In this lesson we take a look at the 1-6-4-5 chord progression made famous by bands like The Beatles, The Penguins (Earth Angel) and many others. It’s a great chord progression and one to add to your guitar learning resources.
To understand this progression we have to step into musical keys, that’s where the numbers come in. They refer to a scale degree from within the key. Every key has 7 unique tones and then repeats again at the 8th, also called the octave. You can play a Major Scale on any of your 6 guitar strings, over and over, until you run out of frets.
Find the 1-6-4-5 Chord Progression by Learning the Key of C Major
As an example, let’s look at the Key of C Major, built from the C Major Scale. We will always start on the letter of the alphabet of our key or scale name, so in this case, C. Next, we just have to go sequentially through the alphabet until we come back to C as the 8th letter.
C-D-E-F-G-A-B-C is what we get by spelling this. The musical alphabet only has the letters A-G ever used, so it’s pretty easy to remember. Now if we wanted to create a chord progression out of this key, say the 1-6-4-5 chord progression, then we’d take C (1), A (6), F (4), and G (5), build chords off of them, and end up with C Major, A minor, F Major, and G Major.
The thing I love about the 1-6-4-5 chord progression is that it is just a slight deviation from the 1-4-5 chord progression that is such a staple of rock n’ roll music, popular music and of course a foundation of the blues. By just throwing in the sixth scale degree of your chosen key, it adds so much flavor.
When I was first learning to play guitar, I didn’t really know too much about chord progressions…I wish I HAD! I believe this is an invaluable thing to learn in guitar playing. If you start out understanding how to make music move, and how it has been done successfully by other artists, then you are prepared to be at the top of your creative game as a musician, artist and creator.
Chord progressions are a great way to begin stepping into music theory and understanding how notes work together in harmony to create the sounds our ears love to hear. The 1-6-4-5 chord progression and 1-4-5 chord progression are great places to start.
Often times, I think music theory scares people. Believe me, it really isn’t that hard at all to go from a beginner guitar player all the way up to an intermediate to advanced player. I think it can be done easily in six months to a year, and when you think about it that isn’t that much time to have a firm grasp on lead guitar, rhythm guitar, songwriting, composition and technique.
To get a free video lesson of this chord progression, use the button below and sign up. You’ll get PDF chord charts to download of the 1-6-4-5 chord progression, the 1-4-5 chord progression, all the Open chords, and a series of free lessons.
Leave A Reply (4 comments so far)