The 1-5-6-4 Chord Progression Toolkit

The 1-5-6-4 (or I-V-vi-IV) chord progression turns up in hundreds of pop songs, and it's incredibly useful to be able to play around with it on the piano or keyboard. 1-5-6-4 may only have four chords, but it has massive musical power. You can hear the progression in Adele’s “Someone Like You”, The Beatles’ “Let It Be”, Bob Marley’s “No Woman No Cry”, Taylor Swift’s “All Too Well” and many, many more songs. In this tutorial I take the 1-5-6-4 progression apart, look at the chords and structure and why it works so well, whether as a chord loop or as part of a wider progression, and give you some tips and techniques for improvising on it with your piano or keyboard.

Along the way I take a look at some useful bits of piano/keyboard technique and music theory, including loops, cadences, chord voicing, bassline development, chord extension, decoration and suspension, passing chords and chromatic mediant passing chords. In other words, there’s a ton of stuff in this tutorial that will help you whether you’re an improvising piano or keyboard player wanting to learning pop styles, a producer, a songwriter, or if you just want to learn more about chord progressions and music theory

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00:00 Why 1-5-6-4 matters
00:41 The basic music theory
01:40 Voicing the 1-5-6-4 chords
04:58 Loops and cadences
08:30 Improvising on the 1-5-6-4 progression
11:31 Chord extensions, progressions, decorations
13:20 Advanced bassline voicings
14:36 Passing chords and chromatic mediants
17:35 My books and Piano Packs
19:26 What to do now

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