thetruthaboutguitar

Today, I’m bringing to you an explanation of the song everyone knows. The four chord song. The Axis of Awesome does a good job of showing what I mean.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pidokakU4I

So what are those chords?

To be more specific, it’s not just four chords, it’s four chords in a specific order. It’s one single progression that underpins literally hundreds of songs.

In general, it is the I-V-vi-IV chord progression. If you aren’t familiar with the concept of keys and the roman numerals, don’t worry, just read on, my examples are specific.

A specific example, if you have a guitar in hand and know some basic chords, is G-D-Em-C. Those are the first, fifth, sixth, and fourth chords of the key G major. This happens to be the progression Green Day – “When I Come Around” is based on.

The Red Hot Chili Peppers song “Under the Bridge” also uses this progression, but it’s played higher on the fretboard, in the key of E. Its chords are E, B, C# minor, and A.

Photo-scanned from my composition notebook, illustrating the four chord progressions from “Under the Bridge” and “When I Come Around” on the fretboard.

If you play through it enough times, you’ll get familiar with and start to hear it everywhere. When writing your own music, you’ll find it’s a good, but boring, place to start.

Here’s a simple way to make it more interesting: substution. What substitutes for what?

Short answer: I = vi. IV=ii. V=iii.

Now, just that information should give you a ton of variation to explore.

Using the key of G as an example, the progression goes with “When I Come Around”: G-D-Em-C

Those are the I-V-vi-IV chords, respectively. We can change any of them out for their “equivalents”. In G, the ii and iii chords are Am and Bm.

Example variations. Our “four chord song” progression in G could be altered to give us new progressions to try.

If I flip just the first chord, exchanging I for vi, or G for Em, I get: Em-D-Em-C

It’s going to sound a little darker, and a little more tense because there isn’t the same resolution as having the G chord.

More advanced detail (ignore if this isn’t yet clear at your current level of playing. you’ll get there): It’s still going to sound like a major progression and not a minor one, though. Because there’s no B7 chord to make E the tone the progression resolves toward.

If I flip the second chord, exhanging the V chord for iii, or D for Bm, I get: G-Bm-Em-C, which is going to sound like a darker, weaker, progression, possibly good for a verse.

If I flip the third chord, exchanging the vi for I, or Em for G, it gets more sing-songy: G-D-G-C. These are all very strong, “happy” sounding chords.

Flipping the fourth chord, exhanging IV for ii, or C for Am, it’s going to sound a little odd: G-D-Em-Am. But then again, that’s good, it means that we can change things out and get potentially more interesting sounds. Some of those sounds are going to be too boring or too “interesting”.

Part of making music is the struggle to try things where we aren’t sure how the “experiment” is going to turn out.

Longer answer: This is a simple introduction to harmony. However, given the nature of modern music and the songs that most of us want to play, it’s also THE single best starting point.

Pushing this simple introduction to its extreme, it’s also just fine to change the order and substitute chords in the I-V-vi-IV progression in almost whatever way you want. In most instances, it will sound just like popular music.

In order to get a proper understanding of what’s going on here requires history lessons about blues, classical music, jazz, and a great deal of music theory.

The root of Western music as we know it goes back to Bach, and as time went on, it came to be understood as a system known by many names, one of which is Functional Harmony. Functional Harmony boils down to a composer’s method for knowing what chords sound good together without actually hearing it played. The jargon quickly gets obnoxious if you aren’t into that kind of thing. We start saying things like the Tonic goes to the subdominant.. to the dominant.. and Mixolydian mode… leading tone voicing triad quatrad… I’m wearing a white wig.. blah blah blah *sips English tea*

It’s worth looking into, if you take yourself to be a serious student of music. Even if you go that route, you’re still going to end up right back here playing the four chord song with everyone else. The music we grow up with tends to have a strong hold over us, and even has a monoply on what whole masses of people interpret as “good music”.