Progressions
The major ii–V–I, in every key
Jazz resolves in threes: a chord that leans, a chord that pulls, a chord that lands. This page holds the most common shape of that motion — the major ii–V–I — voiced the way compers actually play it, with a band to loop it in any key you pick.
Three chords that resolve
In C major, the ii–V–I is Dm7, G7, Cmaj7 — the chords built on the second, fifth, and first degrees of the scale. Each one has a job. The ii chord leans forward; it is stable enough to sit on, restless enough that your ear wants more. The V chord pulls — a dominant seventh is the most unstable chord in the key, and everything in it points home. The I chord lands. Tension made, tension sharpened, tension spent.
That little engine drives more jazz than any other device. Whole sections of standards are nothing but ii–V–Is visiting neighbouring keys, and even a jazz blues grows one in bars nine and ten — which is why players drill this one progression before any tune: learn it in one key and you have learned a sentence; learn it in twelve and you can read.
The voicings, voice-led
Here is the progression on the top four strings, one drop-2 voicing per chord — not the three textbook grips, but the three inversions that happen to sit nearest each other. All three live inside a single four-fret window:
Watch what moves between the cards — and what refuses to. From Dm7 to G7, the F and the D hold their frets while the outer voices step down. From G7 to Cmaj7, the B and the G hold. No voice ever travels more than two semitones, and each chord's seventh falls a half step onto the next chord's third — the falling resolution that makes the progression sound inevitable rather than assembled. That pair of moving notes, the third and seventh of each chord, are the guide tones; the craft of letting each voice take its shortest path is voice leading, and this page is that idea put to work.
Every sound on this page is the Drop2 app's own sampled guitar, bass, and drums — from the MuseScore General sound library, used under the MIT license.
Loop it with the band
Reading about resolution is one thing; feeling it come around every three bars is another. The loop below is the app's Play-Along band — walking bass quarter notes on the root, third, and fifth with a chromatic step into each new chord, and a swung ride pattern — with the three voicings above comped on top:
Listen for the bass approaching each chord from a half step below; that lean-in is what makes the changes feel walked into rather than switched. In the app this same band plays while the guitar part stays silent — comping it, in time, is your job.
Take it around the keys
A ii–V–I you can only play in C is a phrase you have memorized, not one you own. Pick any key above: the chord names re-spell the way the key demands, the cards re-finger to the nearest window, and the band follows. The circle-of-fifths order of the selector is a practice route in itself — each step to the right moves the whole progression up a fifth, changing one note of the scale at a time.
A workable routine: loop C until the changes feel walked, not counted. Then G, then D — or jump to F and work flatward. In every key, say the chord names as they pass, and watch which two frets hold at each change. The window moves; the logic never does.
Where Drop2 comes in
The Drop2 app is built around exactly this vocabulary. Learn shows all four inversions of every seventh chord on all three string sets — the full map this page's three shapes come from — and Train calls out voicings and checks by ear, through the microphone, that you found them. Play-Along, part of Premium, is the band above with the guitar chair empty: it loops the ii–V–I (and longer forms) in any key while you comp, and it hears whether you played the right notes in time.
Free to start, no time limit · Works with acoustic and electric guitar
Next: The jazz blues, in every key →