Lauren Bateman teaches five chord progressions that unlock hundreds of songs. Learn 1-5-6-4, 6-4-1-5, and three others in the key of G, with examples from Wagon Wheel, Wonderful Tonight, and Zombie. A capo and doubled measures make them easier to play.
March 17, 2022
1-5-6-4; 6-4-1-5; 1-6-4-5 (I–vi–IV–V / I6,45 in transcript); doubled-measure variant of progressions; 6-4-5-1.
Hey, guitar enthusiast, I'm going to show you five chord progressions that you can learn today to play thousands of songs that you know and love. But it's a little easier than you think. Okay? And I'm going to show you exactly how to do it right now.
So before I get into the five examples and play some songs for you, what I want to talk about is, Lauren, what is a chord progression? And why is it important to know? So I had a student who came in one time, and, you know, he knew a bunch of chords and. But he didn't know what to do with them. And he's like, all I want to do is play songs, but I'm really frustrated because I don't know what to do. And I said, well, you know what? Let's learn some chord progressions. And all that chord progressions are. Is an order in which chords are played. There are certain formulas that are very common, and we're going to go through some in this video here. And that's what we do. We take chords that we know. I usually like starting with G, E minor, C and D. And if you need the easy versions of those chords, you can go check out my video up here. And go check that out, because that's what we do on this channel. We make guitar make sense and we keep things simple so that you can start having more fun with your guitar today. So to show you just a brief example of what a chord progression could be, it could be something like G, E minor, C, D. And you would play G followed by an E minor followed by C followed by D. And then you would just play that again. G, E minor, C and D. Okay? And all that is, that's the chord progression. G, E minor, C, D. And you play that over and over again until you change chord progressions. And usually songs, this doesn't happen all the time. Sometimes chords stick with one chord progression for the entire song. Okay. Songs like can't you see by Marshall Tucker Band, same chord progression for the entire song. And sometimes songs will change chord progression, so they use one chord progression in the verse and another chord progression in the chorus. So what I'm going to do now is give you guys some great examples of chord progressions along with songs that you might be familiar with. So this first progression I'm going to show you is very, very common in pop music. It's going to be the 1, 5, 6, 4 chord progression. And I know what you're saying, Lauren, what does that mean? So the numbers are just telling you what chord to use. It's a little music theory. But we're just going to keep it simple because I'm going to give you the chords here. We're in what's called the key of G most of these songs, okay? So the G is the first chord in this family of chords, all right? Keys are just families of chords that sound beautiful together. G is number one. A minor is number two. B minor is number three. C is number four. D is number five. E minor is number six. And then we have this crazy chord called an F sharp diminished, which is on the end as our seven chord. But we don't need to worry about that. The only chords we're going to focus are on the I, 4, 5, and 6. G, C, D, and E minor. So let's take a song like Wagon Wheel, okay? So this is your typical 1, 5, 6, 4 progression.
So you definitely hear Wagon Wheel coming through on that. The other thing, if we put a capo on the second fret, we could do Drink a Beer is another common song.
Now, the cool thing about Drink a Beer is it uses this first progression for the chorus, but it actually uses the next progression I'm going to show you for the verse. So it's going to be G, D, C, D, and it's going to sound like this.
And if I take the capo off, you might hear an Eric Clapton song.
This is wonderful tonight. So, see, same chord progression, same chords, different song.
So the next one, we're actually going to be starting on the minor chord. This is a very, very common thing to do. It is 6, 4, 1, 5. And you may have heard this in songs like Zombie.
Or a song like what if God Was One of Us?
And One of Us by Joan Osborne is another one of those songs where that chord progression is used for the majority of the song. There's a slight little change, but I would say 90 to 95% of that song is just one single chord progression. The next one I'm going to show you is what we call I6,45. So we're starting on the G chord. We're going to the E minor chord. Then we're going to the C chord, then the D chord. So think of a song like Pearl Jam's Last Kiss. Oh, where, oh, where can my baby be right?
I found love.
For me.
Down and just dive right in and follow my.
Lead.
So this is a great example of a song where we actually doubled the chord progression. So if you saw from the diagram over there, we had two ones, then we had two, sixes, Then we had two fours and then two fives. So you can see these chord progressions can be a half measure like they were in Joan Osborne's One of Us. They could be a full measure like they were in something like Last Kiss or in this example of Ed Sheeran. The chord progression can be doubled so that each chord is two measures. So there's lots of variety and opportunities just with these simple chord progressions. This next chord progression is a lot of fun. It is 6, 4, 5, 1. As found in songs like Neil Young's Heart of Gold.
Now, if you guys enjoyed this video on chord progressions and my simplified teaching method, I highly encourage you to go check out my seven level guitar system where I take students from knowing absolutely nothing on guitar to playing their favorite songs in just a few months. So please go to the description below, check that out, and I'll see you guys in another lesson video real soon.
Hello there. My name is Heather and I started taking guitar lessons with Lauren Bateman because I wanted to take my guitar playing to the next level. I didn't want to bounce around the Internet learning bits and pieces here and there. I was looking for a structured approach, something that had a logical progression that was delivered in a manner I could easily follow. If that's not enough, you also get access to a private Facebook group that's full of encouraging, positive, supportive people. So if you're ready to play the guitar, I encourage you, sign up and get started.
