What Do These Crazy Dudes Have To Do With My Latest Piano Course?

If you haven’t yet seen this highly entertaining video, do yourself a favor and watch it now. In it, Axis of Awesome shows how you can play big chunks of many of the greatest pop hits using the same four chords.

Now as it happens, my new course, Pop Piano Accompaniment, opens with two tutorials based on the same premise.

In these two lessons, I teach you to play that progression using a variety of rhythmic styles, styles that I match up with specific songs, including Someone Like You, No One, She Will Be Loved, and many others.

So I thought I’d share with you the Axis of Awesome video and the list of songs it contains. If you’re working your way through my course and are looking for more music to play using the same chords, this will be of interest to you.

Clearly, If you’re a songwriter, you need to know this progression.

Update: I just found another video called “4 Chords, 65 Songs”, based on exactly the same idea.

You can find my course here.


On the Axis of Awesome video:
0:52 Journey – Don’t Stop Believing
1:00 James Blunt – You’re Beautiful
1:09 Alphaville – Forever Young
1:17 Jason Mraz – I’m Yours
1:25 Mika – Happy Ending
1:34 Alex Lloyd – Amazing
1:41 The Calling – Wherever You Will Go
1:49 Elton John – Can You Feel The Love Tonight
1:56 Maroon 5 – She Will Be Loved
2:04 The Last Goodnight – Pictures Of You
2:12 U2- With Or Without You
2:19 Crowled House – Fall At Your Feet
2:29 Kasey Chambers – Not Pretty Enough
2:38 The Beatles – Let It Be
2:42 Red Hot Chilli Peppers – Under the Bridge
2:48 Daryl Braithwaite – The Horses
2:54 Bob Marley – No Woman No Cry
2:56 Marcy Playgroung – Sex and Candy
2:59 Men At Work – Land Down Under
3:03 Banjo Patterson’s Waltzing Matilda
3:05 A Ha – Take On Me
3:06 Green Day – When I Come Around
3:22 Eagle Eye Cherry – Save Tonight
3:23 Toto – Africa
3:30 Beyonce – If I were a Boy
3:32 The Offspring – Self Esteem
3:38 The Offspring – You’re Gonna Go Far Kid
3:47 Pink – You and Your Hand
3:53 Lady Gaga – Poker Face
4:00 Aqua – Barbie Girl
4:04 The Fray – You Found Me
4:09 3Oh!3 – Don’t Trust Me
4:16 MGMT – Kids
4:23 Tim Minchin – Canvas Bags
4:33 Natalie Imbruglia – Torn
4:49 Five For Fighting – Superman
4:53 Axis Of Awesome – Birdplane
5:05 Missy Higgins – Scar

Eric - March 14, 2012

This is so true! This is a very unknown concept to beginner piano players. Most beginners think that people who play have some magic ability to play that they don’t.

It comes back to chord progressions. If you can learn the most common chord progressions, you will be able to play just about 90% of contemporary songs out there. Most songwriters aren’t that creative when it come to the music in the song. Also, a lot of the uncommon and unique chord progressions sound really weird anyway and wouldn’t be very pleasing to to the ear with a singer.

Learn the chord progression in the post, then learn the other four or five most common ones. You will see your playing start to really progress!

Bruce Siegel - March 14, 2012

Thanks, Eric! Nicely said. Can I hire you as a teaching assistant? 🙂

Eric - March 15, 2012

Sure Thing 🙂

Virginia Larson - October 20, 2012

Wonder what Beethoven would think of piano music based on nothing more than a few chord progressions.

Bruce Siegel - October 21, 2012

Hi Virginia. Beethoven wrote some Country Dances (and probably other short pieces, too) that only use three chords, so he might not be as shocked as you think!

Comments are closed