This Chord Progression HACK will Make Your Choruses 🚀Pop🚀#songwritingtips #cubase #chordprogressions

hello everyone welcome back dom here and this video is inspired by you guys i received quite a few messages from you on emails or in the comments down below and you guys were commenting on the chords that i use on my latest single which is called behind the wall and it's a synthwave track so myself being an unashamed music harmony geek i thought why not make a video where i talk about the techniques that i use for songwriting and when i'm writing songs when i'm actually not writing music for films which is a completely different territory and a completely different mindset but when writing pop songs like synthwave tracks of like pop tracks so in this video i'm going to show you how you can make your choruses pop by using key changes and modulations how you can go from one key to the other and create interest and excitement to your listeners and also how to build tensions with chord progressions so without any further ado let's get started if you enjoy these videos subscribe to the channel hit the like button and write in the comments down below what you'd like me to do next because i really enjoy doing those [Music] so let's get started i'm going to use my track behind the wall as an example because you guys were asking me about the chords but if you want to check out a much more complex song go ahead and check out my bohemian rhapsody harmonic analysis right here where i talk about all the chords from bohemian rhapsody which is a very complex song right but this is a more traditional pop style song okay so it's still not super easy and it has a few tricks so i want to share this with you today so let me show you what i've done on this try let's listen to the verse and the chorus and let's take it from [Music] there [Applause] [Music] in [Music] but we've [Music] okay so as you can see there's a big key change between the chorus and the verse okay so let me try to explain first of all how we can build tension with chords and second of all how we can use these modulations and how we can trick the ear so that it's not like oh there's a key chains there i don't know where it came from okay and how we can get to a very remote key so as you can see i'm starting with a d minor okay the verse starts with a d minor now for the verse i wanted it to be a little bit more calm not too many chord changes but at the same time i wanted it to have a little bit of a build up so this was done using chord progressions okay so let me show you so the first thing that i did is we have a d minor we have this chord progression here and i've added this in the chord track so that you can see what's going on so we start with d minor then we go with c major but the bass is still on d then a b flat but the bass is still on d now why is that of course i'm not thinking all these things when i'm writing the song but then we can analyze it and see how it works okay how it functions so d minor a c major on top of it these are very common pop chords d minor c b flat c d minor but when you do this i mean this kind of thing many bands in the 80s were using this rock bands and synthwave bands it's a very common you keep the bass you know in the root note and then on top of it you can do anything you want and this gives you a little bit of okay it's it's a very steady you know it's it's it's silver it's still the verse you know it's not the chorus yet so now after this i wanted this to get a little bit of tension and acquire a little bit of momentum there so what i do is now when i break the base and the base changes i go one step up to e now e is i'm not going to this chord which would be the e diminished chord i'm going actually to c major but with the bass on e so first inversion okay this already gives us a oh we lift up you know we're ready to fly okay f this is like the major chord this is very very close to it it's it's a relative major [Music] f and of course this leads to f p then we get to this point which is a g sus4 now g normally is not in the key of of d minor we would normally have [Music] okay but this is a nice surprise we get the fourth but in major because normally the chords would be first second f major third fourth g minor [Music] a major or a minor that's the fifth the sixth the seventh if you play natural or or diminish if you play it like the harmonic scale so now what do we do what i do there is like and i also have this suspended chord there because this also gives us even more tension so we have the stability at first and then we take off okay that's great now let's move on to the next bit let's listen to the second part of the verse same thing but now it changes now what have i done here again i'm changing the chords a little bit so that you don't get bored i hate when chords are repeated over and over again even in pop songs so instead of doing this [Music] i'm going straight to f major and then [Music] i'm playing at g major that's the fourth with a sixth and then go to b flat [Music] with a major seventh you could call it and then c with the sus4 and then that's a secret before i show you this though let me explain the relationship between the two keys this is d minor and this is f minor they're quite remote they're not very close d minor only has a b flat and an f minor has a b flat e flat a flat and d flat okay so how do we get there let me show you so when i do this [Music] you expect to hear [Music] that's where we want to go right but [Music] instead what do we do there what i did there was i have the seventh that already has a little bit of a tendency to go to f but it has a tendency to go maybe to f major but what i do there is i add a flat nine and this already prepares your ear for something else you don't know what's going to happen yet but [Music] we go to f minor and it doesn't sound like it came out of nowhere let's listen one more time i'm going to play the entire verse and then i'm going to lead straight to the chorus [Laughter] [Music] suspended second part the same different chords now [Music] now that's a trick that i wanted to talk to you about this is how you can make your choruses pop key changes you know in pop music and in the 80s this was a very common thing sometimes it didn't use like a chord to lead to the next key but if you add a chord this sounds really nice and sometimes a little bit more sophisticated so this is the fifth but it has so many tensions the seventh and the flat nine [Music] it could go but it has enough tension and enough color to go to f minor which is a very remote key so yeah this is one of the tricks now the problem was that later on let's listen to the [Music] chorus so you see what happens there i need to go back to d minor because if i kept it in f minor it wouldn't work you know it wouldn't work with the vocals so how do we go back because it's one thing to get to a remote key but how do we go back home you know how do we find our way back home and let me play the chords from the chorus these are completely pop popcorns nothing special there [Music] and then we have wreath [Music] [Applause] okay so i'm using the riff as a bridge again i'm not thinking about all these things when i write these songs but the techniques because i've done it so many times it's almost like second nature you don't need to think after you are you know accustomed to these things and you know how they work and that's the reason why i'm making this video i want to give you the tools i don't want you to copy the chords you know this doesn't make any sense you know but you can use it in your own compositions and this i guarantee you it will make your choruses a little bit more exciting of course this is not something you should use over and over again you shouldn't use it on every track but it's good to have like a toolbox of chord progressions and tricks that you can use for pop tracks so let me explain a little bit how i went back home okay so you know you can do it in many different ways in this case let me show you a technique so what i do is like [Music] now normally i would go [Music] instead what i do [Music] i use again the major fourth [Music] b flat major instead of b flat minor i did this before you know when i went like this is the fourth again but instead i'm doing this is also like a little surprise there and it's almost like a ray of light because it's a very minor song it's a little bit dark but [Music] you know major ray of light [Music] then i use c now c c is the fifth of f minor but because it exactly because it's the fifth of f minor it doesn't sound like a an alien chord is like but this is also a very common chord using pop when you are in d [Music] minor so this sounds very normal [Music] but this also sounds [Music] also like a natural thing that you could do with this chords so what i'm doing here is i'm using common chords okay before what i did the technique was i used a very colorful okay a very colorful fifth with a flattened ninth in the seventh c major seven with a flat nine see all these notes they try they want to get resolved that's what we call it in harmony this needs to go here [Music] this needs to go here this needs to go here okay that's how it works and here what i do is i use a common chord [Music] and why is it a common chord because [Music] actually even this is a common chord i'm actually preparing it even before i get to the c major so [Music] so this is a very nice technique of making your choruses pop okay then we have a little bit of a fun thing we have this middle eight here [Music] again the same thing i'm using the same technique [Music] and then it's of course a different chord progression because it's a middle a so what do we have here d minor a major first inversion with the bass on c sharp f major with second inversion with the bass on c [Music] c major again a little bit of a bright brighter sound this is the fourth but it's the major fourth [Music] then we go back home b-flat again g major with the first inversion sus4 suspension you know a little bit of what's going on [Music] and then the same trick i'm using the seventh with a flat nine this time i'm not giving it away so quickly you can hear that it doesn't play until we get this kind of weird 8-bit sounds and it's this arpeggio you know with these kind of 8-bit sim sounds that i created there and we go back to f so again these are two techniques that you can use if you want to make your choruses pop and also in order to make your verses more interesting now if you don't know how to play the keyboard or if you're not familiar with music theory and music harmony use scale assistant in cubase this will help you get all the notes right and you don't need to worry about playing wrong notes watch the video that i've done for cubase 11 i'm gonna link it right here but i'm going to make a dedicated video for this let me know in the comments down below if you'd like me to do this now let's say i want to go from a minor to c minor which one is the fifth of c minor this is c minor one two three four five g so g also exists in the a minor so what do we need to do we just need to add a little bit more color how seventh third fifth seven okay [Music] and maybe a little bit more color and ninth with this is the ninth but maybe i want to make it a little bit darker flat nine so i can be in a minor and i can go to c minor beautiful right now these are very very simple tricks i'm sure that if you are writing music you already might have used them already without even thinking about it like i do and you can go from one key to the other so swiftly without even thinking about it you know you can go from a to c a to c back and forth back and forth no problem [Music] that was another trick but that's for the next video so there you go guys this was a bunch of tricks that you can use when you're writing songs to make your choruses pop even more and your verses sound a little bit more interesting thanks so much for watching if you enjoyed this let me know in the comments down below so i will make more of these until next time have fun and make some great music

Channel: Dom Sigalas

Views: 16,567

Keywords: create pop chord progressions, pop chord progressions, create chord progressions, how to create good chord progressions, how to create interesting chord progressions, how to create minor chord progressions, chord progressions in cubase, cubase 11, cubase 11 dom sigalas, cubase chord track, cubase chord pads, cubase scale assistant, create pop chords, catchy chord progressions, chord progression hacks, chord progression theory, how to write chord progressions

Id: 2M8--NzGo-U

Length: 21min 43sec (1303 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 04 2020