All The Things You Are Chord Progression & Harmonic Analysis

Chord progression

Analyzed excerpt

Section: A1 · Bars 1–4

Fm7 | Bbm7 | Eb7 | Abmaj7

This is a short excerpt quoted for analysis, not the full chart, and this composition is very likely still in copyright. Published versions and recordings disagree with each other about the rest of the tune, and often about these bars too.

The books behind this page

Every one of these tunes is assembled out of the same handful of harmonic resources. Jazz Harmony is those resources, explained in the order in which they build on each other.

Start here Project 03 · Harmony

Harmonic analysis

Key

Ab major

Tonal center

Ab

Confidence

High

Chords analysed

4

Chord	Roman numeral	Function	What it is doing	Confidence
Fm7	vi	Tonic	Fm7 is the vi chord — the relative minor. It shares three notes with the tonic and often replaces it.	High
Bbm7	ii	Predominant	Bbm7 is the ii chord of Ab: the classic predominant. It prepares the dominant and almost always moves to it.	High
Eb7	V7	Dominant	Eb7 is the dominant of Ab. Its third and seventh form a tritone, and that tritone is what makes the tonic feel due.	High
Abmaj7	I	Tonic	Abmaj7 is the tonic of Ab. It is where the progression is at rest.	High

What the analyzer found in it

ii - V7 - IBbm7 - Eb7 - Abmaj7

A complete ii-V-I in Ab. Predominant, dominant, tonic: the sentence jazz harmony is built out of.

V - IEb7 - Abmaj7

The progression closes with an authentic cadence in Ab.

High, medium and low next to each numeral are judgements about musical context, not probabilities. A low rating marks a bar that can honestly be read more than one way. How the ratings are decided →

Why this example matters

In Ab major the excerpt reads vi – ii – V7 – I. Inside those 4 chords there is a complete ii-V-I. Play it slowly with only two voices — the third and seventh of each chord. In Eb7 those are G and Db, and watching where that pair goes next tells you more about the progression than the root movement does. The same device turns up in Autumn Leaves, Tune Up and Solar, in other keys and at other tempos.

How the rest of All The Things You Are goes

The excerpt is the opening cycle, and what makes the tune famous is that it never stops doing that. Each eight-bar unit lands in a key a major third below the one before, prepared the same way every time, so the piece walks from A♭ through C and E♭ to G without a single abrupt modulation. The bridge goes furthest: it arrives on E major, about as far from A♭ as the circle allows, and gets there by the same ii-V it has used all along. The last A comes home through a chromatic descent that most published editions harmonise differently, which is why two players who both “know the tune” can disagree in the final four bars.

All The Things You Are on record

Kern wrote it for the 1939 musical Very Warm for May, with a lyric by Oscar Hammerstein II; the show closed quickly and the song outlived it by decades. Bebop adopted it early — Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie recorded it in 1945 with an introduction that became attached to the tune the way the Somethin’ Else intro attached itself to Autumn Leaves. Keith Jarrett’s Standards Trio returned to it repeatedly from the 1980s on, and those readings are the ones that established the very slow, rubato treatment that is now a second way to play it.

Analyze this progression

Take these bars into the analyzer and interfere with them. The fastest way to learn what a chord was doing is to remove it and read what the analysis says instead.

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All The Things You Are — Chord Progression & Harmonic Analysis

Chord progression

The books behind this page

Jazz Harmony

Harmonic Narrative

Jazz Guitar Comping

Harmonic analysis

What the analyzer found in it

Why this example matters

How the rest of All The Things You Are goes

All The Things You Are on record

Analyze this progression

Related

ii-V-I

Autumn Leaves

Tune Up

Solar

Jazz chord progressions