Best Guitar Chord Progressions for Songwriters

Every guitarist knows that moment. Someone hands you a guitar, and your mind goes blank. It's an awkward mix of frustrating and embarrassing. I've been there. But it doesn't have to be that way.

There's a pattern to playing chords that, once you see it, you can't unsee. Songwriting gets easier, jamming starts to feel second nature, and picking up your guitar becomes the most relaxing part of your day. Skip it, though, and you're stuck second-guessing yourself and fighting writer's block.

The moment it clicked for me was in my first week of music school. My harmony teacher, mid-lecture in his usual deadpan way, suddenly stopped, cleared the board, and said: "If you commit this chart to memory, everything you learn in music will become easier." He was right. And I've watched the same thing happen with my own students.

It’s called a tonal gravity chart. One of my students used to have dozens of half-finished songs sitting in notebooks, stuck from writer's block. Once she learned how to use the chart, she went back to those old songs, instantly saw what wasn't working, and started finishing songs she's actually proud of.

It shows up in almost every song you love

Taylor Swift has written over 90 songs using this chart, and 21 of them use four of the exact same chords I break down in the video. You'll find the same progressions across rock, pop, hip hop, country, even jazz and classical.

And it fixes the freeze-up, too

I used to be the guy who froze the second someone at a jam session said "let's play a V-vi-IV-I in A." I could play great on my own, but playing with other people made me panic. Learning to actually see how chords flow changed that. I could finally play with confidence, write on the spot, and jam without second-guessing myself.

In the video above, I walk through exactly how the chart works, how to use it to fix a chord progression that "sounds off," and why the same four chords keep showing up in hit songs across every genre.