{"id":95,"date":"2023-02-06T21:01:07","date_gmt":"2023-02-06T21:01:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/muzictrain.com\/blog\/?p=95"},"modified":"2023-02-06T21:07:20","modified_gmt":"2023-02-06T21:07:20","slug":"the-1-4-5-chord-system","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/muzictrain.com\/blog\/index.php\/2023\/02\/06\/the-1-4-5-chord-system\/","title":{"rendered":"The 1-4-5 Chord System"},"content":{"rendered":"
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A common way of talking about the use of guitar chords in pop songs is called Basic Chord Theory.<\/strong> It is also referred to as the “1-4-5”<\/strong> or (in Roman numerals) “I-IV-V”<\/strong>. Another term you will sometimes hear is the “Nashville System”.
\nI prefer the name \u201c1-4-5\u201d <\/strong>so that’s how I will refer to it here. And it is not so much a “theory” as it is a “system”.<\/p>\n

Or another way of putting it is to say: “1-4-5 is a description of the ways chords tend to be used in pop songs.” Because the 1, 4, and 5 chords are the ones you will use most often when playing along with pop songs (including rock, country, blues, hip hop, etc.)<\/p>\n

This makes 1-4-5 a shortcut to learning how to play along with songs. Just focus on the 1, 4, and 5 chords and you’ll often be at least 75% of the way home.<\/p>\n

What is the 1-4-5 system?<\/h3>\n

Once you know what key you’re playing in, the chords you need will usually be the major chords based on the 1, 4, and 5 notes of the major scale of that key.<\/p>\n

For example, the \u201c1\u201d note in the key of C is C. The \u201c4\u201d note is F. and the \u201c5\u201d note is G. It turns out that the major chords associated with these notes \u2013 C, F, and G \u2013 are the chords you will most often need to accompany a song in the key of C.<\/p>\n

In the key of G the 1-4-5 chords are G, C and D.
\nIn the key of D the 1-4-5 chords are D, G and A.
\n…and so on.<\/p>\n

What this means for the beginning guitar player is that you can strum along with many songs just by learning a limited number of chords.<\/p>\n

Of course there is more to the story – like for instance, minor chords – but we’ll get to that in the next post in this series.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A common way of talking about the use of guitar chords in pop songs is called Basic Chord Theory. It is also referred to as the “1-4-5” or (in Roman numerals) “I-IV-V”. Another term you will sometimes hear is the “Nashville System”. I prefer the name \u201c1-4-5\u201d so that’s how I will refer to it […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":97,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-95","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-guitar-tips","category-theory"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/muzictrain.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/muzictrain.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/muzictrain.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/muzictrain.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/muzictrain.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=95"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/muzictrain.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":102,"href":"https:\/\/muzictrain.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95\/revisions\/102"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/muzictrain.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/97"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/muzictrain.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=95"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/muzictrain.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=95"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/muzictrain.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=95"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}