How to hear chord progressions by ear

Before naming anything, sing the note that sounds like the end. That is the tonic, and every other chord is heard against it. If you can hum home, you already know more than half of what the progression is doing.

A cadence is the clearest place to hear it. Play the one below and notice how the last chord settles: that settling is the tonic arriving.

The bass line carries most of the harmony. Listen to the lowest note and ask how far it moved: a fifth down, a step up, nowhere at all. Root motion by falling fifths sounds like momentum; by step it sounds like sliding; by third it sounds like a change of light.

Chords group into three families. Tonic chords (I, iii, vi) rest. Subdominant chords (ii, IV) move away. Dominant chords (V, vii) pull back. You do not need the exact chord to hear which family it belongs to, and the family narrows the choice to two or three.

In the progression below, listen for the moment the music leans: that is IV, a subdominant, and then V pulls home.

With home, bass motion and family, naming is a small step: a subdominant whose bass rose a step from I is ii; a tonic family chord a third below home is vi. Chords from outside the key stand out because they bring a note the key does not have, which is how you hear a secondary dominant or a borrowed chord.

Every common progression is on one page in all twelve keys: chord progressions in all 12 keys. Play one in a key you do not know well and hum home before the end.

In Tonalia, section 1 builds exactly this, a skill at a time: intervals, triad qualities, the seven diatonic chords, their functions, cadences and sevenths, with progressions from section 1 onward.