Three Chord Songs

There are literally hundreds, perhaps thousands of songs that can be played with just three chords. Typically it is listed as a: I, IV, V7 chord progression. If the I chord is C, then the IV chord will be F, and the V7 chord will be G7. Even though all the songs listed could be played with just the C, F, and G7 chords other groups of three chords might be used for a variety of reasons.

In particular when you strum the guitar, the chord could have a different arrangement of notes inside the chord and this arrangement will affect the overall sound. Suppose the chord form has more root notes than thirds of the scale, then it will have a strong chord sound that leans toward that root name. If as the chord is strummed the last note hit in the strum pattern is a dominant 7th then it will have a different feel.

So knowing the starting chord is important: If you start at C and go up four musical alphabet names you get to F which is why it is the IV chord. If you go up from C to the 5th musical alphabet name you get to G which is why it is a type of G chord. The seventh tone of the G major scale is F# which is the major seventy, The flat major seventh is the "F" note and it is the note that is added to the basic G chord to make it G7. In most cases it is not listed as G dominant 7th, this is just understood without statement.

If the starting chord is D, then you would go upward from D four musical alphabet letters and you can be certain that the G that you reach will be the IV chord for a starting chord of D, but you must be careful because you can get involved with potential sharps and flats. In this case it is a G chord. Going upward from D to the fifth of D you would reach A and the V7 chord would be an A7 chord.

In all cases we are still using a I, IV, and V7 chord progression. We do need to keep in mind that the musical alphabet goes past G to A and continues. In other words it goes more like A, B, C, D, E, F, G, A, B, C, D, E, F, G, A, B, C, D, E, F, G etc. No matter where you start you can determine the associated I, IV, V7 chords for a song that uses just three chords.

Some of the songs listed in the graphic could of course use more chords if you wanted to use more chords, but can be played with just three. You may not recognize some of the songs and just because they are listed as using three chords does not mean they might even just use two chords. You can search the internet for the words to many of these songs.

For any of you that are teachers, if you have an autoharp at your school and if it is properly tuned, you could play such songs by being able to hold one button at a time to play a very full sounding chord and there is a button for C, F, and G7 on an autoharp. This means you don't have to know much about music to play such songs. Many elementary schools have an autoharp somewhere, but it is often not in tune. You may have to take it to someone that can tune it properly, check with the music teacher first. Electronic tuners can help with the process. You will also need a special wrench to turn the tuners to tighten or loosen the strings as needed. If you don't know what you are doing tuning an autoharp can be very difficult you can break strings and even get hurt as the string breaks. Sometimes strings are missing and some may need to be replaced due to their age. Strings on instruments are affected by temperature change and can even be affected by moving the instrument from one location to another. For the elementary teacher however, this is a great instrument for a classroom.