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Comment by baddox | Hacker News Reader

I find it hard to believe that D major wasn't one of the more common chords to follow and E minor.

Note that he's only searching songs written in C Major. A D Major would be outside the key so naturally it would be quite rare.

The results are exactly as I would expect. F is the most common chord to follow E, because that's the primary way to resolve the dissonance of that note in C major. When E appears in other chords in C Major it will also tend to resolve to F unless there's a good reason not to (cadential 6-4).

A minor is the next most common after F, because that's the next step in a descending circle of 5ths pattern (E, A, D, G, C)

Ah, I missed that the graph was only showing songs in C major.

Why would the II chord follow iii? Can you cite some examples of that?

The only pop/rock use of II that I can think of is as a turn to drive II7 -> V7 -> I.

I agree, I'd really be interested to see what sort of pattern he's thinking about.

Exactly. D Major chord is a V/V in C Major, which has only a couple of common uses in popular music according to the Hooktheory database. V/V -> V7 -> I is one common one. Another is a substitution for ii, like: I -> V/V -> IV -> V, see John mayer, Kelly Clarkson, Kenny Chesney etc.

I missed that the graph was only showing songs in C major.

I tend to agree, but when you think of it, D major isn't used that much in popular music. When you talk about country or acoustic guitar, sure, but not so much in the Billboard charts.

The graph showing the chords following E minor was created after all songs were transposed to the key of C major.

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