5 Common Chord Progressions

Discovered a song for progression 4: 1-6-4-5 (C-Am-F-G). “It’s Raining on Prom Night” from the Grease (movie) Soundtrack.

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I’m so happy to see this lesson. The truth is, I’m not really into most of the recommended practice songs up to this point (with a few exceptions like “Good Riddance” and “Californication”), so I’ve not been playing most them. Instead, what I did was to simply practice the chord progressions in the songs, sometimes with the song-specific strumming pattern if it’s interesting, without the song. I thought the chord progressions sounded musical enough on their own. Good to know that my efforts were not way off the mark.

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6-4-1-5 is heading south by Zach Bryan!

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I’m sure I heard “The first cut is the deepest” in there somewhere.

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I realise this is from a while ago, Richard, and I might be missing the obvious, but what key would you say that progression is in?

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Hi Brian,
Justin first 25 sec of the video in the key of C major…
But you probably already saw that…so this might not help :grimacing:

Edit:And after 8 minutes Justin plays this and now I’m curious about your question …
Or do you ask for calling it that other key and make it unnecessarily complicated?
(Ooo why did I bother with this sorry :upside_down_face:)
Very nice to see this old video again … the first time 4 years ago I gave up a limb to play a chord progression like that and so neatly too :sunglasses:
Greetings

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@brianlarsen , it’s explicit in what @Richard_close2u wrote:

It is a 2, 5, 1, 6 = Dm, G, C, Am

Dm is the 2 chord
G is the 5
C is the 1
Am is the 6

Since C is the 1 chord, it’s in the key of C. Or did I misunderstand your q?

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Sorry guys, I had a bit of a ‘brain-freeze’ :roll_eyes:
I never watched the video, but had my guitar at hand and just played the progression a couple of times. It sounded nice, but I thought that A min sounded like ‘home’, which would have meant it was a minor key and the numbering system would have to be changed to reflect that. I think I’m back on board… :laughing:

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:see_no_evil: You really should start with that… :woozy_face:
They’re all just videos of that Justin guy from the Christmas open mic, he’s a pretty good teacher
:joy:
Oh well, I’m laughing now…

Greetings :guitar:

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Brian - in the lesson, Justin states:

So everything in the Learn more, including the chord numbering, is based on C being the Tonic 1 chord.

I know you like to view things through the minor lens … if we stripped away Justin’s context and had this as a four chord progression up for analysis, we would be drawing tenuous conclusions due to the ambiguous nature that comes from having no other context.
If not the key of C …

It could be the key of A minor and all chords are diatonic.
It could be the key of D minor and the G major is a borrowed chord (G minor is the diatonic chord in that key).
It could be the key of D Dorian and all chords are diatonic.
It could be the key of G major with a borrowed Dm chord too.

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Hehe, very generous and thoughtful of you, Sensei, to try and throw me a lifeline… :pray:

Two things, however, have contributed to my enlightenment in this question- (apart from my fellow forumites of course :laughing:)

  1. My son walked into the room after I typed my question, I played him the progression and asked what key; he responded C. (I didn’t quite follow/accept his explanation, although he was sure)
  2. I went back and played it a couple more times, singing along to the progression and realised that when I finished up on what I believed was the ‘home chord’ A min, I was singing the note C. At least my ears knew if my head didn’t :rofl:

You are also quite correct that this all came out of wearing my ‘little’ goggles. Although I love the Cof5, it’s always been unsatisfactory to me that minor key degrees use a differing numbering system to the major ones. I’d be much happier calling the A in A min the vi rather than the i and so forth.
Ah well, back to the drawing board… :wink:

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That’s perfectly legit … C is a chord tone of A minor … a crucial one as it is the minor 3rd of the chord. :slight_smile:

I know, but I believe I was looking for the tonic :wink:

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Were you sitting, singing with a glass of G and no T?

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If you were inspired by this, I would recommend looking up “David Bennett piano chord progressions” on You_Tube. In a number of different posts, he takes a set of chords, using the symbols that Justin and @stitch have outlined and shows how they have been used by different artists. Very illuminating.
@brianlarsen - I need to pay you back for the help you gave me - I’ll come round and tell you about the relationship of the key C to that of Am and why they sound the same.

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Have a cup of coffee :wink:
Are you going to the OM tomorrow? :smiley:

Yep ! I’ll be backing SaraMay and perhaps doing one or two numbers myself - depends upon the turnout. If there’s lots of performers, I’ll take a back seat.
I’ll also probably be at the "Afternoon Acoustic: sing around, from 2:00pm - again. at the Arts Centre. (sit around off-stage and some people off-mic as well) and go round clockwise, one at a time (anticlockwise is “widdershins” and you should know what that implies !) :sunglasses:

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1 5 6 4 is Wagon Wheel

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At 5:15, Justin adds a few colorful notes to the chord progression 2 that sound amazing. It looks similar when switching between a D major to D sus4 by just adding/removing the 4th finger.

I’m probably asking for a bigger bite than I can chew, but is anyone able to provide the notes for each chord that he is adding to try this?

He’s playing a C major chord and lifts off his first finger. The open B string makes it a C major 7 chord.