That's right, these are the
chord progressions we have to
face in our
daily,
uphill battle against
old,
played out music. If you have any chord progressions you think belong in the top 10, in place of one of these,
node it and I'll
change it :)
* In no particular
order
- I | IV (one of the most basic, and most overused progressions around. Used in James Brown - Sex Machine)
- i | IV (Used in Tito Puente - Oye Como Va and Herbie Hancock - Chameleon)
- I | IV | V (happy pop sound. Used in Green Day - Time of Your Life)
- I | V | IV (thanks, Third Eye Blind, all your latest hits use this progression. Also used in Blink 182 - All The Small Things (chorus))
- I | V | vi | IV (hooray for Blink 182, *cough*)
- i | VII | VI | V (Hit the Road Jack, and several Flamenco pieces)
- I | vi | IV | V (50s happy doowop. Used in Ben E. King - Stand By Me, the first chords of The Beatles - This Boy, and Every Breath You Take by The Police)
- I | VII | IV (rock)
- ii | V | I (jazz standard. Autumn Leaves begins with these chords)
- I | IV | I | I | IV | IV | I | I | V | IV | I | I (12 bar blues, another jazz standard. Used in Jimmy Hendrix - Red House and B.B.King - Everyday I Have The Blues)
While certainly some of these chord progressions were
revolutionary and are still
key in reproducing some of today's most
classic genres, we'd still like certain genres of music to move forward and introduce to us new chord progressions. I have a feeling that although new chord progressions might sound weird at first, with enough use we'd easily attach an
emotion or
mood to them, just as we did to the
blues and to the 50's bebop progression--I bet if the 4 chord blues were played in the
17th century, everyone'd think it was odd and
dissonant crap. People adjust. It's just that when 4 of
Blink 182's hits use the same
exact chord progression (
Alien,
Dammit,
What's My Age Again,
M&Ms) .. I begin to
raise an
eyebrow (or two, as my eyebrows raise and
abdominal muscles tighten in preparation to
vomit)
Surely I don't want these chord progressions all to be put out of
existence. Some of my favorite songs use them. This
list is mainly here to make us
aware that sometimes what we call
different, new and
fabulous has really been done
hundreds of times before. Surely the greater
value of a song can lie in its
lyrics but as my
favorite type of music is
instrumental (which I often find just as moving as lyrical music) I tend to
appreciate more those songs that
break away from a
standard chord progression,
rhythmic pattern or
time signature. Sorry, I've heard all the great
12 bar blues songs--I don't think I want to hear any new
artists tear this thing apart again, beacuse I doubt they could
reproduce it as well as its
originators, and even if they did, the fact still remains that
it's been done before.
~
Confused? For starters, upper case chords are
major, and lower case are
minor. Check out
chord progression and
chord for more
information.