How to Write a
Calming Chord Progression.

Free PDF Tutorial
includes multitrack MIDI file

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Intro.

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Within seconds of hearing the opening chords in Portishead “Roads”, you can feel your cortisol levels dropping and your body’s tension releasing. This intro has to be one of the most calming moments in the entire popular music catalogue.

Unlike the mad rush that songs are in nowadays to grab your attention with a catchy hook (in order to avoid the dreaded skip!), the “Roads” intro unfolds at a pace so leisurely that it feels delightfully pre-internet. Aaah… Remember those days? Back when humans had attention spans longer than goldfish!

On that note. According to Spotify data, about 25% of listeners skip a song within five seconds. If those people skipped “Roads” a mere five seconds in, they wouldn’t even get halfway through the chord progression. Oh well, their loss.

In this dizzyingly fast-paced world, if you want to cater to the distracted listener, then it’s impossible to create a calming atmosphere, as that takes time. For almost the whole first minute of “Roads”, all your hear is the legendary sound of a Fender Rhodes organ. Rumour has it that the song is actually named after the Rhodes.

The vintage sound of a Rhodes organ obviously adds to the atmosphere, but in terms of music theory, what makes these chords so relaxing? Well, it’s not just one thing, it’s many! And in this tutorial you’ll learn them all, as well as our 5-step method for making your own calming chord progression. But first… Tea!

Step 0. Relax

Before we get to Step 1, we need to set the scene. To ensure that our blank canvas is calm to begin with, we need to find a relaxing tempo. Breathe in, breathe out…

When we’re relaxed, our heart rate is usually between 60 and 100 beats per minute (BPM). As the BPM of music unconsciously affects our heart rates, the slower your song’s BPM, the more relaxed your listeners (and you) will feel, and vice versa.

Portishead chose 76 BPM for “Roads”, so we went with 76 too. But, feel free to choose a slower tempo if you want to relax your listeners (and yourself) even more.

Step 1. Roots

If you have a slow tempo but your chords are changing every couple of beats, then your progression isn’t going to feel very calming. So, in the “Roads” intro, each chord is played for an entire bar!

This slow harmonic rhythm creates an illusion of the tempo being slower than it is. And by the way, harmonic rhythm is how long you play each chord for. In other words, where the chords change. The longer you spend on each chord, the slower the harmonic rhythm, and the more relaxed your chord progression will feel.

Another issue to consider is that if you play an uneven amount of chords (e.g. three or five), your listeners could unconsciously feel some tension. It’s the same with time signatures. If you write a progression in 3|4 or 5|4, you could unintentionally make your listeners feel uneasy, as they will be expecting the familiar 4|4.

Symmetry tends to calm us, so choose four chords for your progression. “Roads” is in the key of A minor, so we used it too. Our chords are: Am, Dm, Cmaj, Em.

If you’ve done my Online Apprenticeship, you’ll be wondering about the perfect 4th from A up to D, as well as E up to A. As you know, perfect intervals lack the emotional charge of other intervals. This actually makes them remarkably calming, so that’s why we’ve used them here.

Right, once you’ve chosen your four chords, draw in their root notes. And if you want a fuller sound, you can add the octave of each root note.

Root note (and its octave) of each chord in progression: Am, Dm, Cmaj, Em

Step 2. Unify

If you play what you have so far, you’ll notice that the progression currently sounds disjointed, and separation certainly doesn’t feel calming. So, the next step is to create a unifying connection throughout your progression, which will make it flow beautifully. Unification feels comforting, and therefore calming.

The best way to connect your root notes is by adding a common note above them. A common note is just a note that’s the same between two chords. In other words, when you change chords, their common note doesn’t change.

The ultimate common note is one that you can stay on throughout your chord progression. That’s obviously not something you want to achieve in every progression, but to create a common thread that remains all the way through this chord progression will be deeply comforting, and therefore deeply calming.

The 5 is a great common note. In A minor, that’s E. The 5 of your key will work well over most chords in that key due to its strong relationship to the key-note (i.e. the first note of your scale).

Feel free to use a different common note, though. Choose the common note that feels most calming over the root notes in your progression.

Common note (highlighted) added above root notes