Descending Bass Line

We discussed switching between relative major and minor keys, and now I'll show you one very common chord progression that you can hear in a lot of modern songs.

The webpages talking about so called Andalusian cadence normally mention “Hit the Road Jack” and “Smooth Criminal”, but I'll give you an unconventional example of the chord sequence we will talk about: in “The Last Supper” from ”Jesus Christ Superstar”, listen to the fragment which starts from ”I must be mad thinking...” (youtube at 2:57).

That fragment piece is in G minor, and the chord sequence I want to point out here is Gm F E♭ D:

Or, if we switch to an easier A minor, we'll get Am G F E:

Note that we start in the minor tonic here, but then descend one step at a time to the relative major's dominant, then relative major's subdominant, and then finally the original minor's dominant, which then most likely goes back to the tonic.

The original “Greensleeves” has a little bit different chord progression (I'll show it later just for comparison), but the descending Andalusian cadence fits this melody pretty nicely too. This is in D minor, so the chord sequence here is Dm C B♭ A:

Let me just give you the bass line to listen to, and play it with chords:

I bet you will now start hearing this in random songs that are playing around you!

You might be wondering which chord progression for “Greensleeves” is “correct”. It's different from what I gave you above, and even though I probably like the descending bass pattern more, I must admit that the A minor chord sounds very nice there. I'll make it slower this time because the chords change too often:

Since the fragment is in D minor, F is its relative major, which explains C (a dominant of the relative major), and A (the dominant of D minor), but A minor? Switching from the expected dominant A major to A minor here creates a very different feeling, without any push to resolve it back to the tonic.