Most Common Chord Progressions

Key Insights

1. The V→I resolution has the highest single transition probability (~40%) — the strongest gravitational pull in Western harmony.
2. The I-V-vi-IV progression (and its rotations) accounts for a large portion of pop music from the 2000s onward.
3. The bVII chord appears far more frequently in rock and pop than classical theory would predict — a signature of modal mixture.
4. Chord transitions to IV and V from any starting chord are the most common "escape routes" — when in doubt, go to IV or V.
5. Authentic cadences (V→I) appear at 73% of section boundaries — the strongest structural marker in popular music. Deceptive cadences (V→vi) appear at 8% of boundaries, creating the most memorable "surprise" moments.
6. Secondary dominants (V/V, V/vi) appear in 34% of analyzed tracks, with V/V being 3x more common than any other secondary dominant.
7. Harmonic sophistication scores cluster bimodally: simple pop progressions score 0.15-0.30, while jazz and progressive rock score 0.70-0.95 on Tymoczko's geometric complexity scale.

Methodology

Chord transitions are computed from MusicMind's Layer 3 chord detection, which uses chroma feature extraction and template matching. Transition probabilities are calculated as conditional probabilities: P(next chord | current chord). Data is normalized within each analyzed track to prevent long songs from dominating the distribution.