Putting them in an order that moves
Okay. You've got three chords now. Let's say they're G, C, and D, since that's what most people start with.
Three chords by themselves don't do anything. You could play them in any order forever and it'd just sit there. What makes a song move is putting those three chords in a pattern that goes somewhere and then comes back. That's it. That's the whole trick.
The pattern most old songs use
Here's the one I'd start with, because it's the one that shows up the most if you go digging through hymnals and old folk songs:
G — C — G — D — G
Play through that a few times, slow, until your hand knows where to go without you thinking about it. Don't worry about strumming pattern yet. Just get the chords changing at a steady pace, four beats each, and let it repeat.
Notice what it does. It leaves home (G), goes somewhere else (C), comes back (G), goes somewhere further (D), comes back again (G). That leaving and returning is the whole engine. A song that never leaves G is boring. A song that leaves and never comes back feels like it forgot where it lives.
Verse and chorus, plain version
You don't need fancy names for this. I'd just say:
- Verse — where you tell the part of the story that changes each time.
- Chorus — where you say the main thing, the same way, every time.
Try this: use the pattern above for your verse. Then for the chorus, do the same chords but end on D instead of G — so it feels like a question, or a lift, before it drops back down into the next verse. Something like:
G — C — G — D (chorus, ending unresolved) G — C — G — D — G (verse, ending resolved)
That's a whole song shape right there. People spend years learning music theory to arrive back at more or less this.
Try it at home
Take the words you've been collecting in your notebook — even just a line or two — and see if they fit over that first pattern. Don't force it. If a line's too long for four chords, cut the line. I say that a lot in this class. Most songs, and most lines in them, are longer than they need to be.
If nothing fits yet, that's fine. Just play the pattern on repeat for five minutes a night this week. Let your hand get comfortable moving between the chords without looking. That's most of the work at this stage — not cleverness, just repetition until it's not clumsy anymore.
A word on why old songs feel the way they do
My grandson asked me once why all the old songs sound sad. Washing-day songs, hymns, the stuff Nelda used to hum — a lot of it has this same minor, worn-down feeling to it. I didn't have a good answer for him that day. Told him I'd think about it.
I did think about it, for about a week, and here's where I landed: I don't think old songs are sad because people back then were sadder. I think it's because the happy, easy stuff doesn't get written down. Nobody sits at the washboard and bothers to make a song about how fine everything is. You write the song when something's hard enough that you need somewhere to put it. The pattern we just learned — leave, wander, come back — that's not just a chord trick. That's what people were doing with their actual lives. Leaving the hard thing, sitting with it a minute, coming back to steady ground.
I don't know if that's the whole answer. It's the one I've got.
One opinion, since we're here
I'll say again what I said last week: three chords is plenty. People think they need to learn ten more before they're allowed to write something real. You don't. Most of what's lasted — hymns, work songs, the stuff people still remember without a recording to remind them — ran on three chords and a pattern like the one above. Learn more later if you want it. Or don't. I mostly haven't, and I get by fine.
Before next time
Play that G–C–G–D–G pattern every night this week, even for five minutes, until it stops feeling like work for your hand. See if any of your notebook scraps want to sit on top of it. Don't force a whole song yet — just see what fits.