DANIEL CAESAR CHORD FORMULA - How to Write Chord Progressions like Daniel Caesar

Hello, beautiful people. Have you ever wanted to know how to write a beautiful progression like this? Or maybe this? Or how about something like this. If you weren't familiar with them? The first two songs I played were Blessed by Daniel Caesar and Best Part by Daniel Caesar. And the third one that I wrote was actually a song that I made up called Incomplete, and I wrote it using a formula that I'm going to share with you guys today. Daniel has so many great songs that I've noticed a pattern in some of his most popular ones. In addition to the two that I played earlier, Japanese Denim, Open Up, Toronto, 2014, and Lovien. All utilize the same formula. And today, I'll show you guys how to utilize it for yourselves to make your own beautiful progressions. First things first, I need to make sure that we're all on the same page as far as what I'm going to be calling the chords. If you're familiar with the Nashville number system or just like the Roman numerals type stuff, you can skip this part. Basically, I'm not going to be calling out the progressions by letter name. I'm going to be calling them out by numbers. So, for example, if I'm in the key of C and I say play the I chord, I'm saying play a C chord. If I say play the II chord, it's going to be a D minor chord, because C is 1, D is 2. So 3 would be E, F, 4, G, 5, so on and so forth. There will also be some other chords outside of the key. For example, like a BVII dominant chord. So in the key of C, C is 1, B is 7. And then if you go 1/2 step below 7, you get flat 7. So B flat dominant, going to I. It's not that complicated. You guys will get it. Just keep watching and I'm sure it'll all make sense. So the basic formula is this one, also known as the tonic. To take me to four, I'll explain to four to some form of four minor. If that sounds like gibberish, don't be afraid. I have made a really useful chart to help us understand this. Boom. So basically, what this chart explains is that within those four steps that I just outlined, there are multiple chords that could potentially fulfill that category. So in the case of best part, you have one, and then it goes to a V minor chord, which is actually outside of the key. And then it goes to iv, and then it goes to flat six major seven, which, as you can see, is a form of four minor. And if you guys want me to explain this concept even further about this, like, forms of IV minor, I can get to it in another video. But basically everything that you need to know is right here in this chart. And all you have to do is mix and match. Let's take a look at some of Daniel's existing songs and see how this chart makes sense. So once again, you got Best part one. I'm in the key of D, by the way, five minor. So an A minor chord and then to four G major seven, and then it goes to flat six major seven. And that's your best part. So like, let's say I wanted to be a little bit more creative and I wanted to spice it up, you know, maybe I wanted to use those first three chords. We can use this chart to swap out the last chord and it'll totally still work. Let's try it. So we have one five minor to four, and instead of going to flat six major seven, I'm just going to go to four minor. That totally takes us perfectly back to one. I'll play it one more time. The new version, one five minor four, four minor. And I'm playing four minor seven. And you could even sing the same melodies.

You don't know, Babe, when you hold me and kiss me slowly it's the sweetest thing.

Boom. Right? It's pretty crazy. Let's take a look at another one. So there's another one that he has open up. I don't even know exactly what key you place it. And I'll just keep this in the key of D. So it goes 1, and then it goes to flat 5 dominant sharp 11. This is a pretty complicated chord. And then it goes to four, and then it goes to. To flat seven, I believe.

It's been such a long time since I set foot in the club.

Something like that. Basically. That song also follows it perfectly. Each one of these from. From the category, there's another one, Toronto, 2014. It's really similar to best part. It's just one five minor four. And then instead of going to. To that flat six major seven, it goes to flat seven dominant.

I can hear the bells ringing Reminding us of the butter, the sinking. It's father Time, right?

Something like that. So I hope you guys are starting to see, like, how useful this chart can be. One of the things that I want to talk about is that sometimes you can use two chords in the same measure. So the places that you can do this are, for example, let's say we had one. And if you notice on the chart, you know, I have five minor as a choice, but I also have five minor one dominant in the same bar as a chord choice. So let's like plug that into best part. Instead of playing just five minor, we're going to add that one dominant chord and it's going to be the same. It's going to be 15 minor, 1 dominant, 4 sweetest thing or whatever. Right? So sometimes we can just use five minor to get to four and you can also do the opposite. You can just go 1 1, 1 dominant to 4. You can totally skip the 5 minor. Let's listen to that.

You don't know, babe, when you hold me and kiss me slowly it's the sweetest thing.

Right? It totally works. So our options to getting to four, not only do we have five minor, we have five minor one dominant and then we also have just one dominant. Now let's take a look at that idea of two chords in a measure in a different song. Let's look at Japanese denim, which is different than the other songs. But I still feel like followed the formula. So we got 1, I'm still in the key B to 5, A major to. Instead of going to 4 this time it actually goes to 2. As you can see, 2 is also an option. And then it goes to 4 minor flat 7 dominant to 1. So that's kind of like what we were talking about earlier when we're going to four, but this time we're doing it on our like form of four minor. And so that could either be just four minor. Wait for you. Just four minor. Back to one or how the song actually goes four minor flat seven one. Or we could just do flat seven one five, two flat seven one. Right. So when we're going to four or we're going to one, we can use two measures in a bar, right? Either four minor flat seven to one, or just four minor or just flat seven. And when we're going to iv, we can do five minor flat or V minor I dominant, which is different than our regular I chord to iv or just one dominant to IV or just V minor to iv. Alright, before I end the video, I want to go over these two bonus moves that Daniel Caesar I don't think has ever actually used in his songs, but but still can be used within this formula. First one I want to talk about is for our form of 4 minor, we're going to go to a flat 2 major 7 chord. So let's say this one works really great after you go to the two chords. So let's say we had like a one, then we went to five major, then we went to two, then we went to flat two major seven. Very pretty. Back to one. Cool. So that's another way that you can use that. And then the last one I want to talk about is this one is. Is very unique. It's a five sus chord with a flat nine. So what that could look like. Let's say we go to one five minor to four. And now we're going to go. Very interesting sound there. I'll play it one more time. I got one last time. I go 1 dominant to 4 to 5 sus with a flat 9, Also known as four minor over five. Because really what we're playing here is I have an A in the bass, and then I have. It's a G. It's a G minor chord up there. Back to D. Cool. I hope this is helpful. I hope this will help you guys write some really awesome, unique chord progressions. If you have any questions or anything is unclear, please let me know and also leave in the comments what some of the progressions that you found. Daniel Caesar is not the only artist to use this, but I noticed that he does use it a lot. And you can see there's actually within this framework, there's so much room for variety, and so be creative with it. And if you have any questions or you guys are interested in more like, harmony songwriting lessons, please let me know because this is also something I'm super passionate about. Awesome. Have a great day, everybody.