3 Beautiful and Famous Chord Progressions

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Anyone can improvise! In this lesson, we’ll share three famous chord progressions that anyone can improvise beautiful melodies over. This lesson is beginner-friendly and we’ll walk you through everything you need to know, step by step.

There’s a common misunderstanding that improvisation is only for musical geniuses. But it’s a skill that anyone can learn, even beginners. You don’t need to know how to read sheet music, and you don’t need perfect pitch. What you do need are a few basic ingredients, which we’ll show you.

The Cinematic

The first progression we’ll learn, I like to call the Cinematic. It creates a movie-like, emotional atmosphere. The chords in this progression are:

Dm – C/F – C – G

Here’s how I like to play these chords:

C/F is a slash chord. That means we play the C major triad with our right hand and an F in the bass with our left.

You might notice that I play the C chord in 2nd inversion. This makes it easier for us to transition between chords.

Once you’re comfy with the chords, try breaking up the notes in your right hand to create some melody. If you need some inspiration, here’s a melody you can try:

Psst: If you’ve watched Grey’s Anatomy, Friday Night Lights, Suits, the Olympics, or various sporting events and commercials…you’ve probably heard the song this progression comes from: “To Build a Home” by the Cinematic Orchestra. It’s a beautiful song with Patrick Watson singing. Check it out!

The Lana

This one is absolutely beautiful. It’s a melancholic chord progression thanks to two minor chords:

Am – C – Em – F

Here’s how I play these chords. I’m using all inversions here:

These are beautiful voicings, but you can experiment with all sorts of voicings.

Can you guess which song this progression comes from? It’s “Video Games” by Lana Del Rey!

The Romantic

This is a chord progression you’ll definitely recognize. Why? Because it’s used everywhere, from Pachelbel’s Canon in D to Maroon 5’s “Memories.”

The awesome thing about this progression is that, with the right inversions, you can play it as a simple walk-down in steps. Check it out:

You can make it sound fancier but substituting in a sus chord, like this:

You can also try breaking up the chords. Here’s a broken arpeggio pattern I like. All I do here is break up the notes of each chord voicing and play top-bottom-middle-bottom.

Experiment with mood for this progression. You can play it lightly and romantically. Or, go dark and dramatic. Green Day uses this progression in “Basketcase,” so it even fits punk rock! The possibilities are absolutely endless!

Improv Techniques

Anyone can improvise beautiful music on the piano. You don’t need to be a musical genius or even famous chord progressions. But you do need to understand a few things…

To improvise, we first need to know what key we’re in. I’ve introduced each progression in this lesson in C major, so that’s the scale we’ll stick with for now. Notice that in C major, we have seven scale degrees:

We can build a chord on each scale degree. These are called diatonic chords.

If we build a chord on the first, fourth, and fifth degrees of the scale, using C major’s key signature, we end up with the major chords C, F, and G.

And if we build a chord on the second, third, and sixth degrees of the scale, using C major’s key signature, we end up with minor chords Dm, Em, and Am.

If you mix and match these chords, you can create beautiful progressions.

And guess what? You can play a melody using any note from C major on top of this progression. All C major notes are fair game and will sound good. Neat!

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Lisa Witt has been teaching piano for more than 20 years and in that time has helped hundreds of students learn to play the songs they love. Lisa received classical piano training through the Royal Conservatory of Music, but she has since embraced popular music and playing by ear in order to accompany herself and others. Learn more about Lisa.