Night and Day Chord Progression & Harmonic Analysis

Chord progression

Analyzed excerpt

Section: A1 · Bars 1–4

Abmaj7 | G7 | Cmaj7 | Cmaj7

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.

See all the books

Start here Project 03 · Harmony

Play Night and Day in JamShed

The whole form, not just these bars: JamShed’s trio — double bass, drums and piano — plays it with you at the tempo and in the key you choose. Loop the bars that trip you up, mute the instrument you play, share the link.

▶ Open in JamShed

Harmonic analysis

Key

C major

Tonal center

C

Confidence

High

Chords analysed

4

Chord	Roman numeral	Function	What it is doing	Confidence
Abmaj7	bVI	Modal interchange	Abmaj7 is bVI, borrowed from the parallel minor. It is the most common modal interchange chord in the repertoire after minor iv.	Medium
G7	V7	Dominant	G7 is the dominant of C. Its third and seventh form a tritone, and that tritone is what makes the tonic feel due.	High
Cmaj7	I	Tonic	Cmaj7 is the tonic of C. It is where the progression is at rest.	High
Cmaj7	I	Tonic	Cmaj7 is the tonic of C. It is where the progression is at rest.	High

What the analyzer found in it

modal interchangeAbmaj7

Modal interchange: Abmaj7 come from the parallel mode of C, not from the key itself.

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 →

The complete analysis of Night and Day — every chord of the whole form, with its Roman numeral and its ii–V–Is marked on the chart — is in JamShed with the Practice Pass, ready to print. Open it in JamShed →

Why this example matters

Against a tonic of C major the passage numbers as bVI – V7 – I. Inside those 4 chords there is a chord borrowed from the parallel mode. Strip it to two notes per chord, the third and the seventh, and play it under tempo. G7 gives you B and F; follow that pair from chord to chord and the voice leading becomes audible in a way the root motion never makes it. Once you can hear it here, it is hard to miss in Blues for Alice, All Blues and So What.

How the rest of Night and Day goes

Longer than the standard song form, and organised around one gesture: the borrowed A♭ major seventh falling a half step to the dominant. Each A section then descends chromatically from F♯ half-diminished through F minor and E minor to E♭ diminished before the ii–V home. The last section moves the borrowed colour up, to E♭ major seventh, a chord from the parallel minor held for two bars at a time.

Night and Day on record

Cole Porter wrote it for Gay Divorce (1932), where Fred Astaire introduced it, and it stayed in the film version two years later. Frank Sinatra recorded it several times across his career; Bill Evans’s trio version on Everybody Digs Bill Evans (1958) is the one most jazz players learn the harmony from.

Analyze this progression

Load the progression and start altering it. Every edit is re-read from scratch, so you can test a hunch about one chord without rewriting the rest.

Open in Jazz Harmony Analyzer →

Night and Day — Chord Progression & Harmonic Analysis

Chord progression

The books behind this page

Jazz Harmony

The Jazz Guitar Shortcut

Harmonic Narrative

The Jazz Roadmap Lite

Play Night and Day in JamShed

Harmonic analysis

What the analyzer found in it

Why this example matters

How the rest of Night and Day goes

Night and Day on record

Analyze this progression

Related

Modal interchange

Blues for Alice

All Blues

So What

Jazz chord progressions