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I VI I V: Am F Am Em
'Queen' v.I VI IV VI: Am F Dm F
'Where Do You Think You're Going'.I VII I III: Am G Am C
'Sexy Boy' ch.When you use a four-bar three-chord turnaround, be conscious of the fact that it may begin and end on the same
chord. If so you will need to take this into account in terms of lyric and melody at the start of each phrase. This
question does not arise with the four-chord turnaround because the last chord is usually different (see below).
The Four-Chord Song
After the three-chord trick, we move up to using four chords. If we have only used I, IV and V, the three major
chords of a key, we can now bring in one of the minors II, III, or VI, or even keep it all major with a bII, bVI or bVII
as the additional chord. In a song that is economical with chords, the fourth chord could be held back for the chorus
or the bridge.
The Four-Chord Turnaround
While many songs have only four chords, some put them in a fixed four-bar or eight-bar phrase that then repeats,
either for the verse, chorus or bridge, or some combination, or even goes all the way through the song. The four-
chord turnaround is one of the strongest musical hooks going. There is a significant aesthetic relationship between it
and pop's favourite time signature, 4/4, which in itself has a tendency to cause melodic and verse/chorus lengths to
fall into fours or multiples of four. This is both a blessing and a curse. The turnaround lends itself to lazy
songwriting, and this is one reason why the 1980s and 1990s have generated fewer classic songs that other artists
want to cover.
The Tyranny of Four
When the different parts of a song are all measurable by four, there is a danger of producing something literally
"four-square" and too predictable (although, of course, possibly a hit). Here is an instance in songwriting where
artistic and commercial considerations do not see eye to eye. In a nightmare scenario of the "tyranny of four", we
end up with a song that has a four-bar intro, leading to a 16-bar verse made up of four four-bar four-chord
turnarounds, a chorus of eight bars (twice round a different four-bar turnaround), and an eight-bar middle eight – all
in 4/4!
In 1990s UK chart pop, it was not uncommon to hear songs constructed from a single four-bar four-chord
turnaround. Verses and choruses were distinguished only by small changes in the arrangement.
Symmetry is pleasing, but too much of it is boring. By analogy, think about architecture. What is more engaging,
more mysterious, more human: the unpredictable passages and lanes of a small fishing village where the eye is
continually surprised by irregularity and curve, or the wide concrete spaces of a plaza where everything is straight
lines, squares, 90-degree angles and can be seen all at once?
One of the most important points of craft a songwriter can develop is a