Chord Progression Generator

Steve Vai, Jimi Hendrix, Slash, ‘Joe Satriani’ - what unites these great guitarists? Besides the fact that they all left behind a huge musical heritage, they all began their career with easy guitar chords. Only having mastered the basics, having understood how music works, they began to gradually develop their skills. No matter how much we want, but it’s almost impossible to get around the easy guitar chords. As in the popular game Guitar Hero, in music, we have the way to difficult songs closed, if we are not able to play simple ones.

Once ‘Mark Knopfler’, the legendary guitarist of Dire Straits, said that he had to wash his fingers in the blood while learning to play the guitar because he had to master all the chords and consonances, relying solely on himself. In the modern world, Knopfler’s heroism would not only look inappropriate, but at least not very reasonable - guitar tabs are now available to anyone who has access to the Internet, and learning to play the guitar now does not seem too difficult. At least, it does not seem more difficult than it was twenty years ago.

Writing songs can sometimes come as a most natural thing to do, but that doesn't happen all the time. Sometimes we find ourselves in a creational rut and the feeling that we will never be able to write anything again. Or even worse, we are coming up with new stuff, but it sounds similar/identical to something that we've done before. This is more likely to be expected, as we subconsciously draw inspiration from the music that we are listening to regularly. Of course, songwriting is just like playing an instrument. The more you practice, the better you will become.

In this guide, we will teach you writing songs based around chords progressions.

Here is a super cool table that illustrates chords for all the major scales that I created! Check it out! Also here you can learn how to translate chord progressions into other keys yourself.

Why is Pentatonic Scale so popular?

It is used in many popular music genres such as pop, rock, blues, R&B, metal and in electronic music as well. However, they can be found in jazz and certain traditional music, too!

Pentatonic minor scale is most likely the first scale that you will learn no matter what instrument you are playing. Especially, if you are starting on the guitar.

Literally, 99% of today's music is based solely on the pentatonic scale, with the addition of natural minor or major.

Here is a list I created for myself some time ago.

These are all easy 4-chord songs. Some of them are linked to the sheet music, some are not. Here you can listen to how each chord progression sounds here before playing yourself. Also, there are tutorials that may come in handy!

Elvis Presley — Can’t help falling in love with you

The Beatles — Let It Be

Alphaville’s — Forever Young

Nickelback — Gotta be Somebody

Idina Menzel — Let it go (Frozen)

The Black Eyed Peas — Where Is The Love

Coldplay — The Scientist

Iggy Pop — The Passenger

Taylor Swift — Clean

Tim Minchin — Canvas Bags

Jason Mraz — I’m Yours Guitar Tutorial

P!nk — Fucking Perfect

John Denver — Take Me Home Country Roads

Beyoncé — If I Were A Boy

Bob Marley — No Woman No Cry

P!nk — U Plus Ur Hand

Newton Faulkner — Dream Catch Me

Green Day’s — When I come around

James Blunt’s — You’re beautiful

A-Ha’s — Take on me

The Cure — A Letter to Elise

Adele — Someone like you

Red Hot Chili Peppers — Under The Bridge

Rihanna ft. Calvin Harris — We found love

Imagine Dragons — Demons

OneRepublic — Apologize

Men at Work — Down Under

Lovelytheband — Broken

Sum 41 — Confusion And Frustration In Modern Times

Have you ever heard a particular song or soundtrack in a movie, show, or video game that has left you in tears before? Left you speechless? Don’t be afraid to admit it!

As an aspiring composer or one just starting out, have you ever wondered what makes them so sad and emotionally impactful?

The main answer actually lies in chord progressions. These are some of the most important drivers in how a song feels and how you react to that piece of music.

It shouldn't necessarily be a complex piece to sound beautiful and deep. There are actually thousands of hits written around quite simple 4-chord progressions!

Instrument and lyric choice do have some importance. However, your chord progressions and harmony will determine the heart of your songs. Likewise, they will determine just how sad and emotional you want them to be.

As you study different song structures once you have gained a solid grasp of the structure of a song, you will notice similarities as well as differences. We shall cover some of these differences and their differences in the next session. For now, let’s take a look at how parts of a song are arranged in some common song structures.

Here are some examples of very popular common song structures:

There are also several types of structures that exist by name you can search up and experiment with in your songwriting! Some of these include the Verse-Refrain, Verse-Chorus, and Verse-Prechorus-Chorus to name a few.

Different song structures can achieve many different things, beyond just their obvious structural differences when illustrated on a chart. For some examples, free form is great for songs that you intend to have little to no repetition, making it a difficult or unlikely choice if you wish to utilise repetition heavily.

Another example can be found in Verse-Refrain, where it is quite simple and easy to work with, with few drawbacks as it has proven quite versatile. It has the tradeoff of having been not as popular later on, so you will have to look back to the 20th century for more frequent examples of songs using this structure.

If in the eighties, artists were forced to use rather limited synthesizer functionality, which was often limited to not the widest possibilities for changing and processing the signal, but still managed to find very interesting sound solutions, modern musicians literally bathe in the whole ocean of possibilities. This often leads to a situation in which the artists have a wide functionality for changing the sound signal, programs for sampling and equalization, but at the same time, they are practically devoid of software possibilities for writing musical parts. Such opportunities could give a chord progression generator.

There are three main reasons for musicians to use such a generator:

1. Speed is an essence

This software is able to give a complete picture of what is happening with the song. Musicians, like many people of art, are subject to creative impulses, an idea can come suddenly and just as suddenly can go. Many artists, having written an arrangement for the song during such an impulse, find themselves in front of a kind of wall - song chords, which come to their mind, simply do not fall on tempo, do not fit in tone or do not suit for some other reason. A chord progression generator like ‘ChordChord’ is capable, taking into account the specified parameters (for example, tonality and bpm), of quick creating a harmonious progression that fits well with an already created arrangement. This applies to both simple guitar songs and tracks with an endless number of pads, background sounds, and effects.

2. Ability to find new ideas

Based on simple piano chords, songs may not attract widespread attention from the audience, while the progression generator makes it possible to find some unusual, previously unused idea. Some musicians even specially allocate a part of their working time to just play around with this software, press the “random” button a few dozen times, and, if lucky, develop some interesting idea. Of course, you can type in the search engine something like 'Easiest guitar chords songs’ and dissect already known songs and motifs, but in this case, there is a chance to be accused of plagiarism and forever dwell on reworking other people's works, and not on creating your own.

Have you ever dreamt of writing a song like Twenty One Pilots or The Weeknd and to become a famous artist? Perhaps it’s time to take the leap and implement your passion for songwriting.

When you start for the first time, it may sound challenging to create your own tune, but we are here to prove you wrong.

Here is 5 simple and effective steps on how to do it. Let's face the truth - there is a lot of useless tips like "listen to your heart, start with the song name, etc" all over the Internet. All of them barely give any practical pieces of advice. Therefore, the ChordChord team decided to make the detailed guide with the real world examples.

This guide covers almost any genre, the only thing we assume is — your song should have the melody and lyrics.

Composing the music you want with ease and convenience requires a very good set of tools. There are many wonderful tool sets out there for making original music that you can access right from your web browser at home. The following 10 are some very great examples of these music maker tools.