Bird changes
The Blues for Alice changes, Bird changes, Bird Blues, or New York Blues changes, is a chord progression, often named after Charlie Parker, which is a variation of the twelve-bar blues.
The progression uses a series of sequential ii–V or secondary ii–V progressions, and has been used in pieces such as Parker's "Blues for Alice". Toots Thielemans's "Bluesette" and Parker's "Confirmation" also have similar progressions.Structure
A simple blues progression, in C, is as follows:
A typical blues progression in jazz, in C, is as follows:
The Bird Blues progression, in C, is as follows:
In roman numeral analysis, this is represented by
This can be viewed as a cycle of ii–V progressions leading to the IV chord, and the tritone substitution of the dominant chords leading by half-step to the V chord.
