You’ve heard it before!
Chances are it’s another song with the same chord progression. There are certain progressions that have been used over and over again in popular music.
What is a chord progression?
A chord progression is the sequence that chords are played in. Sometimes pop songs will use only one chord progression that repeats for the entire song. This can be as simple as three or four chords. The chords to many of the most popular songs of all time are no more complex than the examples in the Common Chord Progressions course.
Throughout the history of Pop music, a number of especially popular and common chord progressions have appeared, and even if you might not have realised it yet, you probably know dozens of songs that use the same sequence of chords.
This playlist looks at one of the most commonly used chord progressions in pop music. The 1-5-6-4 or I-V-vi-IV. This forms the basis of hundreds of pop songs… this is just the tip of the iceberg
Grab your keys and play along!
There’s a lot of fun to be had playing along with these tracks as you listen. If you have a keyboard instrument with more than 24 keys. Here’s a step-by-step on how to do it:
- Click the ‘Play this lesson’ button to open the lesson up in the Melodics app.
- Play through the steps & pass the lesson (or play through the final step to warm up if you’ve passed it before.)
- Go back to the Pre-play screen of the lesson (the one where the samples are laid out on your pad controller).
- Come back to this page, start up the playlist (click the Spotify logo in the top right to open it in the Spotify app), and vibe with some classics in various keys.