This shortcut to writing a pop hit became so famous that it was known as the Three-Chord Trick. If you were to write down the chord sequences of every rock and roll, country, or blues song released during the 1950s or early ’60s using our Roman numeral approach, you might be surprised to discover that nearly every single one of them was based almost exclusively on the three major chords in our list: namely, I, IV and V. Now let us step back to the 1950s, because before there was the four-chord song there was the Three-Chord Trick. This unassuming sequence of Roman numerals is the source of our four-chord magic. In fact, regardless of what key they are in, all of our four-chord songs share the progression I-V-VI-IV. If we call the chords in “Four Chord Song” by their numbers rather than their names, our chord progression of E, B, C# minor, and A becomes I-V-VI-IV. If you look again at the table above, you will notice that I labeled our list of E major chords with Roman numerals. Whatever major scale you start with, you will find a major chord, then two minors, then two majors, then another minor, and finally a diminished chord. If you go through every major scale and figure out all the chords, a pattern emerges. Does this mean they are cheats and the four chords are not magical after all?įar from it. In other words, Axis of Awesome transposed all of the songs into E major regardless of their original key. We have found out why songs in the same key tend to have the same chords, but there is another secret behind the Axis of Awesome’s “Four Chord Song.” Many of the songs they weave into their medley are not in the songs’ original keys (for example, U2’s version of “With or Without You” is in D, “Let It Be” is in G, and “Can You Feel the Love Tonight” is in B♭). If you want to learn more about chord theory there are lots of great books available and keep your eyes peeled for future articles here on. * This section contains a few simplifications for the sake of brevity. If we take the Axis of Awesome as an example, the song is in the key of E major so we have the notes: E, F♯, G♯, A, B, C♯, and D♯. Pick a note from the scale to be the first note of your chord, then move two steps up the scale for your next note, then up two more for the final one. There is a simple trick we can use to build all of the chords of a key.
#Wasted on you chords trial
Luckily, we do not have to find them by trial and error. Chords are no different any chord that contains only notes from the song’s key will sound like it fits in with the song. If a song is in C major, you can be confident that any of the notes on the C major scale will sound good and are unlikely to clash. Most Western music is based on the notes of a particular scale, often called the key *. So what are the secrets behind those four magical chords? To find an answer we need to understand where chords come from. Unfortunately for budding songwriters, the odds are that picking four chords at random will result in something that sounds horrible. After all, with 12 notes to choose from, and a choice of major or minor, there should be thousands of pleasant-sounding chord progressions and we should never need to repeat ourselves. But with so many chords to choose from, why did dozens of hit songs end up with the same four chords?Īt first glance, it seems strange that so many songs should have the same chords.
It turns out that the four magical chords are E, B, C# minor and A.
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