In music

Music

Music is an art form whose medium is sound and silence. Its common elements are pitch , rhythm , dynamics, and the sonic qualities of timbre and texture...

 and jazz harmony

Jazz harmony

Jazz harmony is the theory and practice of how chords are used in jazz music. Jazz bears certain similarities to other practices in the tradition of Western harmony, such as many chord progressions, and the incorporation of the major and minor scales as a basis for chordal construction, but...

, the Stomp progression is an eight-bar chord progression

Chord progression

A chord progression is a series of musical chords, or chord changes that "aims for a definite goal" of establishing a tonality founded on a key, root or tonic chord. In other words, the succession of root relationships...

 named for its use in the "stomp" section of the composition "King Porter Stomp

King Porter Stomp

"King Porter Stomp" is a swing-era jazz standard by Jelly Roll Morton. The composition is considered to be important in the development of jazz....

" (1923) by Jelly Roll Morton

Jelly Roll Morton

Ferdinand Joseph LaMothe , known professionally as Jelly Roll Morton, was an American ragtime and early jazz pianist, bandleader and composer....

, later arranged by Fletcher Henderson

Fletcher Henderson

James Fletcher Hamilton Henderson, Jr. was an American pianist, bandleader, arranger and composer, important in the development of big band jazz and swing music. His was one of the most prolific black orchestras and his influence was vast...

. It was one of the most popular tunes of the swing era

Swing Era

The Swing era was the period of time when big band swing music was the most popular music in the United States. Though the music had been around since the late 1920s and early 1930s, being played by black bands led by such artists as Duke Ellington, Jimmie Lunceford, Benny Moten, Ella Fitzgerald,...

, and the Stomp progression was often used.

The progression is based on the last section of the piece, bars

Bar (music)

In musical notation, a bar is a segment of time defined by a given number of beats of a given duration. Typically, a piece consists of several bars of the same length, and in modern musical notation the number of beats in each bar is specified at the beginning of the score by the top number of a...

 57-64 in the original sheet music for piano or the original lead sheet, where the chords for the last 10 bars of the piece are:

G / G°7 / | D7/A / D7 / | G / G°7 / | D7/A / D7 / | G7 / G°7 / | D7/A A°7 Bm7 D/A | G7 / G°7 / | D Bm A°7 D/A | E7/G G6 D/F A7/E | D9 / / / ||

In pieces where the progression is repeated, this becomes something like:

ǁ: G7 G°7 | D7/A D7 | G7 G°7 | D7/A D7 | G7 G°7 | D7/A B7 | E7 | A7 D7 :ǁ

which is, ignoring the temporary tonic shift to G, and treating the key as that of the piece, D:

ǁ: IV⁷ #iv⁷ | I⁷/5 I⁷ | IV⁷ #iv°⁷ | I⁷/5 I⁷ | IV⁷ #iv°⁷ | I⁷/5 VI⁷ | II⁷ | V⁷ I⁷ :ǁ

Many bands and composers have used the Stomp chord progression to write new compositions, writing new head

Head (music)

In its broadest sense, the head of a piece of music is its main theme, particularly in jazz, where the term takes on a more specific set of connotations. In other types of music, "head" may refer to the first or most prominent section of a song...

 tunes or melodies

Melody

A melody , also tune, voice, or line, is a linear succession of musical tones which is perceived as a single entity...

, but using the chord changes to, as Morton phrased it, "make great tunes of themselves".