Comments on: The 4-Chord Recipe for Cooking Hit Songs

By: Ayeni Emmanuel

Ayeni Emmanuel — Sat, 19 Nov 2011 10:04:46 +0000

Yes is the fact that the minor key or chord are used more often than the major keys bcos of the melodious sound it give,than the major keys

By: kerem bekman

kerem bekman — Sun, 21 Aug 2011 19:13:23 +0000

Axis of Awesome is very good band. Your compiled chords is the major scala notes’s I – vi – IV – V keys.. But I think, minor scale notes is more using than major scale keys.

By: Anung

Anung — Fri, 29 Jul 2011 19:26:12 +0000

I never heard about Axis of Awesome before, but after i watched the video i can say that was really awesome. They gather a lot of song that have same chord and sang all the song in medley. That was great performance.

By: emon

emon — Sun, 10 Jul 2011 11:38:25 +0000

Thanks for visiting, Travis!

By: Travis

Travis — Sun, 10 Jul 2011 08:19:44 +0000

Actually Shawn, it couldn’t be done with almost any song. The song would have to have that same progression pattern for it to even sound remotely correct. You couldn’t play The Wallflowers One Headlight over an Am-C-D chord progression and have it sound near correct. The progression intervals aren’t the same. You could FORCE it into the progression, but that’s not what they did. But take two songs with a different key and the same chord progression pattern, and then yes, by knowing that pattern you could transpose any song into any key you like. I can’t tell you the number of songs I know that use the same G-D-Em-C chord progression (three that come to mind are Hootie and the Blowfish’s Hold My Hand, Matchbox 20′s 3am, and Third Eye Blind’s Semi-Chatmed Life) The trick to writing music is not the progression itself but how you use it, how you play it. BTW I had never heard of Axis of Awesome. Thanks for posting this Emon

By: emon

emon — Thu, 16 Jun 2011 14:02:36 +0000

I couldn’t agree with you more. They were doing it to prove a point. Thanks for visiting!

By: shawn

shawn — Thu, 16 Jun 2011 04:29:28 +0000

The originals are not all written in the same cord nor key. These funny guys simply are singing all these songs in the same key over incorrect cording but if done in the proper way with good singing skills…we’ll the point is made.

It could almost be done with any song…

But yes rock and roll is filled with similar progressions but life is that way too…good art builds on previous influence.

By: emon

emon — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 19:48:23 +0000

Hey Rob, thanks for writing. It’s one of those sweet and, dare I say, safe progressions that have worked out for so many. I can bet you out of the next few hit songs there’ll be at least one with that progression.

By: Rob

Rob — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 16:55:14 +0000

It’s amazing that after all of those songs on the same chords, it hasn’t really become boring!

I also noticed that two of the songs were chilli peppers, which just goes to show that they know the power of a decent chord progression! You could write thousands more songs on these chords and still sound good.