Songwriting Tricks: Moving From The 1st To The 4th Chord In A Key

Tommaso Zillio

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If you are writing your songs you know that the most important thing is to have options. For instance, you want to know how to make the same chord progressions sound different... and you want to know many ways to do that!

One of the most common chord movements is going from the 1st to the 4th chord of a key (in the key C, this would be like playing a C chord followed by an F chord). This happens in so many songs that I'd be hard-pressed to mention one that does not do it.

So if you want to be a successful songwriter (or just have fun with music) you want to know of many ways to make this movement sound good and interesting.

In this video I show you how you can take this super-easy super-basic chord movement and make it sound different just by working on the C chord. We do not add more chords (that may clash with your song's melody) we just make the C chord sound more 'professional' with the help of some music theory trickery:

The options I show in the video (as amazing as they are) barely scratch the surface of what is possible. Professional musicians have many more tricks under their sleeves and can create more and more ways to make this very same chord movement sound even different.

If you are curious and want to learn all those tricks, then look no further than the Complete Chord Mastery course that will explain to you (in simple language and with examples) all the tricks of the trade that professional musician use to make simple progression sound GREAT.

Also, if you liked this video, you will LOVE this other video too:

And finally, if you are interested in finally learn how chords and chord progressions work once and for all, you must (yes, you MUST) check out the Complete Chord Mastery course that will teach you everything there is to know from the basics up.

This course has been written specifically for guitar players, and all the examples are played on guitar and transcribed in tablature. And it's a complete video course that... wait, why am I telling you all this here? Click on the link above and find out all the details!