But Not for Me Chord Progression & Harmonic Analysis

Chord progression

Analyzed excerpt

Section: A1 · Bars 1–5

Ebmaj7 | Cm7 | Fm7 | Bb7 | Ebmaj7

This is a short excerpt, not the full chart. The composition dates from 1930 and is old enough that it is very likely in the public domain in the United States, which is why the excerpt runs longer here — but copyright status varies by territory and by edition, so treat that as context, not as legal advice.

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

Eb major

Tonal center

Eb

Confidence

High

Chords analysed

5

Chord	Roman numeral	Function	What it is doing	Confidence
Ebmaj7	I	Tonic	Ebmaj7 is the tonic of Eb. It is where the progression is at rest.	High
Cm7	vi	Tonic	Cm7 is the vi chord — the relative minor. It shares three notes with the tonic and often replaces it.	High
Fm7	ii	Predominant	Fm7 is the ii chord of Eb: the classic predominant. It prepares the dominant and almost always moves to it.	High
Bb7	V7	Dominant	Bb7 is the dominant of Eb. Its third and seventh form a tritone, and that tritone is what makes the tonic feel due.	High
Ebmaj7	I	Tonic	Ebmaj7 is the tonic of Eb. It is where the progression is at rest.	High

What the analyzer found in it

I - vi - ii - VEbmaj7 - Cm7 - Fm7 - Bb7

A I-vi-ii-V turnaround: the four-chord loop that sends a section back to its beginning.

ii - V7 - IFm7 - Bb7 - Ebmaj7

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

V - IBb7 - Ebmaj7

The progression closes with an authentic cadence in Eb.

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 Eb major the excerpt reads I – vi – ii – V7. Inside those 5 chords there is a complete ii-V-I and a turnaround. Play it slowly with only two voices — the third and seventh of each chord. In Bb7 those are D and Ab, 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, All The Things You Are and Tune Up, in other keys and at other tempos.

How the rest of But Not for Me goes

A thirty-two-bar song whose harmony is almost entirely ii-V pairs, one after another, resolving in expected places — which makes it the plainest of the Gershwin standards and the most useful for practice. The lyric is bitter and the music is not, a mismatch the composer used deliberately. For a student it is the tune to bring after Tune Up: the same cadence vocabulary, but distributed across a real song form with phrase lengths that do not line up neatly with the harmony.

But Not for Me on record

From Girl Crazy, 1930 — the third standard to come out of that one show. Chet Baker’s vocal version is the one most often cited, and Ahmad Jamal recorded a trio arrangement that reworks the rhythm substantially. It is called at sessions constantly, partly because it is in a comfortable key for horns and partly because everyone knows 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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But Not for Me — 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 But Not for Me goes

But Not for Me on record

Analyze this progression

Related

ii-V-I

Autumn Leaves

All The Things You Are

Tune Up

Jazz chord progressions