Few chord patterns are as instantly recognizable as this one: the Pachelbel progression, the eight-chord cycle from Johann Pachelbel’s Canon in D, has been looping under weddings, graduations, and pop hits for more than three hundred years. In C major it runs C-G-Am-Em-F-C-F-C, and its gently falling bass line is the reason it sounds both […]
If jazz harmony has a homeward route, this is it. The ii-V-I progression moves from preparation to tension to release in three chords, and it appears in standards so often that jazz musicians learn to recognize it as a single unit. In C major, the chords are Dm7-G7-Cmaj7. Learn that sound and you will begin […]
Three chords. That’s the whole toolkit behind blues, early rock ‘n’ roll, folk, country, and gospel, and it’s the first progression any musician, pianists included, should truly own. The I – IV – V progression is the sturdiest pattern in Western popular music, and stretched into the 12-bar blues it becomes one of the most-played […]
If you learn only one set of chords this year, make it these four. The I–V–vi–IV progression is the single most common chord pattern in modern popular music, and once it’s under your fingers you can play along with a large percentage of the radio queue. This is a deep dive into one progression; for […]
A handful of piano chord progressions structure thousands of songs. Once you can recognize and play these common chord progressions, you stop hearing the music as a wall of sound and start hearing the framework that a composition is built on. Then you can sit down at the piano and play along with just about […]
