15 of the MOST Popular Chord Progressions on Piano

[Music] thanks for now everyone this is Jason Zack from Nathaniel School of Music so as the trend goes on YouTube all channels tend to talk about something on the popular set of chord progressions or at least the most famous popular chord progression of them all apparently the 1564 or any permutation of the 1564 so I thought I'll do a lesson as well covering not only the standard 1564 chord progressions but also a lot of others in fact to my knowledge there are 15 super popular chord progressions which you would have heard in a lot of songs so that's what we are going to do and that's what we are going to dive into and again I followed a few YouTubers trying to cover this topic and the first thing I learned is it's not that exhaustive I thought we'll do as many as we can and also everyone seemed to talk about it on the key of C and as some of you know who've subscribed to our Channel I'm not a huge fan of the C scale so or the C chord or the C anything so let's move on with some other chord why don't we take f for today's lesson so I'm going to take F the key of F and whether it's F major or F minor let's see but it's always good to try your work on other scales not just the the keys which you're familiar with especially music theory Concepts if you have to learn intervals or chord progressions or any Theory it's always easier for some reason on the keys like C but I think the reason is because C is advertised a lot more and I I was just kidding when I said I don't like C there's nothing wrong about any key it's just that I'm trying to encourage you at least on this channel to use things other than c to improve your chops and try to get a lot more efficient on this what you see is what you get kind of an instrument there are no patterns so if you you have to play a tricky chord you have to learn it and all chords All scale should be equally playable by you as you keep practicing so let's get cracking with what I consider as very popular chord progressions and I'm sure you do as well so the first one if we take the key of f would be one six four five so on the key of f we have the chords written down for you it's also available as a patreon download so do consider getting yourselves a copy so you have one two three four five six seven octave F major scale having one flat namely B flat F E D C B flat a g f okay so when you say one six four five that's going to be f D Minor B flat major C major so it's kind of an assortment of one five six four but this ordering is interesting so one six four five a nice way to play it is That Bouncy marching Rhythm [Music] um instead of the four you could also replace it with the the two minor which in this case is G minor they both serve the same predominant function okay F D Minor B flat c r f D minor G minus [Music] I hope I'm not singing a very famous song which you already know and ruining it or maybe this video also could get taken down who knows but anyway you see it's a very very popular progression we call it it's a very old school like 50s progression we also call it do up like [Music] you'll hear a lot of these songs in the old school music compositions okay moving on another great chord progression for ballads would be the one five and then and then which is G minor and then you could end on a four major or a six minor so that's one five foreign [Music] okay you could play the chords longer like what I did now or you can even change it every two counts every two beats or every minim beat so that'll be [Music] no no no no getting better now okay that's very Rock ballad pop ballad you'll find it a lot in the Glam Rock era of the 80s um another thing I like to do with this existing pop progression what everyone calls as deep progression to make hit songs but as you'll find out by this video and hopefully there are other ways to make hit songs too 15 other ways so if you do the traditional one five six four [Music] you can flip this around just imagine that all the chords in that one five six four are not in a line they are in a circle so it forms a cyclic progression in other words you can start anywhere you can do one five six four you can do five six four one you can do six four one five which is also super popular right six [Music] so six four one five one five six four we hear a lot but Mr Ed Sheeran has done something very interesting or either he did it or maybe a lot of people did it before him and you can let me know in the comments who did this progression before Ed Sheeran but at least I know him to have sort of popularized this one a lot so you flip it but you start from the four so you do the four of F major again we are in the key of f not C so don't get confused F G A B flat is a four so B flat and then the one and then five and the six so [Music] [Music] [Applause] you can see I'm getting a bit carried away there but anyway so that's flipping the pop style and you get yourself a four one five six progression okay another thing which is very common in jazz songs is the whole 251 Cadence so you could just make a song which is just two five one so you get what's a two five one of F G minor five is C and then you have your F1 so one way to play it is two five one and wait a little longer for the one maybe you could do it that way [Music] okay the other things you could do another chord after the one that's two five one six [Music] you could even do a six major which is quite interesting that's also called a secondary dominant so that'll be two five and one that's a six major which is a five of the two five there we have your Jazz major so all these progressions were more on the major scale now if we assume the key of f to be not major but minor or some some other Keys as we are going to find out soon we get a lot more interesting results and a lot of popular results as well so let's now move into the other scales let's leave the world of major and move into minor so the first one I have for you is again valid like but you make music on the minor key so we're on F let's first quickly revise our intervals of f f g major second a flat flat three B flat is normal for perfect four not a flat four it is a flat but not a flat four perfect four C is the perfect five d flat perfect six why am I saying perfect six minus six then you have E flat which is the minor seventh that's our natural minor for you okay so the progression goes one seven flat five minor because the 5 in a minor scale forms a minor chord at least in the natural minor scale in the harmonic minor it's five major so [Music] [Applause] F minor flat [Music] five seven flat major five minor six flat major we call it six flat major and it's a six flat with respect to F there we go let's do that again lot lot of minor ballots could be made like this [Music] foreign [Music] and try to make some more modern 2022 dance style music and a strangely or ironically a lot of dance music is on the minor scale it's not really on the major scale which is our standard textbook scale which we start off so if you take standard dance or EDM Style music you may find a progression like this foreign [Music] seven flat major back to your tonic one minor because we are on the minor key then you can go to your five minor or a I have a brave chord as well which a lot of these artists do there we go that's actually a three flat major with a different base so I'll tell you the chords that's d flat E flat F minor a flat over c d flat E flat F minus [Music] foreign foreign [Music] songs just follow this [Music] so that last chord is also an optional card you can do it sometimes you can even avoid it like [Music] to stay on the one minor for a bit longer but if you want some fun [Music] the braver suggestion to do the three flat major a flat with a c bass so that's an inversion of the three flat let's do that again foreign can even end the song on the one major and like have a nice uplifting ending so quite familiar right maybe we should call this like The Chainsmokers chord progression or something drop here and then okay so another chord progression I think is really popular because the band is really popular and no one speaks about this progression at least I haven't found a lot of videos on this progression which this great band Daft Punk uses and they've used it in so many of their songs so I call it the Daft Punk or the get lucky chord progression so if you take the key of f the progression is two minor four major then you do the six minor five major so you see how interesting it is you're never playing the one major you're playing two minor homage [Music] four six [Music] okay that's like your Daft Punk or get lucky chord progression right so another very commonly used chord progression very popular one would be this one I'll play it for you and then break it down [Music] you may have heard this song [Music] it's a jumble of the one five six four it goes something like six [Music] why one and five four major we're on the key of F major so six minus one major five major B flat or the four maybe we should call this like the Counting Stars progression or something no no no no no no no fans have used this okay another jumble like our Ed Sheeran Ed Sheeran didn't jumble it he cycled it so he started on the four but what the song Counting Stars has clearly done is they've just jumbled the one five six four so that's another very nice thing you can try and do right so the next chord progression I have for you is the rock chord progression and I call it the Dorian Rock progression because it's on the Dorian scale and it just sounds Rock right so if I play it for you on the key of f so first of all F Dorian it's a minor scale with a raised sixth or it's a major scale with a flat three and a flat seven so minor would have been that's aeolian or natural minor that's adorian okay so Dorian progression could now be [Music] right so let's build the Dorian Rock progression on the key of f it's one minor that's three flat major no no no no no that's your seven flat flat no no no that's your four major so that's a one uh three flat seven flat um okay four major if you have a doubt about Roman numerals I've done a video exclusively on Roman numerals we link it in the description check that out so it's a great progression for rock songs you must have already heard a lot of songs [Music] foreign [Music] let me know what you think okay Dorian Rock and then I've done an exhaustive series on this so I won't spend a lot of time it's what we call as the Andalusian Cadence it's a nice name actually so if you take it on the key of f you have your one minor seven flat major six flat major and then the five major so sort of combining between the harmonic minor and the natural minor borrows chords from both scales Hit the Road Jack ah and Illusions very popular very Flamenco as well [Music] Andalusian do check out our list of Andalusian Cadence based lessons we've put a playlist just for that okay I did talk about the Jazz major progression 251 you could also make it so easily into a jazz minor progression so that would be the two again but in the minor key the two will always be a half diminished chord so that will be a g foreign flat five going to see which is the dominant seventh and that results to the F minor which is the tonic minor so let me play it without talking [Music] that's 251 on the key of f it just demands you to sing something foreign [Music] flat nine that would also work also use this inside any existing song and kind of re-harmonize it as well that'll be fun okay that's the Jazz minor and the next chord progression I have for you is again in the Rock space we I call this more as the mixolydian cadence I've done a lot of other videos on the mixolydian scale you can look it up but the mixolydian assumes that it's a major scale with a flat seven so not not the normal seven it's the flat flat seven so the progression is nothing but seven flat four major and one major all the major chords of the mixolydian scale which is seven flat four major and One [Music] Sweet Home Alabama [Music] but also seeing the blues scale if you're composing a melody on this it kind of works [Music] that's your mixolydian Cadence okay so I'm pretty much I'm almost done with the lesson but there are just these three chord progressions which amaze me at in in the sense that they are so long and they've yet created so many Timeless Classics so I'd like to just end my series with three what I call is long chord progressions for want of a better word the first one needs absolutely no introduction it's called the 12 Bar Blues I've done a lot of Blues videos Theory and piano lessons so do check them out for further details so on the key of f you your Blues progression will be built out of the one the four the five the four pretty much the one the four and the five and all of those chords could be played as dominant seventh chords to give you that more bluesy Vibe and it follows and a 12 Bar structure because of the lyric writing because of the verse of the Blues songwriting model which is a a b so if you write a sentence like I'm torn down almost level with the ground you tend to repeat that again with the A and then you conclude at the B to say something like well I feel like this when my baby can't be found or some such thing so you go [Music] [Music] find a lot of songs use this progression without even calling it uh you know Blues but actually Michael Jackson's black or white pretty much uses this progression um you know a lot of popular songs actually use the blues progression and blues songs also use it and blues is arguably the most famous genre we have currently in music it's also evolved and inspired a lot a ton of genres which we have today so we have to definitely thank the blues for making us who we are as musicians so the the blues progression is an iconic 12 Bar phrase uh do check it out we've put the notes for you in our patreon you can find it there that's your one major four second time third time times time and then the four chord comes in for two bars then I repeat the one and then the five five four [Music] then you build riffs you build different Melodies and all of that around the structure great another great chord progression the second last one I have for you is what we call as the Canon chord progression or the Packer Bells Canon chord progression so it goes like this one and five six three four one two or four five [Music] no no no no and then there are some artists who I forget the name otherwise I may have named them who just take this progression take the tune which came from the past classical song no copyright issues and just happily use it and make a ton of money so that's for another another video I guess but anyway so the packable cannon chord progression you should learn the song Pachelbel Canon it's a great song then the Canon chord progression follows around the circle of fifths it's very easy it's a very cyclic chord progression and that's what it make that's what makes it last so long because it goes around the entire cycle okay guys so the last thing I'd like to cover is a chord progression which is super easy to form and you can build you can even arrange songs or rearrange songs using this technique it's where you kind of start with one chord be it major or minor and decide to go chromatically down or decide to go chromatically up or not even chromatically just go step wise up or step wise down you'll see what I mean so if you take the key of F minor no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no oh [Music] so what did I do there I'm I can even do this progression starting on just keeping one chord in the right hand let's say F minor [Music] you can even climb okay so this is a very deep concept it involves the use of what we call a secondary dominant chords I've done an entire series on secondary dominance where we've actually done this climb we go all the way up and all the way down so more on that in that lesson and more lessons will be coming up on chord progression so I just thought I'll roll this in it's what we call as a line cliche where you go down pretty much on the scale or off the scale also works and you just find a way to harmonize as your base goes as down as possible as you can see I'm just playing F minor in the right hand so that's another nice very popular way of composing long chord progression so let's just have a quick recap in this lesson we've looked at 15 or maybe more I'm not sure 15 very very popular chord progressions beyond the traditional 1564 we've looked at flipping it around jumbling the one five six four numbers I have to admit those chord degrees are very very gray very very pleasant sounding but you don't have to always use them that order so we've done a lot of progressions where we've interchanged the order then we've done a lot of minor progressions like the Andalusian Cadence the jazz251 and we've done a lot of rock progressions modal ones like Dorian mixolydian then long ones like the Timeless Blues progression the Canon and the line cliche descending movements right guys so hope you found the lesson useful if you did please consider giving the channel a subscribe hit the Bell icon for regular notifications and our notes on patreon would help you supplement this lesson and all the other lessons which have been done and will be done in the future along with the notes you'll also have MIDI files backing tracks notation wherever need be and so on if you'd like something more traditional and more structured you can always consider going to nathanielschool.com and considering a music method semester program which will give you a very structured way of learning this curriculum there are also our video courses where I have thoughtfully put these lessons in a in a Serial order for you to learn along with notes and a lot of other things right guys thanks a ton for watching this video till the very end me your support means a lot do leave us your thoughts in the comments what you thought about this lesson and if you'd like to if you'd like a particular topic which you'd like me to cover in a future video cheers this is Jason

Channel: Jason Zac - Nathaniel School of Music

Views: 44,484

Keywords: common chord progressions, popular chord progressions, chord progressions, most popular chords, music theory, major chords, minor chords, cadence, chords, most popular chords of all time, best chord progressions, blues chord progression, simple chord progression, amazing chord progressions, famous pop chord progressions, how to write chords, how to play piano, chord progression, piano chord progressions, how to write chord progressions, chord progressions piano, jason zac

Id: 4shverneiAw

Length: 34min 53sec (2093 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 23 2022