The routes harmony travels, from three chords to eight.
Overview
Twelve notes in this folder trace the harmonic sentences songs are built from — each one documented with its Roman numerals, its character, and the repertoire that leans on it. The grammar underneath them all is covered in Cadences, the ways a phrase ends or pretends it won't.
The essentials come first: I-IV-V, three chords and the truth; ii-V-I, the sentence every jazz musician speaks fluently; and the Twelve-Bar Blues, twelve bars wide and deep enough to fall into. Pop and rock run on I-V-vi-IV and its dark-starting rotation vi-IV-I-V, on the slow-dance Fifties Progression, and on the bittersweet Royal Road Progression that runs straight through Tokyo.
The deeper cuts follow the pull of falling fifths and borrowed colour: the Circle of Fifths Progression, the descending Andalusian Cadence, the eight immortal chords of Pachelbel's Canon, and the Backdoor Progression that resolves home through an entrance you didn't expect.
Related
- Chords & Progressions — the parent index
- Chords — the colours the progressions are strung from
- Musical Keys — the keys progressions live in