Songs that use the Harmonic Minor Axis progression

this video is sponsored by the rock band sub ohm stick around to the end to hear some of their music I'm sure you're familiar with this chord progression a minor f c g chords six four one and five of the key it's one of the two chord progressions that feature in the Axis of Awesome video where they show that every song uses the same chord progression it's been used in countless songs but today I want to look at a close cousin to this chord progression A variation of it this progression which is what I would call the harmonic minor axis progression in the key of A minor it would be a minor f C and then E major so this chord progression is very very similar to what you would call the minor axis progression or the famous four chords of pop music but the minor version which is usually a minor F C and G this is a progression that's been used in countless pop songs I've talked about it in a video before which I'll link down below the one difference with this harmonic minor variation is the G chord at the end gets swapped for any major chord what can I say except you're welcome for the tides the Sun the skies [Music] [Applause] [Music] when I said that I love you [Applause] baby [Music] [Applause] [Music] swapping the G out for an E major makes this chord progression sound more functional and sort of directional once you're on the E chord it really really wants to go back to the one chord it gives us that drive to get back and that is the characteristic of the harmonic minor scale the harmonic minor scale is a variation of the natural minor scale but with the seventh degree [Music] raised up a semitone to give us that leading note that leads us back home and it's that leading note that G sharp which gives us the E major chord that we're finding in this progression now although I'm calling this chord progression the harmonic minor axis progression it is technically mixing both the harmonic minor and the natural minor the natural minor is just the white notes right in a minor so with this chord progression when we hit the C chord for example we're getting the natural seventh note of the scale G natural but then with the E major chord we're switching to harmonic minor and now we've got the G sharp which leads us up to the one chord to allow us to repeat the progression it gives us a really nice movement actually between the C chord the E chord and the a minor B the chromatic line gluing the three chords together or more than one occasion Green Day have mixed this chord progression that we're looking at the harmonic minor version of the progression with the more typical natural minor version the one in the Axis of Awesome video we can see this in their song Holiday where we're in the key of F minor [Music] oh no yeah [Music] we can see it here in the chorus of troubled times which is in the key of A minor so we go a minor f c g and then a minor f c e [Applause] [Music] and also in the song 21 Guns where we're in the key of D minor [Music] foreign [Music] it's possible that Green Day were first introduced to this chord progression by bad religions 1996 song punk rock song which also switches between the two variations of the chord progression this time we're in C sharp minor so we get the chords C sharp minor a e b and then C sharp minor a e g sharp thank you the passenger by Iggy Pop is another great example of mixing the two variations of the chord progression throughout the entire duration of this song We're pivoting between using the a minor fcg version and the a minor fce version I am a passenger all right all right now so far in this video I've been labeling this chord progression as six four one three ultimately to make it easier to compare to the other version the more popular version from the Axis of Awesome video where we have g at the end instead of e but actually really both of these chord progressions should be labeled like this because they're minor key chord progressions the a minor at the beginning is the tonic chord so it should be labeled as the one we also use a lowercase one to indicate that it's minor although bear in mind that some people instead still use a capital I but then would put a little M after it to indicate that it's minor just two different ways of doing it and another point of contention with Roman numerals when labeling minor key chord progressions like this is whether we need to put these Flats here before the six and the three the F and the C in the chord progression the reason I've included a flat here is because when I use Roman numerals and this is a system that many people use it always relates back to the major key so in relation to the main major key in relation to a major to get an F chord we don't want six we want flat six same for the C we want flat three if we just wrote three that would indicate the regular third degree of the a major scale which is C Sharp not C natural but some other people particularly when they're analyzing a piece of music versus performing it won't include the flat symbols because it suggested that we're talking about the minor scale not the major scale which is fine as long as the fact that we're in the minor key is abundantly clear because if you tried reading these Roman numerals and you didn't know we were in the minor key you would be playing the wrong chords which system you use is down to you but the reason I always go for the one which includes these Flats on screen the one where we always relate things back to the major scale regardless of whether we're in major or minor or a different scale it's because we can apply it to literally any song and always understand what chords are being asked of us there's no ambiguity involved so that is the harmonic minor cousin to the minor version of the axis progression if you'd like to learn more about the regular minor axis progression the progression that goes a minor fcg I talked about it in this previous video and thank you so much to sub ohm for sponsoring this video sub omo a rock band from Los Angeles California their sound is reminiscent of prog metal bands like tall or Porcupine Tree check out their recent song Sun gazer [Music] and here's a bit of their song unifying [Music] to find out more about saboom follow the links down below [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] foreign [Music]

Channel: David Bennett Piano

Views: 28,729

Keywords: axis progression, chord progression, harmonic minor, am f c e, moana, passenger, iggy pop, green day, muse, examples, music theory, chords, minor key

Id: LjOKMNNo7HA

Length: 9min 52sec (592 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 10 2023