Anyone know an authoritative place to find all of the common chord progressions passed down in the western tradition? Passed down means conventional stuff, not the avant-garde.

Wikipedia's list is woefully incomplete.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cadence_(music)

This would be a good place to start. Chord progressions are more or less infinite due to the many ways you can order the same chords.

I - IV - V - IV

I - V - VI - V

I - I - I - I - IV - IV - I - I - V - IV - I - I

ad infinium

EDIT: In fact, this article plus this one is an excellent place to start if you're looking for chords to vamp on or inspiration for songwriting.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chord_progression

The first link doesn't lead anywhere. Is it the official wiki page on cadences?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_chord_progressions

If you list it by number of chords, the maximum is the Canon at 5 unique chords used.

And the chord progressions page says:


I was looking for a more updated book than that of Schoenberg's.

I see all professional musicians hearing a film score or commercial and immediately recognizes where they "stole" that tune from. Often the tunes are manipulated so the common public won't immediately recognize it as iterative. But every trained musician can do it without any effort (meaning going through some record database to find a match).

I don't know about any authoritative 'list' of common chord progressions. There are a limited number of chords in any given key and I think recognizing common progressions just comes naturally by listening to and playing music.

I think most people would just anolyze this as I - IV - I - V- IV- I.


I'm sure the Schoenberg covers a whole lot, and it's going to be a bit more in-depth than just thinking about "progressions", because if anyone is going to be systematic and thorough, it's him. Other than that, you could maybe look at Piston's harmony text or any other number of harmony/theory textbooks.