What Is This Called? Identifying a chord sequence

music theory
1

Hello There -

I’m trying to replicate a chord sequence from he song ‘Don’t’ by Lolo (Styleized L0L0)

There is a line that does something I really like the way it sounds, on my keyboard if I play a E Major, D Major 2nd Inversion, A Major 3rd Inversion back to E Major.

this isn’t in a ‘key’ that I know. Or, one of those chords is a parallel minor chord I don’t know and that’s why I’m struggling with it.

In general I think the song is in E Major, I haven’t found a good source for the vocals that are doing this sequence.

Can someone give me some hints on to what I’m hearing/how this is notated? I’d like to play with it in other keys, but I can’t figure out what the chord ‘numbers’ would be and in what kind of key. If there is a concept I can research into to explain it so it makes sense please feel free to tell me that too.

2

I’d agree that the song is in E Major, although the Chorus might make a bit more sense in B Mixolydian, which is a relative key of E Major (same notes, different tonal center).

The Bridge chord progression is indeed E - D - A - A - E - D - A - C, but the chords are all in root position (no inversions).

This is a fairly standard example of modal mixture, where the D and C chords are borrowed from the parallel Minor mode. You’ll find tons of these progressions on the database if you’re interested.

This is what it looks like in roman numerals:

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