I’m writing this post today because I’ve noticed on multiple occasions people selling books and courses that share with you “secret chord progressions that the pro songwriters use”, or “epic chord progressions to take your songs to the next level”. This sounds very exciting, but inside these packages are essentially just a list of chord progressions without much or any explanation as to what makes them great harmonically. If you’re a beginner and don’t have a solid background in musical harmony, this can be a great cheat sheet to get you started, but you shouldn’t be paying money for these.
The most recent example I saw was a website offering a $50 pack titled “top 33 chord progressions used in #1 hits”. That’s $1.5 per chord progression. This might be worth it to you, but I have a simple and free way of finding good chord progressions. If you want to know what progressions are being used in the biggest hits being written today, you simply need to look it up online. Most of the time if you search the chords to songs, especially for bigger songs from well-known artists, you’ll find multiple websites in your search with all the information you need, including specific chord inversions and guitar tabs sometimes. Do this for several songs, and you just saved yourself $50.
The people selling these packs will try to use their marketing magic to convince you that you’re missing out if you don’t buy these “secret chord progressions”, but trust me, you’re not. The majority of what’s inside these packs are diatonic 4-chord progressions, and as I mentioned, everything you need to write great songs is found in the free chord sheets and guitar tabs to pre-existing songs online.
I used to be in the position where I was rather gullible and paid for products such as these, thinking that the missing ingredients to my songwriting were secret chord progressions or special formulas. I slowly learned that a) there aren’t any “secrets” to writing great music or hit songs, and b) having a good foundational knowledge in musical harmony will help you in the long run much more than a $50 chord cheat sheet.
I don’t want to give the impression that I think paying for education such as books, online courses, and mentoring from experienced people is a bad thing. In fact, some of my biggest breakthroughs in my writing and music career happened when I invested in myself and paid for education from industry professionals. However, we should be wary about people selling “cheat sheets” or other packaged information designed to be a shortcut rather than something that develops you as a musician. More often than not, these are shortcuts for the people selling them to make money, not shortcuts for you to become a better songwriter.
To wrap things up, I’m going to share below some of my favourite chord progressions free of charge, most of which are taken from the biggest hits over the past 60 years of popular music. For simplicity in writing them out, I used mostly 3-chord and 4-chord progressions, but feel free to play with their length and seek out chord progressions with more unusual structures.
Dmaj7 – Amin7 – Gmaj7 – Bbmaj7
Bb – Gmin – C – Eb
Dmin7 – Emin7 – Amin7 – Amin7
C – D – G – Emin
G – A7 – C – G
Dmin7 – Amin7 – C – G
Emin – D – Amin – C
C – Bmin – Bmin – E
Cmin7 – F7 – Dmin7 – Gmin7
G – C – G – D
Amin – Emin – Dmin – Amin
C – Amin – Dmin – G
Cmin7 – Fmin7 – Bb7sus – Bb7
Dmin – G – C – Amin
C – G – D7 – F