Now that we’ve played through a few chord progressions, we’re definitely getting better. Our brains are bigger and our hands have gotten a lot of target practice moving back and forth between chords. But after a while, life would get pretty boring with only three primary chords, right? So to keep things interesting, musicians often like to add even more chords to a song.

The best place to get these “other” chords is from—you guessed it—the major-scale chord pattern. Cool? Yes. Surprising? No. Like a painter’s palette full of colors, this simple progression gives us tons of options for adding just the right chords to a song.

In the same way we chopped up the notes of a scale to create melodies, we simply rearrange the chords of this pattern to form chord progressions. (Snap!) And to see this in action, try playing our next song … called “Pachelbel’s Canon.”

Like a calm ride down a smooth river, we can float through each measure of this song. From beginning to end, the chords naturally flow forward in a constant motion toward the final tonic chord (I). In fact, this progression is so nice, I could play it all night long and never get tired. Which is why it’s such a classic.

By simply rearranging the major-scale progression, we can create magic. Like a path of dominoes, each chord naturally falls into the next … generating a chain reaction that’s totally cool. The “gravitational pull” between chords keeps pushing this basic chord progression along.

Of course, there are many other ways to rearrange these same simple chords. But each one is almost guaranteed to sound good. Why? Because there’s a powerful connection between the chords of a major-scale progression that gives our music life and energy. And as it turns out, musicians often rely on some fairly common “rules” for rearranging these chords. It’s all pretty simple, actually. So here, let me show you.