6 common chord progressions and why they work

this video is sponsored by babble a few weeks ago i did a video looking at seven particularly common chord progressions chord progressions that turn up in literally hundreds of different songs but there was by no means an exhaustive list there's certainly more than seven of these super common chord progressions so today we're going to look at six more chord progressions that turn up in songs from all different styles and all different areas of music starting with this one [Music] the minor one chord the flat three the flat seven and the four this is a chord progression that i would refer to as the wonder chord progression because it was used in the first section of wonderball by oasis but it goes by another name which is the plague cascade that's a name that i believe was coined by 12 tone which is another music theory youtube channel the reason it's called the plagal cascade is because it's making repeated use of what's called the plagal cadence now the plagal cadence is the resolution from the fourth chord of the key to the one chord the tonic chord four one in the playable cascade the chord progression that we're talking about that wonderball chord progression once we get past the first chord the f minor in this example every chord is then resolving by that interval of a descending perfect fourth of the four to one playable cadence so we get the f minor then a flat moves to e flat that's four one e flat moves down the perfect fourth to b flat and b flat moves down a perfect fourth to f minor taking us back to the beginning of the loop so we get in the chain that satisfying sound of the four to one relationship the four to one resolution [Music] [Music] faces [Music] [Music] this next progression is what i refer to as the can't stop or the white hot chili peppers chord progression [Music] so we have the minor one chord flat seven the minor version of the v chord and the flat six you can probably already hear the red hot chili peppers coming through here this is a very smooth sound it's perfectly within what we call the aeolian mode or the natural minor scale which kind of to me has a cool sound slightly moody but not as directional as the harmonic minor would be [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] either way i [Music] between us [Music] do you want to [Music] before we take a look at the next chord progression i'd like to take a moment to tell you about today's sponsor which is babel babel is an interactive app that helps you learn a new language one of my favorite things to do in the entire world is go travelling and in the last couple of years of course that's been near impossible but soon i will be going abroad for the first time in a long time and something i always try to do when i go abroad is speak a bit of the local language because you know it just feels a little bit arrogant to to just bombard people with english so um what i've been doing recently is using babble to develop my ability to speak some basic spanish so what's interesting about babble is it's not just vocab that it throws at you what we have here is a little sort of real world challenge where i'm sort of deciphering a um email about my flight that's in spanish and i have to sort of work out some information from it so right now i have to work out when the flight leaves and i'm pretty sure that it doesn't leave at 12. there we are the lessons in babble are designed by real world language teachers and babble even includes speech recognition to help you improve your pronunciation and accent babble comes with a 20 day money back guarantee and if you use the link below you'll get 65 percent of your subscription the next chord progression is 1 5 2 four it's sort of similar to what's called the axis chord progression the chord progression we talked about last time which goes one five six four the only change here is that we've changed six into two but from a functional standpoint that's actually quite a big change what we've got going on here is one chord which is our tonic our point of rest the five chord which is the dominant chord a point of tension somewhere we don't want to necessarily stay we've got to move somewhere and we we move to the two chord then the two chord has what's called subdominant function so it still has some tension but not as much tension as the v chord did as the dominant chord so we can't necessarily stay here but we can hang around for a while what's interesting though is the next chord in the chord progression the iv chord also has subdominant function they're kind of like different versions of the same chord they share all but one note so really this chord progression is going tonic which is our resolution dominant subdominant another subdominant and then we resolve and what's nice is we get that sense of climbing between the two and the four chord when the mood isn't changing the sense of tension isn't changing it's still subdominant but we're getting that climb from the second degree to the fourth degree so we've got almost that exciting sense of ascending somewhere [Music] yes [Music] the one who makes me scream she said [Music] so just a moment ago i mentioned the axis chord progression the chord progression that goes one five six four used in tons of different songs we talked about it quite a lot last time we also last time talked about a variation on that chord progression where it's the same chord progression but you start instead on the sixth chord of the key what we're going to talk about now is the same chord progression again but this time starting on the fourth chord of the key [Music] this is also a really common chord progression these combinations of chords regardless of which one you start on just work really well what's different with this one of course though is we're starting on a point of tension we're starting on the subdominant chord the fourth chord of the key which kind of gives this a sense of momentum we we need to go somewhere even from the very first chord so we start here on the four chord then we resolve nicely onto the one chord but we don't want to stay resolved because then it would be boring so we move to the fifth chord of the key the dominant which is a point of tension and then we move to the sixth chord of the key which is also considered a tonic a resolved um sound so we're getting a bit of tension resolution a lot of tension resolution and that can just loop round as long as you need it to [Music] together together [Music] well i've got this is [Music] [Music] for the first time [Music] is [Music] this is [Music] in this [Music] the next chord progression is one four six five [Music] now what you may notice is this chord progression uses the same four scale degrees as the axis of awesome chord progression the one we were just talking about the one that we're always talking about but it changes the order around so whereas in actors of awesome we have one five six four here the four and the five chord are swapped around so we go from the one chord to the four chord six five and the effect that has is it changes the movement of tension and relief we talked about before how the fifth chord of the key is the most tense it's the dominant chord the one that has to resolve somewhere else and because this is now at the end of the chord progression it means that the whole chord progression sort of moves from the ground up this slope of energy we don't get a sort of a roller coaster figure we get more of a climb and it results in us getting a cadence that we don't often see in regular pop music nowadays which is the perfect cadence moving from five to one which is the classic way to resolve the key but a lot of popular chord progression nowadays avoid that cadence because it sounds almost too complete it sounds a bit too well-rounded they'll often go instead for the paragle cadence the slightly weaker cadence the four to one which is what we get in the axis of awesome chord progression but what that means is this chord progression kind of captures a slightly sort of brighter major scale energy in my opinion [Music] [Applause] [Music] one man keep your eyes on me [Music] [Music] now the last chord progression that we're going to look at today is arguably the most famous chord progression in the world and one that a lot of people noticed that i didn't include in the first video it's the 12 bar blues but the 12-hour blues is really interesting because although it's super common and super well known it's actually quite unusual when you compare it to other typical chord progressions first of all it's a 12 bar loop most loops most phrase lengths in western music are divisible into 4 8 or 16 not 12. so that's already a bit odd another odd feature is that the one chord in the score progression the tonic chord so if we're in the key of a would often have the dominant seven on it which is something that you just wouldn't get in other western music particularly classical music so without being such a common chord progression it's actually kind of weird but anyway as i said it's a 12 bar structure it has a few different variations most of the variety comes in the final four bars so we'll talk about that but generally speaking what we get is four bars of the one chord [Music] then we go to the four chord [Applause] and you often put a dominant seventh on this chord as well then we go back to the one chord then typically we'll go to the five chord then probably down to the four chord again and then back to one [Music] now as i said that last four bars often have a bit of a variety to them you might not go to the four chord for example you might stay on the fifth chord for two bars or you might have a turn around at the end which is when you add the fifth chord again for the very last bar to sort of help us get back round to the top again but as you'll see from the different examples each different variety ultimately leads to the same effect that classic blues sound where it's acceptable to have a dominant seven on pretty much any chord you like [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] way back up in the woods among the evergreen [Music] cause i don't care too much for money morning love [Music] and i ain't seen the sun shine since i don't know when i'm stuck in folks in prison and time keeps dragging but that's rain keeps rolling on down the stairs i wanna love you so bad come on [Applause] oh go ahead [Music] oh [Music] [Music] it don't matter if you're black or white [Music] [Applause] i was cold as a stone but still well i don't know why i came here tonight i got a feeling of something right i'm so scared in kids to fall off my chair and i'm wondering how i get down the stairs the clowns to the left of me choke us to the right here i am [Music] you're crying you ain't never gonna ever [Music] and a big thank you as always goes to everybody who supports me on patreon including an extra special thanks going to these wonderful people do [Music] you

Channel: David Bennett Piano

Views: 483,041

Keywords: chord progression, music theory, explained, examples, 12 bar blues, plagal cascade, wonderwall, i v ii iv, songs that use

Id: v3YbEL-_eoI

Length: 23min 27sec (1407 seconds)

Published: Mon May 09 2022

Reddit Comments

[u/Cedricedo30]

It literally specifies each song in the bottom left corner.

[u/paranoid6741]

I'll be honest with you. You're not getting serious answers because most people here can't sort it out.

I wish you were more specific on which section sounds like this but I'm guessing you mean the start of the chorus. I don't know how to play Disaster of Passion but from quickly listening to it I think a simplified song structure would be this.

Key: G#

Intro (https://youtu.be/7ZtepNkPzcM?t=2):

|I |I |V |V IV |I |IV | I

Intro Bridge to Verse (https://youtu.be/7ZtepNkPzcM?t=21):

|V |IV |iii repeat three times into I

Verse (https://youtu.be/7ZtepNkPzcM?t=27):

|I |iii |VI |VIb V |I

Verse Bridge: (https://youtu.be/7ZtepNkPzcM?t=37)

|IV |iii |ii repeat three times into I or chorus bridge below

Chorus Bridge: (https://youtu.be/7ZtepNkPzcM?t=64)

|IV |V |IV |iii | I

Chorus: (https://youtu.be/7ZtepNkPzcM?t=68)

|VI |ii |IV |IV repeat twice (I think this is where you hear the similarity)

|V |IV | iii+| ii

|IV |IV | IV| V | VI | IV

|V | V |V |V

About the part I mentioned you might be hearing the similarity. Ignoring passing tones I think the start of the two melodies for both singers are similar. It also helps that the two songs are in the same key of G#:

Disaster of Passion: C G# A# G#

Misery Business: C G# A#

So yeah, I'd say the start of the two melodies are a bit similar. Keep in mind there might be a few mistakes here and music is just a hobby for me. You caught my interest because I love this channel.