How to Analyze a Chord Progression

Hearing a chord progression is one thing — understanding why it works is another. Analysis means breaking a progression down into its functional parts: what key you are in, what role each chord plays, how each chord resolves, and where the non-diatonic chords come from. Once you can analyze a progression, you can transpose it, substitute within it, and write your own progressions with intention instead of guesswork.

This lesson walks through four analytical lenses using a single teaching progression: C → E7 → Am → Dm → G7 → C. Each lens opens a different tab in the Progression Analyzer, pre-filled with the same chords, so you can see exactly what each analysis reveals. Work through them in order — key and function first, then cadences, secondary dominants, and resolution paths.

The teaching progression is diatonic to C major except for one chord: E7. That single chromatic chord is a secondary dominant, and spotting it is what separates a listener from an analyst. By the end of this lesson you will know how to identify the key, name the cadence, explain every non-diatonic chord, and predict where each chord wants to resolve.