Popular Chord Progressions

Great Chord Progressions

Composing music has much to do with finding the right chord progressions. If you're a budding songwriter or a seasoned veteran, I'm sure you thought a lot about what chords to use in your song. Here are some from popular songs that you could try.

1. Vanilla Twilight

This first chord progression from a popular song by Owl City is fairly simple. C major, G major, A minor, and then F major. This chord progression is very common and useful. Beginning and ending with major chords makes your song sound fairly happy, so that's one reason why this song by Owl City doesn't sound very sad in spite of its sorrowful lyrics. If you need a somewhat happy chord progression mixed with a minor tone, choose this one.

Listen to 0:00 - 0:18 of Vanilla Twilight. Notice the chord progression is repeated 3 times and then it changes to C major, G major, D minor, F major for the ending. Also, while I'm on this song, notice the 2 key transpose starting at 2:24 and how it changes the feel of the song, making it much more majestic.

2. What Makes You Beautiful

This second chord progression is taken from One Direction's famous song. Here are the chords: E Major, A major, and then B major.

Listen to 0:00 - 0:38 of What Makes You Beautiful. For this section the chord progression is the same, but then it changes slightly with a minor chord and a few other changes. Still, throughout most of this song, the chord progression is the same. Even with such a simple chord progression, this song still became extremely popular, so there must be something to it. Perhaps it's because this chord progression is very happy-sounding and positive unlike the first one, which had a minor chord in it. 

3.You Belong With Me

This third chord progression from the verse of Taylor Swift's song is D major, A major, E minor, and then G major.

Listen to 0:08 - 0:36 of You Belong With Me. It's easy to tell that this chord progression isn't as happy-sounding as the other one, and I think the E minor chord in it makes it sound even sadder than Vanilla Twilight. This chord progression has sort of a wistful, hopeful, mysterious feel to it. 


That's all for now. Have fun composing music!

Epic Chord Progressions

  Lord of the Ring's Chord Progressions 

1. Gandalf Falls

This first chord progression is one I'll name after one of my favorite songs from the Lord of the Rings. In case you haven't guessed which part of the movie it's from, it's from the first movie, the part when Gandalf falls off of the bridge in the Mines of Moria. Let's do this chord progression in 4/4 time signature, each chord taking up a whole measure. The chords are as follows a minor, F major, C major, and G major. This chord progression is not only very useful, it is also very common and popular. It can definitely be used to make sad songs, but, if used properly, it can also be used to make epic and triumphant songs. This song is used in the beginning of Enya's song May It Be.

2. The Shire

This chord progression is from the first movie of the Lord of the Rings, near the beginning. It's focused on the hobbits. There are different chords used in this theme, as it develops throughout the movies, but we will just focus on the simplest one found near the start of the movie. Using 4/4 time signature, these are the chords used as well as how many measures they take up. Here they are: F major (4 measures). B flat major (2 measures), F major (1 measure), C major (1 measure). If you want to make melancholy and beautiful compositions, this is definitely a good one to use.

That's all for now. Come back later for more music tips.