January 17, 2026 路 Ilmari Koskinen
How to make wavy chord progressions 馃寠
Wavy chord progressions use the same lush chords as soul but in a calmer, more drifting way. This article explains the theory and works through playable examples, each with a short breakdown of why it works.
Wavy chord progressions use the same lush chords as soulful progressions, the sevenths and sixths and ninths, but they carry them in a calmer, more toned-down way. The cool, jazzy color stays while the tension and the forward push relax. The playable examples below build that feel one idea at a time, with a breakdown of why each one drifts the way it does. Wavy isn鈥檛 a genre; it鈥檚 the smooth, atmospheric sound of lush trap.
What makes a chord progression sound wavy?
Wavy harmony leans on the same extended chords as soul, but it puts them to a calmer use. The added notes, the sevenths and sixths and ninths, work as bridges: each quality drops in a note the neighboring chords already hold, so a shared tone carries across every change. That continuity is the effect. When a chord still brings some dissonance, and wavy ones let a little through, the common tones running underneath cushion its edges. Call it smoke and mirrors for the sharp corners: the tension is there, but the thread of shared notes keeps you from feeling its bite.
A few moves show up again and again:
- Maj7 and min7 for body. Lush sevenths in place of plain triads, the jazzy color without the bite.
- Gentle, stepwise motion. Roots that slide by a step, like Am to G6, so the harmony drifts rather than jumps.
- Sixths and ninths as glue. A 6 or a 9 that adds a note the next chord shares, tightening the overlap.
- One soft altered dominant. An E7#5 rather than a bare E7, its raised fifth (C) tying the tension back into the key.
- No hard landing. The progression floats instead of resolving to a firm cadence.
The ideas in practice
Each example is written in A minor and set to 125 BPM. Press Play to hear the full loop, or click any note in the roll to hear it on its own. The player voices every chord with an octave-lower bass, and holds each chord for a full bar or more so the harmony drifts rather than turns.
Both chords are maj7, and the sevenths pull in two directions at once. Fmaj7 (F鈥揂鈥揅鈥揈) and Cmaj7 (C鈥揈鈥揋鈥揃) already share C and E, and that E, the seventh of the F chord, carries over as the third of the C. It threads the pair together. The seventh of Cmaj7 is B, a tritone from F, about the sharpest dissonance there is against the first chord. So the same maj7 quality that glues the two also adds an edge, smoothed over by the shared notes holding underneath.
Three minor sevenths, all drawn from the A minor scale, so nothing sits outside the key. The sevenths widen the overlap between neighbors: Dm7 and Am7 share A and C, Em7 and Am7 share E and G, so each change moves only a note or two while the rest stays put. Nothing pulls hard anywhere. It drifts, which is the plain, easy end of the wavy sound.
E7 is the borrowed dominant that pulls back to Am, and raising its fifth to make E7#5 softens that pull. The raised fifth is C, the same C sitting in the Am and the Fmaj7 around it, so the altered dominant shares a note with its neighbors instead of standing apart. That is a signature wavy move: take a tense, borrowed chord and tie it back into the key through one shared tone. Fmaj7 in the middle keeps the drift smooth on the way there.
Here the qualities all pull toward the same handful of notes. A sixth on the G, a seventh on the Em, a ninth on the Dm: each added note is one the other chords already hold, and the note E runs through all four. G6 and Em7 are even the same four notes in a different order. So while the roots step down from A, the pitches barely change, and that stillness inside moving chords is the calm wavy is after. The extensions would add complexity on their own; used this way they cancel it out.
G6 does the connective work in the middle: its sixth is E, a note the Am9 and the closing chord also carry, and its D ties back to the opening Dm7. That shared E is the thread, and it matters most at the end, where A#dim brings real tension, a diminished chord built to feel unstable. The cohesion built over the first three chords cushions that dissonance, so the diminished lands as a ripple rather than a jolt. Qualities as bridges, dissonance smoothed by what stays the same.
Why it floats
Wavy sits between two worlds. It borrows the extended chords of jazz and soul but skips their dense, dissonant voicings, and it borrows the accessibility of pop but skips its plain triads and hard resolutions. What鈥檚 left is harmony that never fully commits, drifting between chords with a faint ambient glow. That in-between quality is the whole point, and it鈥檚 why wavy pairs so well with smooth, atmospheric trap beats. Wavy isn鈥檛 a genre of its own; it鈥檚 a description of that lush, hazy sound.
How do you use these in a track?
Pick a progression and keep the sounds soft and spacious around it. This is the harmonic heart of wavy trap and smooth, atmospheric beats, and it overlaps with the R&B-tinged side of PluggnB. For the drums beneath these chords, trap kick patterns covers the kick. For the lusher, jazzier extreme, see soulful chord progressions; for the tense opposite, dark chord progressions. To write a line over the top, how to write a counter melody covers it. For orchestral borrowed-chord color, see cinematic chord progressions, and how to voice chords shows how to make any of these sit right in the mix.
Songen generates wavy, atmospheric styles with these lush maj7 and min7 voicings built in. Generate a loop, sink into the mood, then swap in one of these progressions and shape the haze to taste. Songen also has a chord progression builder that recommends the next chord as you build, then generates full loops in any genre from your custom progression, so you can drop any of these in and turn it into a track.