4 less common chord progressions in pop and rock songs

this video is sponsored by the glary GDP 104 weighted keyboard I've made loads of videos now looking at really common chord progressions chord progressions that get used time and time again in loads of popular songs but today I want to look at some slightly less common chord progressions not necessarily complex chord progressions the four chord progressions we're going to look at today are actually all still diatonic they're all within the key they're not sort of fancy Jazzy chord progressions but for one reason or another they're less common than some of the other loops and chord progressions that we've looked at so far so let's begin with this chord progression which I call the She Loves You chord progression because it was used in the verse of She Loves You by The Beatles it's the chords one six three five which in the key of C major would be C A minor E minor and G major so this chord progression as I mentioned at the beginning is diatonic it's perfectly within the major scale nothing fancy going on but this combination of chords just happens to be less common and I think one of the things that makes it quite characterful and noticeable is the use of this three chord the third chord of the key for whatever reason is less commonly used in chord progressions out of the six main chords of the major key one two three four five and six the third chord just happens to turn up less often but that means that when we do use it it can give our chord progression an interesting and more noticeable character [Music] shut up [Music] [Applause] [Music] have to be shy [Music] girl for me [Music] that girl you found is what I do [Applause] [Music] the next chord progression I want to talk about is the chord progression one two six four in the key of C that would be C D Minor A minor and F and this is the chord progression used in the song Starlight by Muse for the verse and the chorus most of the song is based on the loop of this chord progression nothing particularly fancy going on here it's almost identical to the Axis of Awesome chord progression and the classic one five six four but the five here has been swapped out for a two chord [Music] foreign [Music] thank you [Music] thing this video was sponsored by glary keyboards the gallery GDP 104 is a full length 88 key weighted keyboard at a very competitive price that makes it a great option for beginners this keyboard comes with everything you need to get started including a stand a full set of pedals headphones and even some stickers for labeling the keys when you're first starting out the GDP 104 comes with over 100 sounds built in and can also be used as a midi controller via the USB port to find out more about the diary GDP 104 follow the link in the description thanks very much [Music] so the first two Corp questions we looked at in this video were in the major key the second tool we're going to look at are in the minor key and this next one is what I would call the Jolene chord progression the chord progression of one three seven one in the minor key which is the chords A minor c g a minor and this chord progression has a clear sense of beginning and end of cadence because we start in our home we go on a short Journey where we go up and down the scale and then we return to our home so we have a clear beginning middle and end [Music] Johnny Johnny [Music] [Music] thank you so the final chord progression that we're going to look at in this video is very similar to the Jolene chord progression that we looked at a minute ago it only differs by its last chord so once again it starts with the one chord and the minor key three chord in the minor key the seven chord in the minor key but this time rather than going back to where we started a one we go to the sixth chord in the minor key and this is a chord progression I would call the poly chord progression because it was used in the song poly by Nirvana in the key of A minor it would be a minor C G and F I only wants a cracker [Music] [Music] you better move [Music] now something that you might have noticed with the final two chord progressions that we talked about in this video is the way that they were written out in Roman numerals because they were both in the minor key there's actually more than one way to write a minor key chord progression out in Roman numerals the way I did it is I act as if we're still in the major scale effectively so although the chord progression was in a minor when I got to the c major chord I didn't just write three for the third chord in the minor key I wrote flat three because I'm relating it back to the a major scale in which we have a C sharp so if I want to talk about C natural I have to flatten the third same with the G major chord the seventh chord in the key I wrote flat seven because in the key of a major we'd usually have a G sharp so you have to flatten it to get to a g natural now the other way of talking about a minor key chord progression using Roman numerals is to just relate it back to the minor key rather than talking about the flat seven or the flat three we just say the seven or the three in a minor and then it sort of is just more elegant and natural because we don't have all of these flat sort of confusing things and that does make sense if the fact that we're in the minor key is already abundantly clear so when we're analyzing a song for example it will often be stated that this song is in a minor so at that point we can talk about the chord progression in terms of simply just one three seven and one but in the context of an actual song whether we're in the major key or the minor key or maybe even another tonality like mixolydia nordorium those things aren't always abundantly clear they're not always set in stone so if we're actually using Roman numerals to analyze a song maybe even to play a song off a chord chart then we don't need we don't want to confuse things by constantly having to reilliterate whether we're in a minor or a major or a mixed lydium so instead what we do is we just say we're in the key of A and then because the the Roman numerals are assuming we're in the a major scale we don't need to know what the tonality is we don't have to set that in stone we can just still play the entire song understand the entire song using the same set of Roman numerals if we had a song for example that moved from a major to a minor at one point which isn't uncommon it would get confusing if we had a three symbol whether that was referring to C sharp major or C natural major so that's why even if it looks less elegant and less simple it can make more sense in the long run to describe all chord progressions regardless of their tonality with reference to the major scale and then there's no ambiguity to what chord we're asking the player to perform foreign [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] thank you

Channel: David Bennett Piano

Views: 143,072

Keywords: chord progression, famous, songs, examples, music theory, mediant, roman numerals, minor key, major

Id: riKgcUYCma0

Length: 11min 46sec (706 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 28 2023