As Time Goes By Piano Chords

The chord progression nobody really breaks down the way they should

As Time Goes By Piano Chords sit on a I-vi-ii-V turnaround framework that looks deceptively simple until you actually try to voice it in a way that doesn't sound like a pop song from 2019. The original key for Paul Whitney's arrangement is C major, which means the basic skeleton reads C - Am7 - Dm7 - G7, cycling through those four harmonies at roughly a ballad tempo. Jerome Kern didn't write it — Cole Porter did, famously to lyrics by Otto Harbach — and the tune has been so covered that the harmonic language got diluted across decades of simplification. The first four bars are straightforward quartet harmony. You play a C major triad or Cmaj7 in the right hand while the left hand anchors the root. Then it moves to A minor seven, then D minor seven over G7 dominant. The trick most people miss is what happens in bar five. The melody lands on the three of the A minor chord and the harmony briefly tonicizes the relative minor before sliding back through the circle-of-fifths movement. If you just play block chords on every beat, it sounds stiff and wrong. You need to imply the movement. I spent about three weeks last year trying to get a gigging pianist to play this in a lounge setting where the audience actually listens. The problem was that everyone defaults to straight triads in the left hand. The result sounded muddy because the bass notes doubled the melody an octave lower and the upper structure had nothing to say. My workaround was simple but not obvious: play the bass in open position with the root on beats one and three and the fifth on beats two and four, then voice the right hand as close-position sevenths with the third in the bass. That freed up the middle register and the chord changes actually breathed.

The bridge section is where people lose the plot. It modulates temporarily to F major through a secondary dominant path. You get B7 resolving to Em7, then A7 going to Dm7 before pivoting back. Many pianists just play Em7-A7-Dm7-G7 and call it the bridge, but that robs the phrase of its forward momentum. The B7 is essential. It's a V7 of vi, and it needs to be audible — not buried under a thick voicing or played as a plain Em triad. I use a B7alt voicing with the b9 and natural 13 in the right hand, left hand playing B and F#. It creates that tension against the melody note Gwithout sounding aggressive. Here are the actual chord symbols for a standard lead-sheet approach in the original key: Bar 1-2: Cmaj7 | Am7
Bar 3-4: Dm7 | G7
Bar 5-6: Em7 | A7
Bar 7-8: Dm7 | G7
Bridge: B7 | Em7 | A7 | Dm7
Return: G7 | Cmaj7 | Am7 | Dm7-G7

The turnaround at the end usually extends the G7 into a G7b9 or G7alt before resolving back to Cmaj7, especially if the singer wants to hold the final phrase longer. That's where your choice of alteration matters. A plain G7 works fine for a recording. A G7b9 gives you more color for live performance because it signals clearly that we're going home. The b9 (Ab) against the G root creates that classic jazz sound without being heavy-handed. One counter-intuitive thing about this tune: playing it slower than you think helps. The tempo marking is roughly 66-72 BPM, and rushing it even slightly makes the harmonic rhythm feel pointless because the chords change so deliberately. But here's the catch — if you're comping behind a vocalist, you should leave space between chord changes. Don't strum or arpeggiate through every beat. A single well-placed chord on the downbeat and silence for the rest of the measure lets the melody carry the harmonic implication. I learned this the hard way when a singer told me I was competing with her on a cover of this at a wedding rehearsal. She was right. I had been playing dense voicings through the entire first verse while she was trying to find her place in the phrase. If you're transposing for a tenor singer, D major is comfortable. For a female vocalist, E or F works better depending on range. The chord shapes shift proportionally — the real harmony stays identical. The issue with transposition isn't the keys themselves, it's that many piano players lock into one finger pattern and can't adjust voicings for the new key. In E major, for example, the Am7 becomes Bm7 and the G7 becomes A7, and suddenly your comfortable C-major voicings don't map cleanly onto the keyboard anymore. Spend ten minutes running through the bridge in different keys before you commit to one for a gig.

The main limitation of the standard lead-sheet version is that it doesn't capture the full harmonic richness of the original 1931 recording or the 1942 Casablanca version. Those recordings use additional passing chords and inner-voice movements that a four-chord cycle can't represent. If you want to play it with more authenticity, you need to study the melodic line and work out the implied harmonies rather than relying on simplified charts that circulate online. Most free versions you'll find are watered down for beginners and strip out the ii-V motion that makes the progression work in the first place. A practical alternative if you're self-teaching: learn the melody first by ear, then figure out what chord each melody note belongs to. This takes longer upfront but produces results that actually sound like the tune rather than a generic jazz standard approximation. The reward is knowing the harmony from the inside out instead of memorizing a chart that might not match what you're hearing in your head.