Hey, how are yoy doing?
Justin here. Today I want to talk a little bit
about chord progressions. We've talked in the past about chords
in a key. So we learned that in the key of C there are certain chords
that go together. Actually, all of the notes from all of those chords belong
to the same major scale, the parent major scale of the key. So in the
key of C we had C major, D minor, E minor, F major, G major, A minor
and the B diminished which we just don't talk about much, it
runs in the family. And it's really helpfull to number the chords.
So C would be chord I, first chord in the key, D minor is chord II,
E minor is chord III, F major is chord IV, G major is chord V,
A minor is chord VI. Now, since music has evolved, the've become some
some chord progression that people use a lot, that sounds really good.
The're the reason they get chosen a lot. It's not like some formula
that you have to stick to but the're just really effective tools.
Now as part of this course I want to do a little introduction to song
writing and with song writing you don't need to stick to a set chord
progression. You can really go completely free form and choose
what ever chords you like. In fact, some of the best songs don't
use chords that are in the same key. They use weird combination of chords,
unexpected combination of chords that can be really beautiful. But when
you're first starting out trying to write a tune it can be helpful
to have a kind of a starting point. Something just to, just to give you
something to get going on and some chord progressions, common chord
progressions you might find really helpful for that. So it's defenitely
worth studying them for that reason. It's also really helpful when you
start learning songs on your own, when you can hear a song and you go
"Ah that chord progression sounds familiar." Because when you practice
them thay will start to become familiar. You'll hear a song on the radio and
think "Those chords sound familiar, that movement" even if you don't know
exactly what the chords are, like what key it's in, you start to recognise
the movements of the chords and that can be a really valuable thing as well.
So what I thought I'd do is just pick 5 very common chord progressions,
talk you through what they are and then at some point during the, before next
lesson, have a go at practicing them and playing throught them and see
if you can recognise some songs that use each one of the chord
progressions. Just a few, just experiment, play them, you know, slowly, fast,
you know, with the changes happening quite frequently or not happening
very frequently, you know. A couple of bars in each is good. Experiment.
I just want you to open up this little box and go "Oh there's such a
thing as chord progressions, here's some popular ones, I might start
to recognise these sounds, or I might want to use them for song writing
or if I'm jamming with my friends and he's going to improvise using the
C major scale, these would be wonderful chord progressions to do".
OK? So if you got a jam buddy, don't be using my backing track. If you
got somebody to jam with, jam with a real human. One person plays
one of the chord progressions and the other person improvises. The beauty
of doing it using a set chord progression rather then just any odd chords is that
the person which is improvising can start to imagine the chords that's
coming up and find the melody that would go good with it. That's kind
of how it works as you progress and you get better at improvising your
ear kind off guide you into the right note that will fit with the chords
that are coming up. You can kind of anticipate what it's going to
sound like. That is unlikely to happen in the early days of playing
but for sure you can aspire to having that happen.
The first progression that I want to mention is the I, V, VI, IV sequence.
Very, very common chord progression in pop music. So many pop hits
use this and this is the one that they use also for the axes awesome
four chords thing. In the key of C, which is what I recommend that you
stick with for now, it would be C, G, Amin, to F. OK? C, G, Amin, to F. If I'm playing that can you imagine
a song that uses that? Can you sing a song that you know, a pop song
over the top. There are hundreds that you could
be doing, you know, melodies that fit over that chord progression.
Lovely one to improvise over and great one if you want to get into a
little bit of song writing, experimenting later down the way.
Definitely worth exploring a little bit. Next one I want to give you is the
VI, IV, I, V. OK? So chord 6 was Amin, to IV which was the F chord, C which is the I, to the V which is the G. The VI, IV, I, V. Again, really, really common chord
sequence. Lot's, and lot's of songs that will fit with that. I want you to
think about the songs, then pop them in the comments on the web site. OK?
Just leave, if you find songs that use this specific chord progression,
let us know in the comments. See who gets the easy ones first.
There's a few low hanging fruit that you're going to know but let's see
what else we can find. I'm sure we can collectively find a ton of
songs that use this chord sequences. Next chord sequence that we've got
is the I, IV, V, IV sequence. Again, very, very, very common sequence
would be C, F, G, F. Super, super common. Of course we
use the I, IV, V chords in a different sequence for things like the blues.
But this isn't a blues. This is a set chord progression I, IV, V, IV.
There are no rules if you are writing you can try something different too.
That works as well. OK. Next chord progression I, VI, IV, V,
which would be C, Amin, F, G. You can play it lot's of different
ways, I'm just trying to change the feel up a little bit so you get
the idea. You don't have to set, play a set thing,
a set feel, a set time. You can even experiment with playing in 6/8
if you want have a go at doing that. The idea is just to get used to what
these chord sequence sounds like. Last one we're going to check out
uses a different chord which is a II chord so we're going to have
II, V, I, VI. OK? Chord II in the key of C was Dmin, V is G, I is C,
VI is Amin. So we have this Dmin, G, C Amin, again Dmin, G,
C, Amin. Experiment. See what you can come up
with. Theres some chord progressions. These are probably the most common 5
chord progressions around but there are others, there are many others and
it depends on the genre and the style that you want to play and all of that.
But the purpose of this lesson is just to open a new box for you, for you,
and go the songs use chord progressions some are very specific for a specific
song, others are very commonly used over many songs. There all worth
learning. By learning the standard and common chord sequences is
really good for your ear if you try to work out a song on your own
or try to guess how a song goes in your ear and it's also a eally good
starting point if you want to get into song writing. So there's
lot's and lot's of great things about learning and exploring
chord progressions.
