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I agree with everything you said except for the last sentence

You can orchestrate almost any progression to be pleasing or interesting - as there's far more to harmony than just choosing what chords go in what order

Chord voicings and the arrangement of the composition have far more of an impact on the final piece than just the ordering of chords

It's also very culturally relative - Classical North Indian harmony would sound awful (IMO) if you used more than one chord (in their case a Shruti box drone) under the piece

In a similar way, Jazz Musicians would insist the ii-V-I progression is the most useful of all time, not I-V-vi-IV like most pop/rock listeners

It's all relative to context and I-V-vi-IV is not as "universal" as all those magazine articles and blog posts will insist

Don't let the theory of harmony proposed by Bach and his dead German associates be the be all and end all of harmony

Some progressions are more popular than others (think of it like Sloane's Gap in mathematics), but there's certainly no teleology in music or its progressions!




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