10 Popular Guitar Chord Progressions

I’ve had a few people asking about guitar chord progressions lately, so I figured I would put together a little lesson showing a number of variations.

The first thing here is that you’ll see all the guitar chord progressions are listed out in roman numerals – not in chord names. Why? Because when we use numbers, these chord progressions can be very quickly and easily transposed into any key of your choice. In the video, all the examples are done in the key of G. If you’re not familiar with the number system, I highly recommend grabbing a copy of my Unlocking I IV V course; it deals with this nice and efficiently.

If you want to transpose these from the key of G, simply make whatever key you want to move to your new “I” chord. For instance, if you move to the key of B major, B major becomes your new “I” chord instead of G. Likewise, all the other chord relationships change by the same amount as well.

I’m not going to teach you how to interpret the number system in this lesson, though I do give a really brief overview in the video. Notice that nearly all the progressions start with the “I” chord… indeed you will find it incredibly common to start the song on the tonic chord; however that said, I did include a progression that doesn’t start on the “I” just because I wanted to show you that this isn’t a strict requirement. It’s a little off the beaten track, but by no means unheard of.

Here are the ten guitar chord progressions in the video:

1. I – IV – V
2. I – IV – V – IV – I
3. I – V – VI – IV
4. I – VI – V – IV
5. I – VI – III
6. I – VI – II – V
7. I – III – IV – V
8. I – III – VI – IV
9. I – II – III – IV – V
10. IV – V – I – VI