You may have heard of the four chord progression, but think of it more like a family of chord conversions, one of which you may actually know really, really well. Heart and Soul was amongst the first songs I ever learned on piano, and it goes C, A minor, F, G, or 1, 6, 4, 5. And it does this thing where it loops around over and over again, in part because it’s going back and forth between that C and its relative minor.
The ambiguity between major and minor may not be evident, but what we do start to hear is a cycle. It’s the ureboros, or the snake whose tail is in its mouth. What’s surprising is if we displace the downbeat.
Suddenly it sounds like an entirely different chord progression, and there are variations on this, but one thing they tend to have in common is it’s not clear where they end. What is clear is that they tend to want to keep going. If you like talking about stuff like this, you might enjoy our Musician Basics elective.
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