"Countdown" is an instrumental hard bop standard written by John Coltrane, who is its sole composer. It first appeared on Giant Steps, his fifth studio album, released by Atlantic in February 1960. The track was recorded on May 4, 1959, at Atlantic Studios in New York, produced by Nesuhi Ertegün, and runs 2:25. The piece is a contrafact of Miles Davis's "Tune Up", reharmonized to the Coltrane changes. Its 16-bar form consists of four 4-bar sections, each built on a different tonal centre (D major, C major and B-flat major), starting on its ii chord and cycling through dominant 7th chords. Some charts end on an E-flat7(#11) in place of the A7 in the last bar. One reviewer said that its resolute intensity did more to modernize jazz in 141 seconds than many artists do in their careers. Notable later recordings include those by Benny Green (1989), Brad Mehldau (1995), Allan Holdsworth (1996), Kenny Garrett (1996), Steve Kuhn (1998) and Joey Alexander (2016).
