Struggling With Your Pop Song Chords?

[john]

hey

writing a pop hit might seem a million miles away.... but then you only need 4 chords so how hard can it be?

Cheers

John

[john]

eek! not just pop that is infected then...

[DuartmaN]

hey

writing a pop hit might seem a million miles away.... but then you only need 4 chords so how hard can it be?

Cheers

John

It's amazing what we can do only with 4 chords sometimes how much chords we trying to find to write a song more difficult is to earn some inspiration to write/produce it.

Nice video

(sorry my bad English)

DC

[Hyardacil]

It's really quite sad, because Pachelbel wrote really good music.

[john]

Hi, I don't know about sad so much. For me there is a pending question that I think really deserves some discussion - that is

why is this progression so appealing?

and a second question -

Are there song type/genres/themes that this progression works best with?

For example, an uplifting song? a thought provoking song? etc.

[Hyardacil]

I think this chord progression works very well because it provides an ambiguous mood to a certain extent. It starts of with a major chord and then switches to the dominant, which is common enough. This dominant is naturally the chord which brings us back home, but instead we get the vi minor chord, which is a sort of sad step away from that "home" feeling.

This switch to a minor provides some sort of lyrical quality to me - especially the switch to IV which brings a sort of calming in the tension that naturally leads back to the root.