How to Work Out Any Song's Chords by Ear

Step 1: Find the key

Open a Software Instrument track and use Musical Typing or a MIDI keyboard (see Recording Software Instruments & Musical Typing) to play single notes along with the song. Start on any note and slide up or down until a note feels like it "matches home" — usually the note the melody keeps returning to, or the one that sounds most resolved when the song ends or pauses. That note is very likely your key center.

Step 2: Decide major or minor

Does the song feel bright and resolved, or moody and unresolved? That's usually the difference between major and minor (covered in more depth on Music Theory Basics). This narrows down which chords are even worth trying next.

Step 3: Try the "big four" first

An enormous number of songs are built from just four chords in a major key — the ones built on the 1st, 4th, 5th, and 6th notes of the scale (I, IV, V, and vi). Play through those four against the song, in whatever order, and listen for which ones land. Most of the time, you'll find the whole song — or at least most of it — hiding in that small set before you need anything more exotic.

Step 4: Follow the bass first

The bassline is usually the clearest, least cluttered part of a mix, and it very often plays the root note of whatever chord is currently happening. Isolate your listening on the bass (headphones help) and try to match its notes on your keyboard — those notes are your strongest clue to which chord you're looking for at any given moment.

Step 5: Count the changes

Chords in most popular music change on a predictable rhythmic pattern — commonly once every bar, or once every two bars. Tap along with the song and listen for the moment things shift, even before you know what they're shifting to. Knowing when a change happens makes it much easier to isolate and identify what it changes to.

Step 6: Let GarageBand narrow the guesswork

Set your project's key to your best guess from Step 1 and 2, then use a scale-locked keyboard (see Using GarageBand's Built-In Music Theory Tools) so you're only ever playing notes that actually belong to that key — it removes most of the wrong answers before you even try them. Record your attempt on its own track and loop the section of the song you're working out, so you can play your guess back-to-back against the real thing.

A worked example: "Amazing Grace"

Since it's public domain, here's the actual method applied start to finish. The melody centers on and resolves to G, and it feels bright and resolved throughout — major, not minor. Testing the big four against it turns up G (I), C (IV), and D (V) covering nearly the entire song, with Em (vi) adding a touch of contrast on one line. That's the whole progression, found in minutes using exactly the six steps above — no lookup required.

The G major chord (G–B–D) shown here as C major shape, transposed — the pattern of root, third, and fifth is what to listen for in any key.

Once you've got it, build on it

Record your found progression as a proper Software Instrument track, matched to the song's actual tempo (see Creating Your First Project), and use it as the harmonic foundation for your own arrangement — the same way described in How to Make a Pop Song in GarageBand and the other genre guides on Find Your Sound.

Why this beats looking it up

A chord chart for one song answers one question. This method answers all of them, forever — every song you'll ever want to learn, cover, sample the idea from, or just understand better, without depending on whether someone else already transcribed it (or transcribed it correctly). It's a slower first few times and much faster every time after that.