I Got Rhythm — Free Lead Sheet PDF (Eb, Bb, Concert) + Rhythm Changes Explained

Music by George Gershwin · Published 1930 · From the musical Girl Crazy · Melody & chords only

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About I Got Rhythm

Gershwin’s Girl Crazy Showstopper

I Got Rhythm was composed by George Gershwin, with lyrics by his brother Ira, for the 1930 Broadway musical Girl Crazy. The show opened at the Alvin Theatre on 14 October 1930 and made an overnight star of Ethel Merman, who introduced the song in her Broadway debut and reportedly stopped the show cold on opening night. According to Broadway legend, George Gershwin was so struck by Merman’s voice that he told her never to take a singing lesson. Girl Crazy was a hit score all round — it also gave the world “Embraceable You” and “But Not for Me” — but it is I Got Rhythm that went on to have the biggest afterlife, becoming a jazz standard within months of the show’s opening.

What makes I Got Rhythm so important to jazz has less to do with its melody than with its chords. The tune’s 32-bar AABA harmonic skeleton is simple, sturdy and endlessly adaptable, and it became the second most widely used chord progression in jazz after the 12-bar blues. Musicians nicknamed it “rhythm changes,” and from the 1930s onward composers wrote new melodies on top of Gershwin’s chords — partly as a compositional exercise, and partly as a way for a bandleader to put a new, original tune of their own on the bandstand.

I Got Rhythm remains one of the most useful tunes a jazz musician can learn — the chart on this page offers the melody and chords, no lyrics. If you are also studying Have You Met Miss Jones or other tunes with cycling bridges, it is well worth comparing how differently Gershwin’s generation and the later bebop composers treated a common harmonic skeleton.

What Are Rhythm Changes?

The Second Most Important Form in Jazz

“Rhythm changes” is jazz shorthand for the chord progression of I Got Rhythm, stripped of its melody and lyrics and treated as a reusable harmonic template. After the 12-bar blues, it is the most common form you will meet on a bandstand or at a jam session, and a huge share of the swing and bebop repertoire is built on it. The form is a 32-bar AABA song form — four 8-bar sections, with the first, second and fourth (the “A” sections) sharing the same harmony and the third (the “B” section, or bridge) providing contrast.

Each A section is powered by a simple, endlessly repeatable engine: a I-vi-ii-V progression, usually played twice per 8 bars. In the most common key of Bb, that is Bb6-Gm7-Cm7-F7, twice, followed by a brief move to the IV chord (Eb) in bars 5-6 with its own ii-V, before a turnaround takes you back to the top.

The bridge is where rhythm changes really shows its character: a circle-of-fifths cycle of four dominant seventh chords, each lasting two beats, moving briskly through III7-VI7-II7-V7. In Bb that means D7-G7-C7-F7 — four dominants stepping down by fifths, building tension that resolves as the form returns to the final A section.

There is no single, definitive rhythm changes progression — think of it more like the blues, a family of closely related variations sharing the same skeleton. Different tunes and different eras stack different substitutions on top of these bones, but that I-vi-ii-V engine in the A sections and the III7-VI7-II7-V7 dominant cycle in the bridge are the two ideas worth internalising above everything else.

Rhythm changes became especially important during the bebop era of the 1940s, when players such as Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie used it constantly as a vehicle for new compositions and for jam-session workouts, cementing it — alongside the blues — as one of the two forms every jazz musician is expected to know cold, in multiple keys.

Common Substitutions & Contrafacts

Dressing Up the Basic Changes

Once the basic I-vi-ii-V skeleton feels comfortable, most players start adding the substitutions that give rhythm changes its distinctive bebop flavour. A few of the most common:

Turning static bars into a ii-V. The plain move to IV in bars 5-6 of the A section is often reharmonised into a ii-V of IV (in Bb, that’s Fm7 to Bb7 resolving to Eb), giving the line somewhere to go rather than sitting on one chord for two bars.

Adding a bVII7 passing chord. A quick Ab7 (bVII7 in Bb) is frequently slipped in on the way back to the tonic, adding a bluesy, chromatic pull into the final cadence of the A section.

Tritone substitution in the bridge. Any of the four dominants in the bridge cycle (D7-G7-C7-F7) can be replaced with the dominant a tritone away (Ab7 for D7, Db7 for G7, and so on), which keeps the same essential motion by half-step voice leading while sounding more modern.

Replacing I with iii. Substituting a iii chord (Dm7 in Bb) for the tonic at the end of the first A section is a common way to add harmonic variety between repeated A sections without changing the overall shape of the form.

These substitutions, and dozens more like them, are exactly the toolkit that bebop composers used to write brand-new melodies over Gershwin’s chords — creating what musicians call contrafacts. Charlie Parker alone wrote several rhythm changes contrafacts, including Anthropology (co-written with Dizzy Gillespie), Dexterity and Moose the Mooche. Duke Ellington’s Cotton Tail, Thelonious Monk’s Rhythm-a-ning, Lester Young’s Lester Leaps In and Sonny Rollins’s Oleo are among the best-known rhythm changes contrafacts, and even pop culture has one: the theme to The Flintstones is built on the same changes.

If you are also working through Oleo on this site, comparing Sonny Rollins’s angular melody against Gershwin’s original tune over the identical chords is one of the clearest ways to see how much a contrafact can transform the character of a familiar progression.

How to Learn Rhythm Changes

A Practical Approach for Saxophonists

1. Learn the melody and internalise the AABA form. Before worrying about improvising, make sure you can sing Gershwin’s melody and feel exactly where you are in the 32-bar form at all times — including the small but important difference between the ending of the first A section and the second. Losing your place in the form is the single most common mistake players make on rhythm changes tunes, especially at a fast jam-session tempo.

2. Drill the A-section engine in every practical key. Practise the I-vi-ii-V progression on its own, slowly, in every register of the horn. Rhythm changes tunes and jam sessions turn up in several keys beyond Bb — particularly Eb, F and C — so it is worth building genuine fluency in more than one key rather than only the original.

3. Master the bridge cycle on its own. The four-chord dominant cycle of the bridge moves faster than most players expect at speed, and it is where solos most often come unstuck. Loop just the bridge changes until moving between the four dominants feels automatic before you try to connect it to the A sections.

4. Add the common substitutions. Once the basic changes are secure, start layering in the bebop-era substitutions covered above — the ii-V of IV, the bVII7 passing chord, tritone subs in the bridge. Adding these gradually, one at a time, keeps you from getting lost while still building a more sophisticated vocabulary.

5. Build tempo gradually, with a metronome. Rhythm changes tunes are traditionally played fast — jam-session versions are frequently taken well above 200 BPM — but there is no shortcut to that speed. Loop the form with a metronome at a slow, comfortable tempo, and only increase the speed once the form feels genuinely relaxed rather than rushed.

6. Study the contrafacts. Once you are comfortable with Gershwin’s own tune, transcribe or play along with classic rhythm changes contrafacts such as Anthropology, Oleo, Cotton Tail and Rhythm-a-ning. Each composer phrases across the same chords very differently, and absorbing several approaches is one of the fastest ways to build your own vocabulary on the form.

If you would like one-to-one guidance working through rhythm changes or building a wider jazz vocabulary, saxophone lessons in person in South East London or online are available, with a focus on jazz harmony, transcription study and technique. The free saxophone transcriptions on this site are also useful for hearing how great players navigate this and other forms.

Essential Recordings

Where to Start Listening

Start with the tune itself before moving on to the contrafacts. Ella Fitzgerald’s reading of I Got Rhythm is a benchmark vocal-jazz version, and Coleman Hawkins and Don Byas both recorded fluent, swinging instrumental takes on the original changes that are well worth studying for pure harmonic navigation at speed.

The Jo Jones Trio’s 1959 session for Everest Records is a lesser-known gem worth seeking out: drummer Jo Jones, with Ray Bryant on piano and Tommy Bryant on bass, cut two takes of I Got Rhythm back to back — Part I at a relaxed, unhurried tempo and Part II considerably faster — making the pair a genuinely useful study in how the same changes sit at two very different speeds.

From there, the contrafacts are where rhythm changes really comes alive. Charlie Parker’s Anthropology and Dexterity are essential listening for anyone learning to solo on the form, showcasing the melodic vocabulary bebop built on top of Gershwin’s chords. Duke Ellington’s Cotton Tail, with a famous solo by tenor saxophonist Ben Webster, is one of the most exciting big-band treatments of the form. Thelonious Monk’s Rhythm-a-ning rearranges the harmonic material in his own idiosyncratic way, and is a fascinating study in how flexible the form really is.

For saxophonists specifically, Sonny Rollins’s Oleo is a rite of passage — a lean, angular melody over the changes that has become a standard test piece in its own right, and is available as a free Oleo lead sheet on this site. That same recording also features one of the most studied tenor solos in jazz education — we've broken down John Coltrane’s solo on Oleo in a free saxophone transcription, with practice tips for working through it. Lester Young’s Lester Leaps In and Sonny Stitt’s The Eternal Triangle (recorded with Rollins) are also well worth transcribing for their very different takes on phrasing across the same harmonic ground.

If you are working through the broader Great American Songbook repertoire, browse the online real book index for related tunes, all available as free lead sheet PDFs in Concert, Bb and Eb.