Explore the Musical DNA of Pop Songs with this Chord Progression Tool
You may be aware that many pop songs share the same chord progressions, even if their melodies sound quite different.
The website Hooktheory has developed a free tool that allows you to browse a large database of songs that share the same chord progression, look at the most common choices of next chord in a sequence and other statistical data.
Shared Chord Progressions in Pop
On the first page you will find the default musical key set to C Major - this can easily be changed to any tonality including major, minor and various modes. Select a colour-coded chord and you will see all songs in the database that feature that chord, plus a spider diagram showing what the likely next chord in a sequence would be following your chosen chord. Choose that chord and the list will repopulate with a bunch of songs which have both of those chords in that order in them, and so on.
This tool could be enormously helpful for both budding songwriters and music theorists and generally offers an interesting insight into how many songs of vastly differing genres share a similar musical DNA.
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