One Tune - Three Chord Progressions

hello everybody how you doing welcome to the shed today we're going to be taking a fairly straightforward little tune fairly straightforward it's so simple it's well it's really simple and we're going to be put seeing how many different ways we can put chords with it and how the chords speak to the tune and how it suddenly will bring it to life and turn it into the kind of tune that people will stream on spotify a billion times no i am not holding my breath for that either but nonetheless this is how the little tune goes it goes like this i did tell you it was simple so what we've got going on here eg ea cb okay so when i come to um put chords with tunes i mean it doesn't always work that way around sometimes you start with the chord and then you come with the tune over it um but just sort of it's the same kind of conversation so what's going on is what we're trying to do is find a chord which is appropriate but also interesting so the most obvious chords to choose when you're you know where you probably start is chords one four and five which in c major um is okay chord in c major obviously chord one is c major chord four is uh f major chord five is g major so you can go chord one then it's going to go e a a is in chord four so chord four then it's going to go c b and b is the middle note of chord five then you're going to go back probably ga so you're going back to chord four if you were just harmonizing this using chords one four and five that's the more obvious way of doing it but you don't have to stick to chords one four and five and you don't have to stick to um just basic diatonic chords like that to try it so here's another way you could do it um let's uh let's try this so now instead of going to um chord um when we go up to the a i could use any other chord which has got an a in it like for example an a minor [Music] it's then going to go cb so b is the top note of chord three that works then back to chord four [Music] yeah are we liking that do we like that at all i quite like that i think that's all right um so that's using chords six and three as well as chords one four and five let's see what else we can do though because there's another way we could approach this um we could just keep that c going down the bottom all the time so we could go now what's actually going on there's a normalcy triad [Music] we've now gone to a second inversion of f there's there's chord four f a and c if we put the c in the bottom that's a second inversion now what's going on there what do you mean guy we got a b we got a g a b and a c yeah it's it's a chord called c major seven okay so this is a fournette chord but we're only playing three notes of it so that's why you get that kind of nice sense of yearning see i quite like that i like that one most so far okay so we got several variations on this going already um let's see what happens when we but you don't have to there's also other options available to you some of them some of them are a little bit more bizarre so if you're going to go some things are hard to do um you see you could say okay well why don't i go [Music] um if it goes up to the g g is the middle of e flat but then the tune is actually you've still got in your sort of harmonic memory the fact that it's an e natural so going to an e flat chord is going to sound a bit bizarre [Music] but you could go uh you could start on an a minor because that's an a minor seven chord this is the other thing that when you get um you're not just restricted to triads and the tune can form the extension the the note which sits on the top so for example um with that a minor chord if the tune is on goes to the g what you've what you've got there is an a minor seven chord because that that's a seven so the note doesn't have to be um in the heart of the triad it can act as an extension to it which is pretty much what we were doing before when we were going [Music] that is the extension so [Music] okay so let's just what we're going to do is knock this knock this into some kind of shape now so we got this this piano i'm using let's now just turn briefly to what i'm using this is a brand new piano for synchron pianos from vsl it's called bozendorf 280 vc it was out this week and it has a lot of character i really like it so okay so using that let us now add [Music] um we're gonna put a synth pad underneath it how will that work let's see how that goes actually start the simple pad earlier start the synth pad then let the tune come in [Music] not so keen on that okay let's try a different approach let's go with the [Music] let's use the guitar [Music] that works all right um how about some of those other chord progressions we're talking about so what that does is going um let me just show you again i'll get my keyboard back here we go hello keyboard c that's going to the second inversion of f then when we go down to the b we go to a e minor so so there's the e minor chord and i'm just taking the this is a it's a figure i really like the you go from the base you go up a fifth and then you go up to the tenth so you go you're putting the middle of that e minor chord you're spreading it like that if you have two hands the size of dinner plates that's relatively easy to play if you've got dainty little fingers then you're going to be sitting there going [Music] i can't do this i can't do this so i i appreciate that this this particular way of anyway so where were we yeah but so so what are my preferred choices um so that's f well it's sort of i could or you could spell it like that which is a d minor seven no [Music] then you come up to um chord four let's do that i like that here we go [Music] okay let's add something else in let's add a little bit of a strings in going back to my friend's sign factory from orchestral tools this is their free strings library [Music] helix strings [Music] now add a baseline uh we've got a base here yes now tempting what am i going to do with the bass line or i'm going to keep it i'm going to keep it um so we're going to go c we're going to keep it going through the f [Music] so the c almost acts like a pedal oh then we go to the e minor it's really simple but you see start it's it becomes more effective the more you play that's my story and i'm sticking to it [Music] no it doesn't need drums look i mean that's really the i mean more or less what i was going to show you pretty much showing you everything now i think but so just to recap um the way in which i'm approaching this is i'm looking at um i sit here and i look at my keyboard and i think okay there when i see a tune i'm seeing chords at the same time so if i see a tune which is as this one is going um then i'm i'm obviously seeing it i can see okay i can see a c i can see an e minor um i can see um what else can i see uh g uh chord five c so you could see that as being an extension of g but and i start by thinking of sort of chords one four and five and then i sort of spread out and become more bizarre as time goes on that's rather a sort of metaphor for my life really spreading out and becoming oh no that's not what i intended to say today but anyway look so um when you are playing your little trick the other thing actually just just one other thing when i say [Music] that wouldn't work by going to the flat what then happens if you quite like that harmonic movement you would then alter the tune so it's a conversation as i've mentioned before between the tune and the and the chords so you could then go then you're into a whole new world you see and that if you're writing a film score and you want suddenly to take your motif and to mangle it and turn it into something it was never intended to be then you can start looking at these slightly more bizarre uh ways of harmonizing things but you will need also then to modify the basic thematic idea as well but that's fine because you can still recognize it you know that's whatever so look if this kind of thing rings your bell um by some enormous stroke of luck we happen to produce courses on things like this um learn music theory yes we do one of those how to write music yes i do one of those as well and you will find details of all this underneath this video so look thank you very much indeed for your company um hope you found that useful and entertaining keep your chin up uh stay healthy stove um happy and i will see you very soon cheerio

Channel: Guy Michelmore

Views: 31,507

Keywords: thinkspace, education, music, film, scoring, games, television, composition, composer, guy michelmore, guy, michelmore, thinkspace education, how to add chords to a melody, chord progression, chord progression piano, music theory, how to write music, how to write a song, piano chord progressions, piano chords, chord progression theory, chord progressions for writing songs, chord progressions music theory

Id: 4riHGNzO9Ao

Length: 14min 16sec (856 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 03 2021