If you have a reasonable understanding of how chords work, and already know which chords are likely to be useful in a given key, you’ve got an advantage over songwriters who must rely solely on improvising to create progressions. If you want to have just a bit of chord theory to get you started, try […]
Want to know the best way to use chords as a starting point in your songwriting process? Read “Writing a Song From a Chord Progression.” Get it separately, or as part of “The Essential Secrets of Songwriting 10-eBook Bundle.” A circle of fifths progression is one in which adjacent chords have roots that are a […]
For any major or minor key, you can build a chord on top of each note of its scale. That gives you seven chords that naturally exist for every key. If you do that with C major, for example, you get the following chords: I: C ii: Dm iii: Em IV: F V: G vi: Am vii: […]
Take a look at the following two progressions. The first one comes from the verse of John Legend’s “All of Me” (John Stephens, Toby Gad), and the second one comes from the verse of “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road” (Elton John, Bernie Taupin): 1. All of Me: Fm Db Ab Eb 2. Goodbye Yellow Brick Road: […]
A verse-chorus chord progression pair refers to two progressions that move seamlessly one to the other, where one has those characteristics of a good verse progression and the other acts as a good chorus one. Before giving examples of these types of pairs, keep in mind that the easiest way is to create one progression that will […]
It might surprise you to know that most chord progressions, regardless of the genre of the song you’re looking at, are relatively short. Comparing verse to chorus, you’ll find that verse progressions tend to be a bit longer on average, involving more chords, but even so, progressions that use more than 6 or 7 chords are […]
