Mixing Major and Minor Chords to Create Powerful Song Progressions

Here are 5 chord progressions that successfully blend major and minor chords and strengthen the relationship between verse and chorus.

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All songwriters know that most song progressions contain a mixture of major and minor chords, all working together in such a way that they point to one important chord as the tonic. The tonic chord is the one that represents the key of your song.

In that sense, a song is like a musical journey a traveler might take: no matter where the journey takes you, all roads (most of the time, anyway) lead back to home.

It’s the fact that most progressions are a mixture of major and minor that I want to focus on in this post. Once you begin to study pop songs from the past several decades, you’ll notice something of a pattern emerging: in quite a few major-key songs, verses are a bit more likely to use more minor chords than choruses are:

There’s a good reason for that. The chorus, which represents the most recognizable, easily remembered and easily sung part of the song, usually sits strongly in the song’s key. The verse, by comparison, will often engage in a more interesting musical journey, setting up the chorus as being a musical target.

But it’s more than that. The reason minor chords often work so well in a song verse is that they offer a nice sense of contrast to the chorus. And some of the most successful songs are ones that most expertly integrate that sense of contrast.

As you work out the chords for your song, simply deciding to stick close to minor-sounding progressions for a verse may not necessarily give you the progressions that are going to work.

So the following is a list of 5 progressions, all of which feature a verse progression that uses a good number of minor chords, and then switching to choruses that feature mainly major chords. (Key: C Major).

The verse progression continues up until the double line, followed by a suggested chorus progression. Each verse progression, as the diagram above demonstrates, will start to reorient itself toward major as it gets close to the chorus.

They’ll work in almost any style, tempo and/or time signature. Also, experiment with how long you hold each chord. Most of them will work fine holding each chord for 2 or 4 beats.

1. Am  Bb  F  G  Am  Bb  Dm  G || C  F  Dm  G  C  F  Am  G
2. Am  Em  Am  G  Am  Dm  Em  G  ||C  G  C  G/B  Am  F  C  G
3. Am  F  Am  Em  Am  F  Am  G  ||C  Am  F  G  F  C  F  G
4. Am  G  Am  Dm  Am  Em  F  F  ||C  Bb  F  G  C  Bb  F  G
5. Am  Dm  Esus4  E  Am  Dm  Gsus4  G ||C  F  Gsus4  G  Am  F  Gsus4  G

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Written by Gary Ewer. Follow on Twitter.

“The Essential Secrets of Songwriting” 10-eBook Bundle looks at songwriting from every angle, and has been used by thousands of songwriters. Polish your songwriting technique and write the songs you’ve always wanted to write.  (And today you’ll receive a FREE copy of “Creative Chord Progressions“)