Cole Porter You Do Something To Me

Working With Cole Porter You Do Something To Me

People tend to overcomplicate this song. It came out in 1934 for the musical The Hot Mikado, and the chord progression is more interesting than most people realize. The melody is straightforward enough that anyone with intermediate piano skills can pick it up in a couple of hours, but the real challenge is getting the harmony right without sounding stiff or overdone. I work with this tune fairly regularly for recording sessions and gig arrangements. The key for the original version is B-flat major, though I usually transpose it down to A major or even G major depending on the vocalist. The bridge moves through some unexpected areas—specifically that F-sharp diminished to B minor turnaround that catches most musicians off guard the first few times they sight-read it. Here is what actually happens when you try to play it straight from the fake book.

Cole Porter You Do Something To Me Arrangement Guide

The form is AABA, 32 bars total, in 4/4 time. Each section is eight bars. The A sections are built around a descending chromatic line in the bass that goes from the tonic down to the dominant. The standard chord changes for the A section are: Bm7b5 E7alt | Am7 D7alt | Gm7 C7alt | Fm7 B7alt. That B section jumps to the relative minor and has a deceptive cadence on bar seven that resolves back to the final A. The ending can go a few ways depending on whether you are playing solo, in a combo, or leading a vocal group. One thing nobody mentions about this song is the pickup measure. It starts with an anacrusis that many fake books notate incorrectly. The original chart shows a single quarter-note pickup into the first downbeat, but if you play it as written in most Lead Sheet collections, it sounds rushed because the band expects you to enter on the one. Count it as an upbeat into bar one, not as a separate measure. I learned that the hard way during a session where the producer kept cutting us and we could not figure out why the tempo felt wrong. Once we stopped counting the pickup as a full bar, everything aligned. For improvisation over the A section, the E7alt and D7alt chords are your main opportunities. Players often default to standard blues scales here, which works but sounds generic. The altered sound—specifically the b9 and #9 on those dominant chords—fits the mood of the song much better. Try targeting the #11 on E7 and the b13 on D7. It gives the line more forward motion and connects better to the next chord change.

The bridge requires a different approach. The chord movement is slower, mostly ii-V patterns moving through F#m7b5 B7alt and then Dm7 G7alt before landing back on Em7. Most pianists comp here with drop-2 voicings, which is fine, but single-note lines tend to work better because the melody already carries so much harmonic information. Keep the comping sparse or skip it entirely for the first four bars of the bridge, then bring it back. The arrangement loses steam when every instrument is playing at full density during that section. If you are looking for a lead sheet, the Real Book version is accurate enough for most situations, but it flattens the original harmony by simplifying some of the extended chords. For performance purposes, the Musicnotes transcription or a Schirmer edition will give you closer-to-original voicings. I prefer the Schirmer version because it includes the alternate endings and the optional tag that some arrangers use for live shows. One limitation to be aware of: this song does not translate well to fast tempos. It was written at approximately 140 beats per minute in the original recording, but pushing it past 160 makes the bridge feel cramped and the melody lines start to lose their shape. Slow tempos work, but anything below 100 makes the tune drag unless you add rhythmic variation through syncopation in the comping pattern. The sweet spot is somewhere between 120 and 140.

Another edge case that comes up in live settings is the vocal range. The melody sits comfortably in a tenor or mezzo-soprano range in the original key, but it jumps a ninth in the final chorus. If your singer cannot hit that high note cleanly, transposing down a half step or whole step solves it without changing the harmonic character. I have also seen players try to raise the key to make it brighter, but that pushes the low end of the melody into a register where it becomes indistinct, especially on acoustic piano without amplification. For a recording project, I usually lay down a basic rhythm track first, then overdub a piano or guitar part with reharmonized comping on the second and third choruses. The standard reharmonization here is to replace the Bm7b5 E7alt with a G7alt moving to C7alt, creating a cycle of dominants that adds tension before the bridge. It is a subtle change that most listeners will not consciously identify, but it keeps the arrangement from sounding like a cover version of itself after the first chorus. The song falls into the standard American songbook repertoire alongside tunes like I Get It For You and Well You Needn't, which share similar harmonic language. Porter was known for using chromatic mediants and secondary dominants in ways that sounded conventional at the time but are genuinely sophisticated by modern analysis. Understanding that context helps when you are deciding how strictly to follow the written changes versus reharmonizing for your own interpretation.