Chord Progression
Pachelbel's Canon
I – V – vi – iii – IV – I – IV – V
The eight-chord descent that has outlived three centuries of pop songs.
Feel: Flowing, stately, inevitable.
Also called Canon progression.
Key
The chords in C Major
5 shapes to learn — tap any diagram to hear it on guitar or piano.
How it works
Pachelbel wrote it some time between about 1680 and 1706, and it has been quietly powering pop songs ever since its twentieth-century revival. Underneath it is a repeating eight-note ground bass — D–A–B–F♯–G–D–G–A in the original key — and the chords exist to harmonise it. Take every other note and you find two interleaved chains of descending thirds (D–B–G and A–F♯–D), which is why it feels like it is always gently falling without ever simply walking down the scale.
The first half (I–V–vi–iii) is a chain of descending motion; the second half (IV–I–IV–V) turns it around and drives back to the top. Eight chords give it far more narrative room than a four-chord loop, so it can carry a whole song on its own.
Speed it up, add a backbeat, and the baroque canon becomes a modern chorus — as countless artists have discovered.
Songs built on it
A few well-known examples — every one of them the same chords, moving in the same order.
- Canon in D— Johann Pachelbel
- Basket Case— Green Day
- Graduation (Friends Forever)— Vitamin C
I – V – vi – iii – IV – I – IV – V in every key
The same numerals, twelve different sets of letters. Tap a key to explore all its chords.