How To Play A 2 - 5 - 1 Chord Sequence  

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James here… if this is your first time on eBassGuitar.Com, I want to say a massive hello and welcome you to the tribe! We’re here to help rookie through to intermediate bass players make progress faster than they ever thought possible. We do this by breaking complex ideas down into simple, bite size ideas.  

In this lesson we cover one of the most important chord sequences you will find in music… period. It’s particularly prevalent in jazz music, but as you will discover you’ll also see it regularly in pop, funk, soul etc. 

Here we are going to cover how it’s constructed and give you some real world examples to explore.  The Roman Numeral Chord System  

The II - V - I (or 2 - 5 - 1) is derived from the major scale. We can build a chord from each degree of the scale. These chords are often referred to in roman numeral format. You may also hear this concept called the Nashville Number System. 

Here is the C major scale with its respective roman numerals:  

  

We can then create our chords or arpeggios by stacking every other note (or 3rds) on top of each other. It’s typical to stack 4 notes to begin with. 

   

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 Chord II - Dm7  When you stack every other note of the second degree of the scale we get the notes D - F - A - C . This creates a Dm7 (or D minor 7) chord or arpeggio. 

  

Chord V - G7 When we stack off the fifth degree of the scale we get the notes G - B - D - F . This creates a G7 chord or arpeggio. This is sometimes called dominant chord or dominant 7th 

 

 Chord I - Cmaj7  When we stack off the first degree of the scale we get the notes C - E - G - B . This creates a Cmaj7 chord or arpeggio.  

 We have now created the following chord sequence: 

|| Dm7  | G7  | Cmaj7  || 

You will ALWAYS get a minor 7 chord, followed by a dominant 7th chord and ending on a Major 7 chord. It also creates some quite distinctive shapes on the neck too. 

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It’s worth noting you will also hear the term 9th, 11th, 13th too. This is where you take the 2nd, 4th, 6th respectively above the octave.  

 

Sunday Morning - Maroon 5 In the video that goes with this lesson I reference the pop song ‘Sunday Morning’ by Maroon 5. With the exception of the bridge this uses a II-V-I chord sequence all the way through but in the key of Bb. All we need to do is transpose the chord sequence we have created above down a tone: 

|| Cm7  F7 | Bbmaj7  ||  

Try playing along with the original song! 

 Perdido Here is a copy of the chord chart to the well known Jazz Standard ‘Perdido’. You can clearly see the II - V - I chord sequence happening in the A & C sections. 

 

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Further listening Here are some further jazz standards you can research. I advise jumping on Spotify and going on your own musical journey! This is literally the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the II-V-I chord sequence. 

● Autumn Leaves ● Tunes Up ● All The Things You Are ● Blue Bossa ● Giant Steps ● Solar 

 

 

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