th progression and are analyzed below in the key of Eb.

A much more traditional roman numeral analysis of the down a 5th progression is shown in the example below. In this example, the chords are analyzed as a series of secondary dominants (some altered).

Now, let’s focus on the chords in the purple box.

These two chords are a ii7-V7 progression in the key of Ab (the IV in the key of Eb). Thus the ii7 here is a related ii.

Other examples of related ii chords are found in the lessons that follow.