12 LEVELS OF CHORD PROGRESSION COMPLEXITY

so what if there's a manager that's just one note so the only way to make it sound interesting apart from the rhythm is the chords then this is probably something that ed sheeran would do [Music] the classic 1564 chord progression in the key of e major so we're exploring the song the 4th of july by james taylor where he just sings that e note over the entire chord progression and in this video we're building it up till we have what eventually ended up on the record the perfect chord progression yes again the step by step adding more complex concepts to it so if all of these terms go above your head it's also to just listen to how the progression evolves as we go along so let's move on to level number two so we can easily spice these basic chords up we're just adding the top two strings over everything [Music] but this is not the direction i want to go in so i want to introduce seventh chords and compound chords something that maybe jason mraz would do [Music] if you say well i guess i agree so now i'd love to introduce a concept of secondary dominance so we all know that dominant sound [Music] strong resolution from that v chord to the one chord to the home chord and the secondary dominant adds another resolution but not towards the home court but towards another chord of your choice basically so if we throw one in this is how it sounds [Music] so in this case the f sharp 7 i played was the secondary dominant leading to b7 leading beautifully back to e major and the home chord but this is a bit too cheesy for me it's too major so let's play the whole thing in minor and now we use the relative minor so the relative minor of e major is c sharp minor they use like the scales use the same notes but it's fused from a different perspective if you will so this is the perfect way to change the mood a little bit let's have a listen all the spells [Music] it sounds a bit like a classic turnaround right [Music] so a cool thing about the secondary dominant is that you can throw in as many as you like and james taylor apparently he likes him i like him too so i've now bombarded at e major chord to a secondary dominant turning it into an e seventh chord and then this chord leads to a major baby so whole new territory let's have a listen [Music] right so now we pivoted via that e7 chord to the a major chord sort of a new territory new explorations where can we go from here from that a major still at e on top still something beautiful right so i think it's time to introduce the concept of a two five one and even if the words sound like jiro is to you i'm sure you will recognize the sound of it sounds like this [Music] two five one in a matrix b minor seven e seven back to a let's have a listen [Music] [Music] singing all right sounding epic right that a chord is it's taking too long right now i'm playing it twice so let's use the good old blue streak of adding a diminished chord in there before we go there i want to say that i love playing the acoustic guitar and i often feel like nothing beats it and that's why i made a guitar course focusing just on the acoustic it's called acoustic adventure and there's this awesome interactive map where you can visit places like the finger picking lounge or the flat pickers saloon and pick your favorite lessons from there we cover styles from swampy fingerstyle blues to awesome modern guitar techniques strumming and picking there's a lot so please check it out at acousticadventure.com it would mean the world to me so now back to the diminished chord we went from a to b flat diminished and the rest stays the same as hopefully listen how it sounds [Music] [Music] we're getting very close to the actual chord progression of the song the 4th of july but we need to make some drastic changes so in the first line the b7 we're playing now becomes a b minor 7. so actually that becomes the 2 5 of the a we're going to in the second line it's well pretty typical but then there's one more thing that a becomes an a minor and that's a little bit strange for now you will see later why it makes sense so b minor e7 to a minor all right here we go level 9. [Music] all right so now it's time for a thought experiment so we change the a to an a minor because what if that a minor is actually the two of a two five one what would be the key then well g major a minor seven d7 g major 7th and that's exactly what happens the second time around it's so awesome so have a listener [Music] forever [Music] so it really shakes you up when you suddenly go to that a minor d7 g and then the c major seven it's a typical jazz progression really it's super cliche maybe autumn leaves old stuff so we're almost getting to the final chord progression two more steps so now we're adding a tritone substitution so where we played a minor d7 to g major 7 we're substituting the d7 for its tritone or a chord built upon the tritone of d which is a flat and then we play a seventh chord over there then you get that chromatically descending bass line that's everlasting sounds pretty cool [Music] [Music] etc so that's kind of cool right beautiful grammatically walking bass line so um step 12 the last one adding as many jazzy extensions to our chorus as we can so we already had some cool chromatic lines in [Music] but the new chord just adds another chromatic line on top of that listen [Music] and that high note just keeps on singing on top it's pretty wicked okay let's have a listen [Music] so how awesome does this sound i think it's pretty epic and it sounds great with all these jazzy lines going on but i want to hear from you what do you think about this chord progression is it too much for you too jazzy are you more into the ed sheeran chord progression there's nothing wrong with that so um if you're into acoustic please check out acoustic adventure just saying it again and otherwise i'm sure you'll enjoy one of these videos popping up over here and of course hit that like button if you enjoyed this video and subscribe to the channel if you aren't already see you next time this is paul goodbye

Channel: Paul Davids

Views: 351,992

Keywords: chord progression, chords, basic, ii V I, music theory, chord theory, roman numerals, paul davids, perfect chord progression, james taylor, lesson, tutorial, video, how to write a chord porgression, beautiful chords, how to, chord lesson, guitar chords, secondary dominant, jazz chords, blues chords, turnaround, guitar chord, acoustic guitar, acoustic guitar lesson, ed sheeran, jason mraz, jazz

Id: xDZi5XkqS8U

Length: 10min 29sec (629 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 04 2022