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For a long time, I didn’t know why certain songs hit differently. I wasn’t sure if it was the lyrics or the instrumentation; there was just something deeper drawing my emotions to them, even across tracks with nothing obvious in common.

The year 2016 marked the start of my journey into music theory. I was a huge fan of Above & Beyond at the time, and since they released weekly DJ mixes, I wanted to create my own. Wondering how DJs blended tracks so smoothly, I dug into the Camelot wheel and the Circle of Fifths. Simply put: the farther away a key is from your current key, the more “awkward” the transition sounds (unless you are Jacob Collier). I listed the tracks and wrote down their root keys. That’s how Eunoia Podcast (my first, and so far, only DJ mix😅) was created.

The following year, a video about modal interchange sparked my curiosity even further. I went full nerd, mapping out the chords of my favorite songs in a spreadsheet until patterns began to emerge. For instance, Boards of Canada’s “Olson” (my all-time number one track) and Fatum’s “Draco” (at the drop) coincidentally share the exact same chord progression: E♭–F–C. Moving from E♭ to F is a whole step forward, while dropping from F to C is 2.5 steps backward. “This. This is the exact kind of chord movement I love,” I realized. I had finally found the answer to my original question: it was all about the chord progression.

Furthermore, I tried to lay down every chord from every single key, but I didn’t finish it because it was a mundane task, simply too much to do manually. I did not know about web development back then. Hell, I didn’t even know about programming; I only learned that later, at the end of 2018.

During the COVID quarantine in 2020, I had the idea to finish what I had started. So, I used my coding knowledge to build an app that maps chords so it can programmatically change them based on the selected key. I called it “Musical Modes.” It was simple, and I mostly used it for personal research to analyze the chords of my favorite songs. But now, as told in “Rejuvenating My Projects”, it has expanded into something I’m even more proud of.

Then	Now

Back to the Olson chords. E♭–F–C fits perfectly into the ♭III–IV–I chord progression. Why do I love it so much? Because it captures a beautifully mixed feeling. It’s like meeting someone who seems cold on the surface, but turns out to be warm at heart once you get to know them. This particular progression is rarely discussed and usually connected to classic blues rock. The funny thing is, I unconsciously embedded it into my tracks, Alter Ego (2014) and Maffei (2011), long before realizing it. As my listening journey evolved, I compiled songs with this same progression into a playlist:

♭III–IV–I achieves its distinct emotion by pairing a dramatic shift with a powerful harmonic resolution. It begins with the ♭III, a major chord borrowed from the parallel minor key, which injects an immediate sense of mystery and weight. This heavy tension lifts as it steps up to the IV chord, creating a surge of upward momentum and hopeful anticipation. Finally, the progression lands on the I chord, resolving that built-up energy into a deep sense of relief and homecoming. Try pressing play below.

The chord that doesn’t belong is sometimes the one that makes the rest of it mean something.