Recognising Keys by Chord Sequences

Thank you Richard for your reaction! I guess I have to start learning songs now! :grinning: About a week ago I started ear training with chords so I hope to improve that way. It starts with chords and then uses real music. I think this will help me, and to be honest, Iā€™m really enjoying it. Itā€™s a quiz you play and Iā€™m not bad at all at the easy and medium levels!

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Exams man that thing :woozy_face::woozy_face::confounded::confounded::cold_sweat::cold_sweat::cold_sweat:, it was deep :disappointed_relieved::disappointed_relieved::disappointed_relieved::disappointed_relieved:

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Super cool lesson. I practiced this with a bunch of songs, and one that tripped me up for a second was the song Too Much Of A Good Thing by The Sons. I noticed there was a C and aa D, and said, ā€œAha! Two major chords a tone apart - must be G major!ā€ However, I noticed F major was prominently featured in the song as well - how can it be G major then? When I looked at all the chords again, I noticed the D major that originally tipped me off only appears in one tiny section, so I pretended it wasnā€™t there and viola, we have C major. Am I correct in saying that this song is indeed in C major, and that the D major is a key change that sort of outros the chorus?

@ChrisAbeGuitar You are correct all the chords except the D are in the key of C the D is the 5 of 5.
Meaning the 5th of C is G and the 5th of G is D
The tip for the key of C is the F and G are major.

@stitch The 5 of 5 makes a lot of sense, hoping to learn a little more about that thinking in the coming lessons.

I am having a very difficult time identifying chord progression patterns in songs and what chords are being played. i have no problem with everything else, but i my ear cant seem to know which chords are which, if itā€™s ascending or descending, and sometimes i canā€™t even tell if a chord is a minor or major chord due to multiple instruments being played. i have practiced, written, and memorized everything justin has covered up to this lesson, but with this i really canā€™t get my head around this. Someone please help me on what to do, i love playing guitar and have been for playing for 3 years.

@ChrisAbeGuitar
I have tidied up the posts about Too Much Of A Good Thing to remove the typos and responses to them.

Here is a slightly different analysis.
The intro and verse simply bounces back and forward between C and Em but it feels tense, unresolved, looping around with no place to settle.
Then, when the chorus arrives - do you hear how satisfying that G chord is? They have arrived at the tonic. The key of G but until the chorus the tonic chord has been avoided with a two-chord vamp that tricks us. The solo and bridge use F and in the key of G that is a bVII chord, a commonly borrowed chord.

Robbie, you can train your ear and Justin has Ear Training courses to help develop this essential skill.

one of the most important things you can do is familiarise your ear and your expectations of chord movements is by following my mantra - learn songs, learn songs, learn songs. By learning songs you are exposing your ears to many, many ways that chords are used in combination. The combinations are limitless but there are a handful of very commonly used patterns that you will encounter across all genres - so learn and and all songs whether it is your taste or not.

thank you for the advice.

@ChrisAbeGuitar
This puts it in G mixolydian mode. C major resolving to G. This also explains the D chord being major and the F not being F#dim. In the key of G the D is the 4 chord and F# being flattened to F.
So the easiest way to look at this song is in the Key of C but the tonal center is G. To get the sound of the G mixolydian mode into you head play the C major scale but start and end on the note G.

@stitch
I didnā€™t want to raise the notion of mides in case it was unfamiliar territory for @ChrisAbeGuitar but that is a valid way to view that section I reckon.
I definitely hear G being the tonic (that we have been long teased about but denied) when the chorus lands after that extended 2 chord vamp in the intro and verse.
Because the F chord arrives during the soli, any lead guitar will need to make sure to avoid the G major scale F# note (and ideally land an F note) over that chord.

Iā€™ve been going through a few songs in my repertoire and noticed that 2 of them could be either of 2 keys:

Whatā€™s up
A Bm (C#m) D (E F#m) = A
or
D (Em F#m G) A Bm = D

Mr Jones
C Dm (Em) F G Am = C
or
Am (Bdim) C Dm (Em) F G = Am

If I understand Justinā€™s video correctly itā€™s just a matter of checking which scale sounds best when improvising over the song to determine which key it actually is. Or are both keys just as correct?

Floris, I think you have listed the six main diatonic chords for the keys you are naming and placed a bracket around those not used in the chord progressio. If so, that is useful because it can help to see the inconsistencies in your presentation and conclusions.

Whatā€™s Up
This is a I, ii, IV progression in the key of A ā†’ YES

If
D = 1
then
A - V and Bm = vi

A I, V, vi progression in the key of key of D ā†’ NO

Mr Jones
The verses are in the key of A minor and the chorus in the relative key of C major.
Relative major and minor share common chords so it is the manner in which they are played and which is given emphasis to be the ā€˜home chordā€™.

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Thank you so much for emphasising the importance of doing at least 5 songs (although better 50 rather than 5). This has been a revalation for me. Iā€™ve been a little inconsistent with my practical theory and recently reworked previous quizes and corrected some misundertanding from that valuable exercise. The past couple of days Iā€™ve been working identifying some progressions and couldnā€™t understand why some of the keys sounded different from others. I somehow hadnā€™t recognised the importance of the intervals and only now while working on a I, IV, I, IV, V, I in the key of F I found that B didnā€™t work (this was my problem) but Bb did. Ding! A revalatory moment. Happy days. Thank you once again for yet another superb lesson.