Common Chord Progressions in Pop, Rock, Blues, Jazz, and Hip-Hop (With Real Song Examples)

Play C, G, A minor and F, four slow beats each, and go around again. That loop opens the verse of the Beatles' "Let It Be" and runs under most of U2's "With or Without You" (there in D, with the same pattern), and in a 2012 count of about 1,300 verses and choruses of popular songs it was the most common four-chord progression in the sample. A chord progression is a series of chords a song repeats, and each style of popular music has its favorites.

This guide plays through those favorites in pop, doo-wop, blues, rock, jazz and hip-hop, plus two progressions that cross styles: the circle-of-fifths sequence and the Andalusian cadence. Each one is engraved in C major or A minor with Roman numerals and a smooth way to voice it at the piano, and most come with a rhythm that suits the style. Every song named was checked against official sheet music or a published analysis, and free worksheets are linked as you go.

Roman numerals in two minutes

Roman numerals name a chord by the step of the scale it is built on, so a progression keeps its name in any key. Stack a triad on each note of C major and you get seven chords: C, Dm, Em, F, G, Am and B°. A capital numeral means a major chord (I, IV, V), a small one a minor chord (ii, iii, vi), and a small one with a circle a diminished chord (vii°). The chords of a key builds all seven, Name the chords of the key tests you in C, G, F and D major, and Build the chords has you stack triads and 7ths on a given root.

One set of chords, two homes. Read from C, the white-key chords are I to vii°; read from A minor, the same chords become ♭III, iv, v, ♭VI, ♭VII, i and ii°.

The same white-key chords also make A minor, where Am is i, C is ♭III, F is ♭VI and G is ♭VII. The flat says the root sits a half step lower than the major scale on A would put it. Pop and rock analysts write it that way, partly so that ♭VII is never confused with vii°, while classical textbooks and our minor-key sheets write III, VI and VII. A minor key usually borrows one chord: a major V with a raised 7th, E–G♯–B in A minor (The three minors explains why, using the B♮ of C minor). Rock goes further and borrows E♭, A♭ and B♭ from C minor into C major as ♭III, ♭VI and ♭VII, which Borrowed chords voices in four parts.

Each chord also has a job. Classical theory sorts chords into tonic, pre-dominant and dominant: I is home, IV and ii lead away, V and vii° build tension that pulls back to I, and the roles of vi and iii depend on context. The Chords of a Key sheet calls the three jobs home, away and tension.

The three jobs. Away leads to tension and tension pulls back home; vi can stand in for I and ii for IV, because each shares two notes with the chord it replaces.

Pop: I–V–vi–IV and its relatives

Pop's favorite loop runs I–V–vi–IV: home, tension, then the relative minor where your ear expected home, then IV. In C it is C–G–Am–F. That 2012 count, by the songwriting site Hooktheory, also found IV moving to I as often as V does. Besides "Let It Be" (in C) and "With or Without You," you can hear it in Bob Marley and the Wailers' "No Woman, No Cry" (the 1975 live recording, in C, with G/B in place of plain G), all three as analyzed by the music theorists Trevor de Clercq and David Temperley (Temperley hears the F of "Let It Be" as Dm7 over F).

G pulls toward C, and A minor answers with two of C's three notes, C and E: a small surprise that our Cadences sheet calls the deceptive cadence. F then leads home by the gentler "amen" route, IV to I.

Play it two ways. In root position every chord is stacked up from its root, so your whole hand jumps. In smooth shapes, C stays on the bottom of C, A minor and F and slips to B under G, so each note holds or moves one step. The Primary Chords in C builds the C, F and G shapes, and Chords & Progressions in C adds A minor (C–E–A) and plays G as G7 (B–F–G). Three of the smooth shapes are inversions, with a note other than the root on the bottom, which Identify the triads & inversions teaches you to spot. Put the root in your left hand either way.

I–V–vi–IV in C, two ways. Root position (top) moves the whole hand; the smooth shapes (bottom) keep C on the bottom of C, Am and F and drop it to B under G, so every note holds or moves one step.

For a pop groove, give the left hand root and 5th in steady eighths, the "steady-eighth pop" pattern from Accompaniment patterns, and push the right-hand chord on beat 1, the "and" of 2, and beat 4.

The pop groove: the smooth shapes pushed on 1, the "and" of 2 and 4 (a dotted quarter, a dotted quarter and a quarter), over root and 5th in steady eighths.

Open Music Theory, a free online textbook, calls this loop the singer/songwriter schema (a schema is a stock chord pattern), in either rotation, and finds it increasingly common from the mid-1990s on. Started on A minor it reads vi–IV–I–V, and with no V–I cadence either the major chord or its relative minor can sound like home: "Despacito" (2017) loops Bm–G–D–A, which can sound like vi–IV–I–V in D major or i–♭VI–♭III–♭VII in B minor. The same four chords in other orders make two more loops: doo-wop's I–vi–IV–V and the "hopscotch" IV–V–vi–I, which the textbook says has grown more common since about 2010, in songs such as Sam Smith's "Dancing with a Stranger" (2019).

Same four chords, three loops. Open Music Theory tells them apart by how home arrives: from V in doo-wop, from IV in the pop loop, and by a skip from vi in hopscotch.

Doo-wop: I–vi–IV–V in 12/8

Reorder the same four chords as I–vi–IV–V and you have what Open Music Theory calls the doo-wop schema, after its common use in ballads of the 1950s and early 1960s. The Five Satins' "In the Still of the Night" (1956) loops it a chord per bar, the Penguins' "Earth Angel" (1954) puts two chords in each bar on its published lead sheet, and Ben E. King's "Stand by Me" (1961) stretches it over eight bars, holding I and vi for two bars each. The same chords run through the verse of the Police's "Every Breath You Take."

Every step is easy on the ear: I to vi keeps C and E, IV is a gentle move away, and V gives each pass a classical full stop into the next I. Swap IV for ii and you get I–vi–ii–V, the jazz turnaround below, a swap The chords of a key asks you to try.

The "Earth Angel" lead sheet is in 12/8: four big beats, each split in three, which our Time Signatures II sheet calls "the slow roll of blues and doo-wop." Repeat each chord on six eighth-note pulses and feel the four big beats underneath.

Doo-wop's I–vi–IV–V in 12/8, two chords to a bar as on the "Earth Angel" lead sheet. C holds through C, Am and F; under G it drops to B.

Blues: the 12-bar form

The 12-bar blues is a form rather than a loop: three four-bar lines, with four bars of I, two of IV and two of I, then V, IV and two bars of I. In a standard blues every chord is a dominant 7th (Identify the dominant 7ths & inversions drills three of them in all four positions), and the last line comes home through IV rather than straight from V. Elvis Presley's "Hound Dog" (1956, in C) and Little Richard's "Long Tall Sally" (in F) follow this map bar for bar in de Clercq and Temperley's analyses, and Ray Charles's "What'd I Say" (1959, in E) adds a V in bar 12 to turn around into the next chorus. Our 12-Bar Blues sheet lays out the same twelve bars with close C, F and G7 shapes.

Ray Charles at a night concert in the RAI building, Amsterdam, on May 11, 1963. His "What'd I Say" (1959) is a 12-bar blues in E, and "Hit the Road Jack" (1961), further down, walks the Andalusian bass line. Photo: Hugo van Gelderen / Anefo, CC0, via Nationaal Archief and Wikimedia Commons.

For a clear, light voicing, play only the 3rd and 7th of each chord over the root. E and B♭ (C7) slip down to E♭ and A (F7), and F and B (G7) sit a half step above C7's pair, so the right hand never moves more than a whole step.

The 12-bar blues in C with guide tones, just the 3rd and 7th of each chord over its root. From C7 to F7 both notes slip down a half step; G7's pair sits a half step above C7's and a whole step above F7's.

Rock: I–IV–V and the borrowed ♭VII

Early rock and roll leaned on the same three primary chords (The primary chords: I, IV & V). In de Clercq and Temperley's corpus of 100 songs from Rolling Stone's "500 Greatest Songs of All Time" (the top 20 from each decade, 1950s to 1990s), I, IV and V make up more than 95 percent of the harmony in the 1950s songs; across all five decades, IV is the most common chord after I and the one heard most often just before it. Loops of I, IV and V drive Ritchie Valens's "La Bamba" (C–F–G7), the Beatles' "Twist and Shout" (D–G–A7) and the Troggs' "Wild Thing" (A–D–E–D, I–IV–V–IV).

Try the power-chord sound of rock guitar at the piano: root, 5th and octave, no 3rd, so the chord is neither major nor minor. Sliding one shape from chord to chord makes parallel 5ths, a motion Four-part harmony teaches you to avoid in a hymn; in rock it is the sound. Then play the same loop with smooth triads.

Rock's I–IV–V–IV in C two ways: power chords (root, 5th and octave, no 3rd) sliding in parallel, then the smooth triad shapes.

Rock's other signature is ♭VII. Borrow B♭ from C minor and C–B♭–F–C sounds like classic rock at once. Open Music Theory says the chord is borrowed from the Mixolydian mode, a major scale with a lowered 7th (The modes). The theorist Walter Everett hears it another way: ♭VII–IV–I is a chain of plagal moves (IV of IV, then IV, then home) that he calls the double plagal, and he says it "is often incorrectly said to have a modal basis." His example is the celebrated coda of "Hey Jude" (1968, F–E♭–B♭–F); the Rolling Stones' "Sympathy for the Devil" (1968) loops the same pattern in E. In the corpus, ♭VII is the fourth most common chord, though classical music rarely uses it.

I–♭VII–IV–I in C, the double plagal. The B♭ chord borrows its root from C minor, and the right hand stays around middle C: only the B♭ chord lifts it, by a step or a 3rd.

Jazz: ii–V–I and the I–vi–ii–V turnaround

The ii–V–I is, in Open Music Theory's words, "one of the most important progressions in jazz music," heard at cadences and as a building block all through a tune. Jazz players usually add a 7th to each chord: Dm7–G7–Cmaj7 in C major, and Bm7♭5–E7–Am7 in A minor, where ii is half-diminished (Chord symbols decodes the suffixes). "Autumn Leaves" uses both kinds: it opens with a ii7–V7–I in G major, then turns to E minor with a minor ii–V.

Follow two notes per chord, the 3rd and the 7th, called guide tones. The 7th of each chord slips down a step into the next chord's 3rd, while the other guide tone holds or moves a half step, so the right hand barely moves. These are the voicings of our ii–V–I sheets, in every major and minor key. The minor 7th and The dominant 7th build each chord from scratch, and Name the seventh chords tests all five kinds.

ii–V–I in C major and in A minor, with the voicings of our ii–V–I sheets. Each chord's 7th steps down into the next chord's 3rd: C to B and F to E in C major, A to G♯ and D to C in A minor.

The turnaround I–vi–ii–V links the end of a phrase back to its start. "Blue Moon" (1934) is built on it, and so are the first two bars of George Gershwin's "I Got Rhythm" (1930), whose chords, the "rhythm changes," were reused in hundreds of published tunes, from Charlie Parker's "Anthropology" to the theme from The Flintstones.

Mary Lou Williams, jazz pianist, composer and arranger, at the piano in New York around 1946. Photo: William P. Gottlieb, public domain, via the Library of Congress and Wikimedia Commons.

Comp the turnaround (accompany it with chords) with a swing feel: strike each chord on beat 1 and again on the "and" of 2, while the left hand plays root and 5th in half notes. Swing Eighths shows how to count swing.

The I–vi–ii–V turnaround comped with a swing feel: a dotted quarter on beat 1, an accented eighth on the "and" of 2, then rest, over root and 5th in half notes.

The circle-of-fifths sequence

The ii–V–I's roots fall by 5ths: D, G, C. Chain more falling 5ths and you get the circle-of-fifths sequence, in which every root falls a 5th. In A minor it runs Am7–Dm7–G7–Cmaj7–Fmaj7–Bm7♭5–E7 and back to Am7. Draw the roots on The Circle of Fifths and the sequence walks around the clock one notch at a time, with one shortcut: F to B, a diminished 5th that keeps every chord inside the key.

The sequence on the circle of fifths. Each root falls a perfect 5th, one notch counterclockwise, except F to B, the diminished 5th that keeps the chords in A minor.

The verse of Gloria Gaynor's "I Will Survive" (1978) walks these roots in A minor: Am, Dm, G, Cmaj7, Fmaj7, Bm7♭5. The opening of "Autumn Leaves" runs the same kind of chain in G major and E minor. Play it with guide tones again: the 3rds and 7ths step down in two lines while the left hand zigzags.

The circle-of-fifths sequence in A minor with guide tones. The right hand's two lines only hold or step down (C, C, B, B, A, A, G♯, G under G, F, F, E, E, D, D, C) while the left hand zigzags, up a 4th and down a 5th by turns, through roots that fall by 5ths.

The Andalusian cadence: i–♭VII–♭VI–V

In minor, walk the bass down A–G–F–E and put a chord on each step: Am–G–F–E, or i–♭VII–♭VI–V. Open Music Theory calls it the lament schema, after the mourning songs that Baroque composers built over falling bass lines; it is also called the Andalusian cadence (cadencia andaluza), the name flamenco guitarists use. The last chord is E major, whose G♯ pulls back up to A, so the loop keeps wanting to start again. The published arrangement of Ray Charles's "Hit the Road Jack" (1961) walks its bass A–G–F–E (the record is in A♭ minor), and Dire Straits' "Sultans of Swing" (1978) runs Dm–C–B♭–A7.

Play it two ways: slide one root-position shape down with the bass, or climb with the right hand as the bass falls, which avoids parallel 5ths and octaves.

The Andalusian cadence in A minor two ways: one root-position shape sliding down in parallel with the bass (top), or the right hand climbing against it (bottom). Either way, the G♯ in the E chord rises to A.

Flamenco has its own way of hearing these chords. The guitarist Manolo Sanlúcar treats the E chord rather than A minor as home, which makes the same descent iv–♭III–♭II–I in the Phrygian mode on E.

A café cantante in Seville in the 1880s, with dancers, clapping performers and a guitarist on stage. Photo: Emilio Beauchy; scan by Carlos Teixidor Cadenas, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons (cropped).

Hip-hop: loops that circle instead of resolving

In the rap tracks of de Clercq and Temperley's corpus the harmony barely moves. Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five's "The Message" (1982) sits on one minor chord, Dr. Dre's "Nuthin' but a 'G' Thang" rocks between two (i–v in B minor), and in Public Enemy's "Bring the Noise" both analysts found no triadic harmony at all. Eminem's "Stan" (2000) loops a sample of Dido's "Thank You"; the published sheet music gives the loop as G♯m–E–F♯ (i–♭VI–♭VII). The chorus of his "Love the Way You Lie" (2010) takes all four chords of the pop loop from the minor side: Gm–E♭–B♭–F, or i–♭VI–♭III–♭VII.

Here is that minor loop in A minor, Am–F–C–G, played with the same four hand shapes as the pop loop. Hold the chords and let the left hand push on 1, the "and" of 2, and 4. Then try the two-chord version, A minor to E minor, with E holding on top.

Two minor loops. Top: i–♭VI–♭III–♭VII, the pop loop's four shapes started on A minor, over a bass that pushes on 1, the "and" of 2 and 4. Bottom: the two-chord i–v; E stays on top while the other two notes step down and back.

Neither loop contains the G♯ that pulls to A, so there is no full stop, only another lap.

Move any progression to a new key

Because numerals name scale degrees, not letters, moving a progression takes three steps: write it in numerals, count the new key's scale, and build the same numbers. I–V–vi–IV becomes G–D–Em–C in G major and F–C–Dm–B♭ in F major. Keep the hand shapes from C and only the letters change; the key signature supplies the F♯ in the D chord and the B♭ in the B♭ chord.

I–V–vi–IV moved to G and F. The hand shapes and numerals are exactly those of C; the key signature supplies F♯ for the D chord and B♭ for the B♭ chord.

Transposition teaches the same scale-degree method with a tune, Transpose the melody gives you one to work out, and Chords & Progressions has the same kind of smooth shapes in every major and minor key, with V7 in place of V.

Transposing in three steps, from C major to G major.

A 15-minute progression workout

Pick one progression a day, give it four passes of about three minutes each, then move it:

1. Roots only. Left hand alone, four slow beats per chord, saying the numerals out loud.
2. Root-position chords. Add the right hand, stacking each chord up from its root.
3. Smooth shapes. Replay it with the closest shapes and notice which notes stay put.
4. The groove. Add a rhythm that suits the style (the pop, doo-wop, rock, jazz and hip-hop figures each give you one), slowly, with a metronome.

Finish by playing it in G and F. Then test your ears with Round 2 of Ear Training: Cadences & Progressions, which plays a loop and asks you which one it is, and when you can name chords on paper, try Roman numeral analysis.

The workout: four passes, then two new keys.

Keep the cheat sheet below on your music stand while you work through the styles.

The main progressions in this guide on one page, in C major or A minor, with songs to listen for.

Free worksheets for this lesson

• The chords of a key — the seven chords of C major, their numerals and their three jobs
• Name the chords of the key — numerals for chords in four major keys
• Roman numeral analysis — name every chord in three progressions, inversions included
• The primary chords: I, IV & V — tonic, subdominant and dominant, with a Listen panel
• The Primary Chords in Every Key — I, IV and V in root position and in smooth shapes
• Chords & Progressions in Every Key — four smooth shapes and three loops in each major and minor key
• Cadences in Every Key — perfect, plagal, half and deceptive cadences
• The three minors — natural, harmonic and melodic minor, and why V is major in minor
• Borrowed chords — iv, ♭VI, ♭VII and ♭III in C major, borrowed from C minor
• The modes — the seven white-key modes, Mixolydian included
• The 12-Bar Blues — the twelve-bar map in C with close shapes and audio
• Time Signatures II: Compound Time — 6/8, 9/8, 12/8 and 6/4, felt in big beats
• Four-part harmony — four voices on one chord, and the parallel 5ths and octaves to avoid
• The ii–V–I in Every Key — guide tones and a both-hands loop, in major and minor keys
• The dominant 7th — G7, its tritone and how it resolves to C
• The minor 7th — Dm7 and the ii7–V7–I
• Name the seventh chords — twenty root-position seventh chords to name
• Build the chords — build triads and seventh chords on a given root
• Identify the triads & inversions — C, F and G chords in every position
• Identify the dominant 7ths & inversions — G7, C7 and D7 in all four positions
• Chord symbols — the common chord symbols, each built on C
• Swing Eighths — written even, played long-short, and how to count it
• The Circle of Fifths — all twelve keys around the clock
• Accompaniment patterns — four left-hand grooves, including steady-eighth pop
• Transposition — the interval method and the scale-degree method
• Transpose the melody — move a short tune from C into G and F
• Ear Training: Cadences & Progressions — name cadences and loops by ear

Hear the numbers everywhere

Learn a handful of numeral patterns and new songs start to sound like old friends: the pop loop, doo-wop's I–vi–IV–V, the 12-bar map, rock's ♭VII, the ii–V–I and the minor loops of hip-hop. Learn each one in C, give it a groove, then take it to a new key. A Tissimo piano teacher can listen in a live lesson and tell you whether your voicings are as smooth as they look on paper.

Sources

• Part 2: I analyzed the chords of 1300 popular songs for patterns (Dave Carlton, 2012) — Hooktheory
• A corpus analysis of rock harmony (de Clercq and Temperley, Popular Music 30/1, 2011, Cambridge University Press) — authors' copy
• Four-Chord Schemas (Hughes and Lavengood) — Open Music Theory
• Making Sense of Rock's Tonal Systems (Walter Everett, Music Theory Online 10/4, 2004) — Society for Music Theory
• Blues Harmony (Hughes and Lavengood) — Open Music Theory
• Modal Schemas (Lavengood) — Open Music Theory
• Classical Schemas (in a Pop Context) (Hughes and Shaffer) — Open Music Theory
• ii–V–I (Lavengood) — Open Music Theory
• Autumn Leaves — JazzStandards.com
• I Got Rhythm — JazzStandards.com
• Love the Way You Lie, official sheet music (Eminem feat. Rihanna) — Musicnotes
• El compromiso y la generosidad de Manolo Sanlúcar (Norberto Torres Cortés, El Olivo 88, 2001; in Spanish) — Triste y Azul, archived