Do THIS For More Interesting Chord Progressions (NO MUSIC THEORY NECESSARY)

Added: 2026-05-03

[00:00:00]Sometimes going very simple is the best option for a song, but sometimes you want to add a little bit of spice in your records. And for me, one of the best ways to do that is to add some extra seasoning on some of the chords.

[00:00:10]And I think that this can get really overwhelming if you don't have a ton of music theory experience, if you don't have a lot of experience with using different scales and modes and, you know, chord changes. But there are a couple really, really simple things that you can do with basically no music theory skills. and whatever you do need.

[00:00:25]I'll spend a couple minutes teaching you at the beginning of this video where you can go in and you can add quite a bit of texture and depth and uh just interest to very very simple chord progressions where it's going to add that extra little detail, but it's not going to step on the song. It's not going to get too heavy. It's not going to get too intense. So, we're going to dive in and check all of that out in one second. But before you do, my name is Austin. You're watching Make Pop Music. We do videos like this every single Friday, so definitely subscribe so you don't miss those. Also, if you want to support us or if you want any more like courses, sample packs, preset packs, MIDI packs, uh free content, that's all at makepusic.com. There will be a link in the description, but you can check that all out after the video. Let's dive in because there is some stuff that I want to talk about to get started. I kind of want to at least dive in with what we're going to call the number system. So, you've probably heard people go a 251 chord progression, a 4 5 67 chord progression, uh 3 615 chord progression.

[00:01:19]And so, I want to break all that down before we start adding extra flavor to the notes. It's important to understand what we're even playing. So, today we're going to be working in the key of C mostly and specifically C major and C minor. We're not going to really branch out onto any uh you know, super interesting scales like Lydian or mixelyian or uh dorian or anything like that. We're going to keep it to C major and C minor for these examples, but you can start to apply this to a lot of different scales and modes and keys. So C major, we're starting there because it's very easy. It's all the white keys on the keyboard starting at C. So we have C, D, E, F, G, A, B, and then back to C. So for the major scale, you start at C. You're going to go a whole step up to D, which is two semmit tones. Then you're going to go another whole step up, two more semmit tones. Then you're going to go a half step up, one semmit tone. A whole step up, two semmit tones.

[00:02:12]A whole step up, two semmit tones. A whole step up, two semmit tones. And then a half step up back to your root note, which is C. And it's going to be something very similar in C minor.

[00:02:22]However, we're going to change the gap between notes. So in C minor, you have C, then you're going to take a whole step up to D. Then you're going to take a half step up to E flat. Then you're gonna take a whole step up to F. Then you're gonna take a whole step up to G.

[00:02:38]Then a half step up to A flat. A half a whole step up to B flat. And then a whole step up to C. So root note whole half whole half whole back to the brute.

[00:02:51]So as you can see now both in the key of C major minor.

[00:03:00]So each have their distinctions. You can do this all over the keyboard. We're just using C because I feel like it's the most easy to get to know. But one of my first little cheat codes is if you're not super proficient in piano or music theory or anything, feel free to just play everything in the key of C. C major is the same exact thing as A minor. So there's relative major and minor scales.

[00:03:20]So if you want to write in minor and use all the white keys, you could just write in A minor. They're technically going to be the exact same notes. But it's really easy. If let's say I want to actually make a song in F minor, I play some chord progressions in A minor. So all the white notes and then I just go to my keyboard and I transpose everything down 1 2 3 four semmit tones. So now if I'm playing in a minor technically it's technically an F minor. So you can always transpose, especially if you're not going to be playing live. If you're just trying to get things done in the studio, that's a great way to do it. But for right now, we at least understand C major, C, D, E, F, G, A, B, back to C, and then C minor. C, D, E flat, F, G, A flat, B flat, C. And so those exact notes that we just played for both of those have numbers assigned to them. And this is where you kind of get that number scale, right? This is where you get 1 2 3 4 5 6 7. So we'll go through it. In the key of C major, C is going to be your one chord. D is going to be your two. E is going to be your three. F is going to be your four. G is going to be your five. A is going to be your six. B is your seven. And then you go back to one. So 1 2 3 4 5 6 7. So when you hear somebody say play a four five 61 in the key of C major, you're going to go F because that's 1 2 3 4. So F 4 G5 A6 C1. Let's say they want to play a 6 4 2 1. You'd go 6 4 2 1. Let's say they want to play a 4 6 5 2 4 6 5 2. So everything has a number. It's the same exact thing in a minor scale. And it's going to go C is your 1, D is your two, E flat is your three, F is your four, G is your five, A flat is your six, B flat is your seven, and then back up to C. So, so they share some notes, for example, minor and major, they share the one, they share the two, they share the four, and they share the five. So, what we're going to talk about in this is using that number system uh just to kind of add a little bit of interest because you could do something as basic as let's say a 251 just playing really really basic triads which a triad is the root note the third and the fifth. A 251 triad in C major would be D, F, and uh A right here. So, you have your D minor triad. Then you're going to go to your five, your G major triad, and then you're going to go to your one, your C major triad. And so triad is basically the essential building block for most chords. Again, for a major triad, the root, the third, and the fifth. And since you're in major, that third is going to be right here. If you're playing a minor triad, it's still a root, a third, and the fifth, but your third is right here in the minor. So major triad, minor triad. And so a lot of the time you see chord progressions, you'll see something very simple like let's just lay something down. Let's say we're going to go 4 6 5 1.

[00:06:48]Very simple pop progression using triads. We're in the key of C major. So you have that F major, that A minor, that G major, that C major. The best way that I like to start to kind of add a little bit of spice is changing what type of chord that I'm using. So instead of just doing root notes or triads or just perfect fifths, let's talk about some different options that you have even without a lot of music theory. So we'll just play a C. We're still in the key of C major right now. So we're going to play our C major triad. But one thing that I like to do is use sus chords. So sus is short for suspended. You're going to see sus 2 and sus 4. So for a sus chord, we have this major triad. 1 3 5.

[00:07:31]All you're doing is you're going to move that three to the two for a sus 2. So 1 2 5. There's our C sus 2. Or you can move that three to a four and do a sus 4. 1 4 5.

[00:07:45]And these have quite a bit of different textures. So, let's say you're playing C major. Let's go. Sus 2 4.

[00:07:58]That's still a one in C major, right?

[00:08:01]You're playing the one as a major chord.

[00:08:03]Now, you're playing the one as a sus 2.

[00:08:05]Now you're playing the one as a sus 4.

[00:08:07]And the cool thing about sus 2 and sus 4 is that since two and four are part of a major and minor scale, even if you're in C minor, sus 2 still works.

[00:08:23]Sus 4 also still works. So sus chords are really fun because you can use them in major and minor scales. You can kind of borrow them. They can be a cool way to transition between modulating a major and a minor scale, but that's something for another day that's a little bit more advanced. So sus chords a great way to do it. For example, we have this A minor A sus 2 A sus4. So we have the F, Fsus 2. If we go to Fsus4, we're actually hopping into a slightly different key than C major because that doesn't happen in C major. So it's a cool way that you can kind of borrow notes from other scales. I love sus chords. I use them all the time. If that's not your flavor, if you're not going to go for that like almost like indie pop vibe that I think they work really, really great for, let's say you want something a little bit more R&B, uh you could do what are called chord extensions. So you could go 6, 7th, 9th, 11th. And the way that these work is let's say you have a C major.

[00:09:24]1 3 5. You have the five right here.

[00:09:27]Let's say you want to make it a six. You just add that six right on top. And we know that the six in C major is an A.

[00:09:34]So there you go. You have a C6 now. A C major 6. Let's say we want to have a C major 7. 1 3 5. Let's play the seven.

[00:09:44]Now we have a C major 7. You can do the same thing in minor. Let's say that we have a C minor.

[00:09:50]We need to play the seventh in the minor sc in the minor scale which is at B flat. So there's our minor 7. There's our major 7. Minor 7. major 7. So you're just getting that extra number on the end by adding whatever note that is in your relative key and scale. Right?

[00:10:08]Again, C major, seven's going to be B, C minor, seven's going to be B flat.

[00:10:15]And you can do that also with ninths.

[00:10:17]The interesting thing about 9th, 11th, and 13ths is that we said earlier in this video that it goes 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 and then back to one. The only exception is with chord extensions, right? So, let's say you have your 1, your three, your five, your seven. Now, how the hell are you supposed to get a nine?

[00:10:36]That's going to take us eight. That's technically just a C major with an extra note on top cuz it's that notes already been played. That C has been played down here. So, 1 3 5 7. We need to go to nine. We haven't played a D yet. That D is a two, but 2 + 7, we're getting up to 9. Let's add an 11th. We haven't played that F yet. So 1 3 5 7 9 11.

[00:11:01]You can do the same exact thing in minor. You could play 1 3 5 7 9 11 C minor 11.

[00:11:12]So just to recap, you have your triad, you have your sus 2, you have your sus 4, you have your six, your seven, your nine, and your 11. Those are all technically still C chords. So if you're in the key of C, that's all going to be a one. So when you see something that's like 25 1 that could be something as simple as but that also could be something like two very simple five very simple major 7th maybe even a ninth just to add a little bit of extra spice if you have trouble figuring out what stays in key versus out of key. What I recommend is in your DAW normally you can go in and you can do something like set the key.

[00:12:00]So, we're going to stay in C major.

[00:12:02]Right now, I can select chords and scale. And now, every note that's green, I know is going to be in C major. So, let's say I'm I'm just riffing around, right? Let's say I'm getting too crazy and I'm trying all of these sus chords and augmented chords and and minor chords. Let's do like that. Chord progression actually sounded really cool, but we're not quite in C major. We have this note. We can move it up and then we can hit this. We can move it down and hit that. But we could also just see maybe we're in a slightly different scale. You can play around.

[00:12:40]You can always add these into different things. But it might be the case that we have swapped between two scales by using what are called borrowed chords, which are going to be a whole different video.

[00:12:49]You can circle through everything. And as you can see, just by adding that extra little extension, we've now modulated between two keys quite on accident.

[00:12:59]and it sounds fire. That's going to be one of my other points is like sometimes just play and if something sounds good, you don't necessarily have to know the theory behind it. If it sounds good, it is good. But adding something like those extensions, sus 2, sus 4, major 7, minor 7, 11, whatever, they're going to do a great job. There's another seventh that you're going to commonly see. It's called a dominant 7th. And that essentially happens when you play a major triad. C, E, G. And instead of playing the major 7, you're actually going to play the minor 7. So you're going what's called a flat 7. So 1 3 5 instead of seven. Flat 7. There is your dominant 7. You're going to see that a lot, especially if you're playing seventh and you get to something like the five in a scale, which would be G.

[00:13:43]If we play all the white keys, we're just at a G dominant. To get to a major, you'd have to break out a C major.

[00:13:53]And to get to a minor, you'd also have to break out of C major. So C major, D minor 7, E minor 7, F major 7, G dominant 7, A minor 7, and then this is kind of just a one of those weird once you get to the seven chord, adding a seventh can get tricky. A lot of the time, I'll just play it as a diminished instead. So I'll take that six, take it back up to a seven. And so when I'm stringing together chord progressions, I want to show you a very simple way of taking something very, very simple and just adding extra chords. Right? So let's go simple version. We're going to do four, six, five, back to six.

[00:14:40]That works fine. We've got a major triad, a minor triad, a major triad, back to a minor triad. Let's add something. Let's say we want to make it a little bit more indie poppy Jack Antinoff. He loves these sus chords.

[00:14:51]Let's try some sus twos instead of just having all triads. So Fsus 2, we can do an A minor triad there, but Gsus 2, A sus 4.

[00:15:04]Slightly different. We're technically still playing a 4 6 5 6, but we're adding extra texture. We can do that same thing. Let's do sevenths or ninths.

[00:15:13]Let's do There we go. For that one, we played a major 7. We played a minor 7. We played a dominant nine, and then back to a minor 7. You could also go major 7, minor 7, maybe a a G dominant 6, and then back to an A minor 7. We're still playing the same exact chord progression. We're still playing a 4 six 56, but by adding things like this extra chord. Let me just show you real quick, major 7, minor 7, dominant 6, back to minor 7. And this sounds so much more interesting than this.

[00:16:10]Boring, but little bit more interesting. Back to our traditional. More interesting.

[00:16:19]Wasn't expecting that to go there. Or you can add a little bit of that R&B seasoning on it.

[00:16:25]Nice.

[00:16:28]Nice.

[00:16:29]Kind of jazzy.

[00:16:32]Nice. Or you can go a little bit more R&B. Don't have that jazzy uh dominant ninth in there. That's nice.

[00:16:40]hit that dominant 6 a little bit easier to pallet minor 7th. So just by adding sus major minor 9th dominant 7ths and 9ths things like that do a lot for making chords feel more interesting. And then my last little tip is going to be uh doing what are called chord inversions. Right? So we have our C major.

[00:17:01]We know that's at this point C, E, and G. A C major is the same if you're playing those three notes no matter where you play them in the keyboard. So we're all used to doing this, right? So, thumb on the one, index finger on the three, ring finger on the five, right? But let's say you want to invert that. Let's say you want to take this G. We'll move it an octave down.

[00:17:24]It's a little bit different flavor.

[00:17:25]Still a C major chord. Let's say we want to take this E and move it down. You could do technically it's a C over E, but it's kind of doing the same thing. We could have that G over there.

[00:17:39]still a C major. So you've got C major, C major, C major. All the same chord but with different flavors. And you can do the same things with even these sus chords, uh, 11th chords, seventh chords. So let's go into here. What I want to do is maybe I'll just lay down something. I'll lay down something how it's easy for me to play and then we'll go in and we'll invert the MIDI, right? So let's just go over here. Let's do And let's go to the one right here.

[00:18:22]Really sitting on those sevenths, right?

[00:18:24]But let's make it a little bit more interesting. Maybe let's take this, move that an octave down. Maybe let's take these two and move an octave down. So instead of having this rise, we have this kind of like descending action.

[00:18:35]It's gonna give you a different vibe.

[00:18:37]And then for these, we'll have them all come down here. Nice. That feels normal.

[00:18:45]That feels jazzier. Even though it's just that dominant 7, it feels more interesting.

[00:18:54]It feels more sad, more somber.

[00:18:57]Feels more sad and somber.

[00:19:03]That when it's like When it's rising like that, it feels a bit more hopeful. It's the same exact chord progression. It's a four, a five, a six, and a one in C major. But just by changing the chord inversions, you can do a lot for that. Let's say you want to add something like let's do let's do we're not doing anything too too major there. Let's invert these. I don't like the big jump there. Maybe I'll add in a little extra note here because we had like a what was this? I believe it was like a G5 or something like that. Right there. Let's add in an extra chord just to give us a little bit more structure there. We've got a G dominant 7. Let's make that a G dominant 6 instead.

[00:20:06]And then let's make that rise. So now we have something like this.

[00:20:26]Let's take that down just so we don't have those two dissonant notes next to each other.

[00:20:31]And you can kind of do whatever you want when you have everything set to the key of your song. You can see if we do anything that's going to get out of pocket and take us out of C major. You can do the same exact things that we've just done in this video in minor. you can do them in different uh you know modes. You'll start to kind of swap between different keys if you start doing some of that. But just by knowing the general number system, knowing generally what happens in a major or a minor scale, knowing what different chord types you can introduce like suses and chord extensions and diminish chords, and then knowing how to invert those chords is such an easy way to just hear, oh, I need to make a four five one progression. But how do I make that interesting? How do I make that feel more like Justin Bieber? Or how do I make that feel more like Taylor Swift?

[00:21:14]Or how do I make that feel more like The Weekend? What kind of chord extensions do you want to use? What kind of chord voicings do you want to use? What kind of borrowing do you want to use between major and minor? These are things that you'll kind of get into. And you don't need a ton of music theory. You just need to be able to basically check your work by going in and seeing like, hey, I like what I just did. Did that all happen to fall in C major? If good, great. And if not, and you like the way it sounds, that's also totally fine. You don't need to be in one key for a whole song. You don't need to be perfectly, you know, sticking to the seven notes that happen to fall in that scale. Do whatever sounds great, but if that feels overwhelming, try some of these tricks.

[00:21:48]I think that they really, really might help. But hopefully this video was helpful for you guys. If you liked it, we do videos like it every single Friday, so make sure that you subscribe.

[00:21:55]Also, if you want to check out our website, makepusic.com. We have start to finish production courses specifically in the style of like R&B, dark pop, uh, pop, indie rock, and alternatives. So, if you want to learn that from start to finish, check those out. If you want to grab any of our sample packs or preset packs, they're all available over there, including the new R&B mini packs we just dropped. But we really, really appreciate the support. Hopefully this video helped, especially coming from somebody who is almost music theory illiterate myself. But I'll see you guys next week. Much love. Peace.