Step 3: To show how these formulae work in any key, let’s program a typical pop progression of minor and major chords, beginning with A major. Our root note is A, and we want to make a major chord, so ...

3. Pop-punk progression: I-V-VIM-V This is another chord progression that’s one of the most famous and influential in pop music history, from Iggy Pop to Green Day and The Gaslight Anthem.

A great way to get started writing a song is to use a well-known chord progression. Certain progressions have been used thousands of times throughout the history of recorded music, so there’s no ...

The more common way you see this progression is as Dm7-G7-Cmaj7—this sounds jazzier than the regular Dm-G-C because it uses better voice leading. This is a process where we make each of our ...

To celebrate the 30th anniversary issue of American Songwriter (Jan/Feb 2015), “Measure for Measure” served up a smorgasbord of 30 handpicked, solid gold chord progressions. T ...

One of the oldest chord progressions in pop is the 12-bar blues - a looping pattern of three chords that is very identifiable. As the name suggests, this set of chords stems from early blues and ...

You’ll find variations of this progression in pop, R&B and jazz. It usually is very hard to mistake a blues song for a country song, even when both are based on the same three-chord progression.

The first is relatively straightforward but not to be neglected: simply put, it’s a good pop song, combining decades of songwriting experience, a weaponized chord progression, inspired ...

The pop star strummed a four-chord progression from “Thinking Out Loud” in a Manhattan courtroom, seeking to separate his work from Marvin Gaye’s “Let’s Get It On.” ...