You're a great googler, Jack.

Actually, though, "Giant Steps" uses the circle fifths, as well as the "Carlos Santana secret chord progression, and another composer trick, used in SBrown, which you can call "Jump to the 5th", simply stated, is:

to change key, jump to the 5th in the new key you want to move to(this can be *any* chord, as long as it is dominant 7th).

To clarify:

If you are in C and want to be in D, jump from C to A7, (which is the 5th, or dominant 7th chord in the key of D), then resolve to the D chord, and there you are!



If you are in C and want to be in Eb for some reason, you just jump to Bb7 and resolve.

If you are Ben Bernie and Maceo Pinkard, and want to write a catchy song that doesn't just bounce around in the key of G, you jump out to E7, which is the dominant in the key of A, resolve to A7, which is the dominant in the key of D, resolve to D7, which is the dominant in the key of G, and then you've moved in through the circle of 4ths, back to your home key.

Now, a few words on the "Carlos Santana Secret Chord Progression". Instead of moving from, say, D7 to G7, then to C, you play Dm7 to G7. The "Santana" part is that you just repeat it over and over and never go to the C at all.

The "secret" is that any time you've got, say, one measure that is four counts of G7, you can play /Dm7 G7/. Josepp mentioned this above, and called the "Carlos Santana SCP" something like a "Two-Five" progression. If you're still here, Big Al, we'll give you three guesses as to why that is;)

Anyway, John Coltrane didn't want to play "Sweet Georgia Brown" all his life, so he developed a related, but new chord progression:

Giant Steps

||:B D7/G Bb7/Eb Eb/ A-7 D7/

G Bb7/ Eb F#7/ B B/ F-7 Bb7/

Eb Eb/ A-7 D7/ G G/ C#-7 F#7/

B B/ F-7 Bb7/ Eb Eb/ C#-7 F#7:||

Frightening to look at, until you realize that

he is really just jumping around and changing keys.


He starts on a B, then jumps to the D7, which is the fifth(dominant) in the key of G, and resolves to G.

Then he jumps to Bb which is the 5th (dominant) in Eb, and resolves to Eb.

Then he jumps to F#7, 5th(dominant) in B, and resolves to B.

Then, to add some color, he does a "Carlos", jumping to F-7 and Bb7 instead of just Bb7, and resolves to Eb.

Do I need to explain the A-7 and D7 that resolve to G? I WON'T! This is already way too long of a post!

As to whether we need to know this for the music we deal with, I know for a fact that GfS, Big Al Whittle, and josepp, and, to a degree,Don, all play music that uses these ideas.

For most of us, though trad/folk music is important, it's not the only music we hear or play.