How many chords in a song

Based on what our database is showing, I might suggest some small changes. In particular, Bdim , while diatonic in C, is much less common than some other chords, like D , and E. Perhaps in the next version of garageband, Apple will fix this they really should. The previous question took an overall look at the relative popularity of different chords, but we can also look at the relationship that different chords have to one another.

For example, a great question to ask is, if a song happens to use a particular chord, what chord is most likely to come next? Is it random, or will certain chords sound better than others and thus be more likely to show up in the popular songs that make up our database? The relative popularity of what the next chord will be is shown below:. This result is striking. If you write a song in C with an E minor in it, you should probably think very hard if you want to put a chord that is anything other than A minor or F major after the E minor.

There are lot of interesting questions to ask, and we want to know what is most interesting to you. Let us know in the comments below. Hook theory. Before we look at how you can make a ton of different songs with these four chords, it might help to quickly review this basic question: What is a chord? To write your own songs, you just need to put a few of the chords we looked at earlier into a progression.

Then, you can put a beautiful melody on top of it, sit back, and wait for your Grammy. Huh, that reminds me… my Grammy should have arrived by now! Two star rating for The Recording Academy. In their song, The Axis of Awesome identified about 50 pop songs that used this chord progression:.

In fact, simple can be better in music. Even if you start with the same four chords, you can change their order in the chord progression, extend some of them for a few bars, and mess around with unique rhythms that add sophistication to your song. In this example, notice that we split the last bar so that each chord got just a few beats.

It sounds really nice! This is a great rhythm that really drives the song forward. Almost every song in the pop charts is built around the same four chords. And it's nothing new — they're the same three chords that Pachelbel used in his famous Canon. But why do we keep coming back to this exact structure? Quiz: what percentage music geek are you? These four chords are the magic I, IV, V and vi. But why are these four chords so universal? Chord I is built upon the first note of an eight note scale, and chord V upon the fifth.