Any idea what’s going on with this progression of A Link to the Past?

[Manolito Mystiq]

I transcribed all of A Link to the Past note for note exact, and am a very analytical thinker, wanting to understand everything that I touch. However, I don’t understand how this progression works. I know it does work. I know that sometimes progressions can’t really be analyzed vertically, but are delayed movements of tension and resolving. With that way of thinking, I do have some ideas of how it can work, but I’d still like your thoughts.

It’s about this part of The Dark World


Horizontally thinking, the ‘A’ in bar 4 is a delayed resolution of the third chord of the previous bar, which makes the ‘Bb’ a suspension of the Adim7 chord. The ‘F’ in the third bar then is nothing more than a neighbor of the ‘Eb’.

In that sense, the 4th chord is really Fm7 or Fm13 (if you add the ‘D’) with this delayed ‘A’.

Also, bar 3-4 is a pseudo-sequence of bar 1-2, which is another reason why it works.

Bar 5, 6, and 7 are chromatically downward progressions. Bar 6, 7, and 8 are completely understandable, but bar 5 is a bit odd. A bII of the bII of D7 would sound okay, but maybe you’ve other ideas?

Sincerely,

Mano