quick and dirty guide to pop chords and keys
Without getting into any harmony theory or learning scales you can put together pop songs by simply playing around with the most common chord progressions. Most songs being two or more chord progressions looped as verse and chorus. Here is a collection of 50 common progressions in the key of C.
And here is a collection of all the most common chords in each key. At the simplest level basslines just consist of the root note of a chord (c note for cmajor for instance) played along behind the chords. If you are reading this and thinking: Chords! I can’t play Chords! You’ll find a helpful midi plugin in Albeton Live which which turn any note you play one the keyboard into a chord, major, minor, etc.
If you’d like to follow on with further common chord structures here is a summary of the different types of common progressions.
A few groups are considering a mashup approach. Here is an interview with GirlTalk where he talks about his techniques. There are a few video tuts around for doing this in Ableton which is a great tool for it. The video tutes are of very variable quality however.
