Common guitar chord progressions
12-bar blues
The foundation of blues, rock and roll, and a huge share of popular music since the 1950s: three dominant seventh chords, one per scale degree, played in a fixed twelve-bar form.
I–V–vi–IV
The four-chord pop loop heard in hundreds of hit songs across every decade since the 1980s — the same four chords, started on vi instead, are sometimes called the 'sensitive female' progression.
50s doo-wop
I–vi–IV–V, the doo-wop and early-rock-and-roll progression under countless close-harmony ballads of the 1950s and 60s.
ii–V–I (major)
The most common cadence in jazz, moving from a subdominant ii through the dominant V to a resting major-seventh tonic.
ii–V–i (minor)
The minor-key version of jazz's core cadence: a half-diminished ii, a dominant V that borrows the raised seventh, and a minor tonic.
Andalusian cadence
A descending i–bVII–bVI–V figure heard across flamenco, and in rock songs from 'Hit the Road Jack' to 'Stray Cat Strut'.
12-bar blues (quick change)
The same twelve-bar blues form, ending back on the I chord for the last two bars instead of turning around on V — common when a band is vamping into a repeat.
Minor blues
The twelve-bar blues form in a minor key: minor seventh chords throughout, except a dominant seventh V that pulls harder back to the tonic.
Pachelbel's progression
The eight-chord descending-bass pattern from Pachelbel's Canon in D, borrowed by pop songs from the 1970s onward.
I–IV–V
The three-chord song — folk, country and early rock's whole harmonic vocabulary in one loop.
vi–IV–I–V
The same four chords as the pop loop, started on the minor vi instead — a wistful opening before the progression resolves the same way.
Blues turnaround
I–VI7–ii7–V7, the four-bar turnaround that closes a blues chorus and sets up the next one.
Rhythm changes (A section)
The I–vi–ii–V harmonic backbone of the A section of 'rhythm changes', the jazz standard form built on Gershwin's 'I Got Rhythm'.
I–bVII–IV–I
The mixolydian rock cadence — a flattened seventh in place of the leading tone — behind riffs from classic rock to jam-band vamps.
I–IV–I–V
A simple folk and campfire-song pattern: home, up to the subdominant, home again, then out to the dominant before the next verse.
Jazz turnaround
I–vi–ii–V, the standard-tune turnaround that cycles a jazz form back to its top.
Sus resolution
A suspended fourth built and released on the dominant before resolving home — the sound of a cadence taking one extra breath.
Plagal cadence
The 'Amen' cadence, IV back to I — a softer close than the dominant V, common at the end of hymns.
Minor plagal cadence
The plagal cadence's minor-key cousin: a minor iv falling back to a minor i, a favorite darker substitute for the dominant.
Circle progression
vi–ii–V–I, each root a fifth below the last — the circle-of-fifths motion that underlies a huge share of functional harmony.