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Learning Ukulele with Curt
Common Chord Progressions and Remembering Songs
Understanding the similarities between chord progressions and songs can greatly enhance your ability to remember and play a wide variety of songs. It's fascinating how much common ground (chord harmony) exists among different musical compositions.
Main Category: Chords Main Instrument: Chords
6 August 2026
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Understanding the similarities between chord progressions and songs can greatly enhance your ability to remember and play a wide variety of songs. It's fascinating how much common ground (chord harmony) exists among different musical compositions.
This series of lessons delves into the exploration of common chord progressions, uncovering the underlying connections between songs.
Remembering songs is akin to recalling the directions for a road trip. Just like following turn-by-turn directions, consulting road maps, observing signs, and recognizing landmarks, songs rely on chords, harmonic cells, and overall song structure.
Equipped with a few musical tools and a grasp of chord principles and progressions, you can begin unraveling the intricate workings of a song. It's remarkable how much songs have in common, and each one possesses its own unique direction, signs, and landmarks.
By honing your understanding of chord progressions and their relationships, you can navigate through songs with greater ease and appreciate the underlying patterns and structures that make music so captivating.
10 lessons in the Common Chord Progressions and Remembering Songs LessonSERIES :
Listening to songs and wanting to play the same songs on ukulele – that's what draws most people to the ukulele. That and it looks like a load of fun and easy to play – which it is. Then you need to actually remember the songs that you're learning, so you can play them again. And, hopefully, not have to read them off a sheet all the time.
In the key of C major Pachelbel's Canon is: C G Am Em F C F G. This is a I V VI III IV I IV V in harmonic analysis notation. In Nashville Numbering it's 1 5 6 3 4 1 4 5. It is a full diatonic progression with all the chords coming from it's parent major scale. A bit of a varaition of the Four Chord Pop progression.
The Andalusian cadence is a term adopted from flamenco music for a chord progression comprising four chords descending stepwise. It is otherwise known as the minor descending tetrachord. Traceable back to the Renaissance, its effective sonorities made it one of the most popular progressions in classical music.
In jazz and jazz harmony, the chord progression from IV7 to bVII7 to I has been nicknamed the backdoor progression or the backdoor II-V. This name derives from an assumption that the normal progression to the tonic, the II-V-I turnaround ( II-V7 to I ) is, by inference, the front door. It can be considered a minor plagal cadence in traditional theory.
Series Info
Chords
Chords
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Chord a Day, January 11th - D7
Learn a new Ukulele chord every day of the year. The chord for January 11th is D7. This partial D7 is ofter referred to as the Hawaiian D7 chord after its use in the Chord sequence C D7 G7, a common turnaround in Hawaiian music. So much so that it's called the Hawaiian Turnaround.
Chord a Day, March 3rd - F7
Learn a new Ukulele chord every day of the year. The chord for March 3rd is F7. We are now entering into the so-called “Jazz” chord, world of chords. Technically “Jazz” chords are simply 4-part contemporary chords that find the use in a wide variety of traditional and contemporary music.
Hearing the Changes
Hearing The Changes is knowing what the chords of a song or chord progression are and when they change. This lesson gets you on the road to developing this ability. This involves know the chords of the keys and scales that are used for common progressions and songs. And the ability to recognize the sound of intervals, the distance between intervals.
