Vi–ii–V–I
chord progression
In music, the vi–ii–V–I progression is a chord progression (also called the circle progression for the circle of fifths, along which it travels). A vi–ii–V–I progression in C major (with inverted chords) is shown below.
It is "undoubtedly the most common and the strongest of all harmonic progressions" and consists of "adjacent roots in ascending fourth or descending fifth relationship", with movement by ascending perfect fourth being equivalent to movement by descending perfect fifth due to inversion. For instance, in C major, the chords are Am–Dm–G–C, which have roots that descend by perfect fifth (or ascend by fourth).
Examples
Examples of vi–ii–V–I are shown below.
Pop songs that include the vi–ii–V–I progression include Weezer's "Island in the Sun" and Talk Talk's "It's My Life".
I−vi−ii−V
I−vi−ii−V is one of the most common chord progressions in jazz. The progression is often used as a turnaround, occurring as the last two bars of a chorus or section. The I−vi−ii−V chord progression occurs as a two-bar pattern in the A section of the rhythm changes, the progression based on George Gershwin's "I Got Rhythm". It can be varied as well: according to Mark Levine, "[t]oday's players usually play a dominant 7th chord rather than a minor 7th chord as the VI chord in a I-VI-II-V."
In the jazz minor scale, the diatonic progression below is possible.
“Vi–ii–V–I” enters the record as chord progression. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what chord and progression can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Apr 4, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q137987. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference.
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This entry incorporates text from “Vi–ii–V–I” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.