What is the happy chord?

I – IV – V. To create a happy-sounding chord progression, you can simply use the I, IV, and V chords (or 1-4-5). Each one of these chords is a major chord, and they work together in any order to create a happy sound. You can also add energy or enthusiasm to the progression by varying the rhythm.

pianote.com - How to Write Sad, Hopeful & Happy Chord Progressions - Pianote

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In this lesson, I’ll show you how to write happy chord progressions, sad chord progressions, and uplifting chord progressions. You don’t need to be an expert to understand this lesson — beginners who are just learning how to play the piano can benefit from understanding chord progressions too! Chord progressions are the foundation of almost every song. And the types of chords used in a progression affect how a song feels to the listener. And it’s a little more interesting than major = happy and minor = sad! Introducing: the All-New Pianote+ Membership 🎉 Play More Songs and Learn Multiple Instruments in 2023 Join Pianote now and you’ll save 17% and get 10 free bonuses worth $905, including the Pianote Concert Series Headphones. Learn how to play piano (or guitar! or the drums! or singing!) and get 1000+ transcribed sheet music of your favorite songs. CHECK IT OUT

A Note About Key…

We’ll explore these progressions in the key of G major. Which means all Fs are sharped! However, you can transpose these chords to any key you like. That’s because I’ll be using the Nashville Numbering System, which means chords are named after numbers (ie. I, V, vi) rather than names (ie. G major, D major, A minor). You can learn more about the Nashville Numbering System here. It’s a pretty handy system to learn. In a nutshell, it just means we name chords after the scale degree they’re built on. For example, if a chord is built on the fifth note of the C major scale (G), we call it a V chord instead of a G major chord.

Happy Chord Progressions 😄

If you guess we’ll be using major chords, you are right! Major chords have a distinctive “happy” sound.

I – IV – V

To create a happy-sounding chord progression, you can simply use the I, IV, and V chords (or 1-4-5). Each one of these chords is a major chord, and they work together in any order to create a happy sound. You can also add energy or enthusiasm to the progression by varying the rhythm. 🎹 Make This Your Year of Getting Good at Piano 🔥 Get free lessons, tips, and piano news delivered to your inbox every week. Subscribe to The Note!

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Sad Chord Progressions 😢

As you may have predicted, we’ll be using minor chords for our sad chord progression. …And to make things even sadder, we’ll start the progression with a minor chord. This tricks our ears into thinking of the minor chord as the “home base” chord. I’ll show you a progression that starts on the vi chord, like this:

vi – IV – I – V

While there’s only one minor chord in this progression, we create a sad mood because we start with it. This is a very common progression in pop music. Here’s another progression with two minor chords that also sounds kind of dark!

vi – iii – V – IV

Is someone cutting onions?!

Chord Progressions For Uplifting Moods 🙏

This chord progression works well with many pop songs and fits with the EDM sound. It’s essentially a combination of the happy and sad progressions we’ve covered. This progression creates an uplifting, hopeful feeling, and it goes like this:

IV – V – vi – I

Stepping up from the major IV chord to the minor vi chord creates a sort of hopeful “lift” before we settle back into the I chord.

Takeaways

Indeed, the greatest songs use the similar ingredients (chords) to convey an emotional impact. As Leonard Cohen says…

It goes like this, the fourth, the fifth

The minor falls, the major lifts… from Leonard Cohen’s hit “Hallelujah” The greatest songwriters of all time use these same progressions. Roland Godefroy, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons These are just a couple of options that you can try to experiment with when writing chord progressions for different moods. The real fun comes when you start making them your own. Once you have your progression down, then you can start working on a melody. We have a lesson on that right here.