The GREATEST Blues progression of all time

[Music] the blues it's such a timeless genre but if you look at the chord structures we often find the classic 12 bars using the same three chords over and over and i don't mean that in a bad way it's just a characteristic of the blues and of course there's all sorts of variations but ultimately it's mostly derived from those same 12 bars but this tune which is considered a blues standard is just the perfect blues chord progression it does everything a little different and i'd love to take a look at it the piece is called nobody knows you when you're down and out the first recording of this blue standard dates back to 1927 and during the years we've seen many different renditions of [Music] oh well nobody knows you when you're down and out [Music] [Music] oh and this is how i like to play it [Music] so if you want to learn this piece how i just play it on the guitar you can hop over to my second channel after this video of course where i'm doing a classic guitar tutorial of the tune it's paul david's 2 that's the name of the second channel but now why is this chord progression so great it's a blues blade in the key of c major following 8 bars and immediately it starts out great with the first two bars like this [Music] so after that c i'm playing an e7 chord and an a7 chord two chords not very often seen in the key of c major so why does it work so well okay so that e7 chord we call it a dominant seventh chord that's the seventh a chord that needs to be resolved there's tension and it seeks resolution so just listen to this in the key of c g 7th and c major that's your typical dominant 7 resolution in the key of c everyone knows it from the 5 the g 1 to c d e f g the v chord to the 1 chord the c major [Music] but now we play that same thing not on the 5 but on the 3 c d e so e7 we call that secondary dominant and you can see the secondary dominant as a sort of a setup chord for where we where we want to go next again this chord seeks resolution it wants to lead somewhere where does it want to lead well it definitely wants to lead to an a chord you see c [Music] and that a chord is also played as an a seventh chord and that's a pretty dramatic turn of events right playing an a7 in the key of c it's a whole different vibe anyway this a7th chord also wants to lead somewhere right it's a dominant seventh chord so this is again a secondary dominant and where e7 led us to a7 a7 leads us to the d chord and in this case d minor let's have a listen it's beautiful right so now we find ourselves on the d minor the two chord in the key of c major but to me it feels more like the tonic a new tonic we're tonicizing the d minor or so it feels like to me it's our new home chord and that gets emphasized by playing an a7 again after the dd minor [Music] so now it feels like yeah sure we can hang a little bit on the d minor chord it feels like the piece could end here if you wish but it doesn't because this is only the first half of the tune now going to the second half we find ourselves in a sort of a paradigm shift we transform from the d minor to the relative major of the d minor which is the f and we go there with a nice chromatic bass line it sounds super cool d minor [Music] and then to f major so d to e flat to e and to f so from the two chord we go to the four chord because the f is the four chord in the key of c a chord we find in any blues very grounded and then something cool happens because that chromatic run isn't over yet nope we play d minor chromatic run to f and then the bass keeps on going to f sharp we play an f sharp diminished chord you can play it everywhere it sounds great but i like to keep the chord on top just the a and the c so so it all links together a little bit so this is great and now we can even keep on going because the next chord is c major chord and if we keep on rising that bass we go to f sharp to g so we play the c major over a g base note which is done in a lot of recordings as well because it's just you need to milk that chromatic thing as much as possible or like this but in this case i'm actually not doing that because i'm going to the c major chord which is a start point of another chromatic run so first we walk up chromatically to f sharp and then we're going to walk down chromatically from the c major to the a cell so c b b flat to a [Music] something like this from the f [Music] that's awesome right if you're just as excited about this as i am just hit that like button gently if you will it means a lot to me and now again we find ourselves at the a7 chord and this is the perfect setup again a secondary dominant chord to the next place we're going and you might have heard about it it's the cadence two five one it's used in jazz a lot but it's not really something that's exclusively for jazz no no for blues it works great as well so the a7 sets us up to go to the d chord we've seen it before right and then we used the d minor chord which wasn't the secondary dominant but what if that d chord again was a secondary dominant well then we played as a d7 chord and that's exactly what happened and the d is the 2 c d so d and the d is again also the secondary dominant of the new chord so a leads to d and d leads to the g7 and we've seen the g7 before in the beginning of the video where i said well the classic dominant resolution in the key of c is g7 to c and now this is exactly what happens we go to the g7 via the d7 the two the five and the five leads us to the c major chord and now we've come full circle so that end just listen how lovely and how elegant it moves [Music] it's just chords but there's so much information inside the chords that you can use to play lovely lines over it for example the last four chords gives us a lovely chromatic run [Music] all these little things there's so much cool stuff you can do let's just move over the chords one more time so c major to e7 dominant seventh secondary dominant of a [Music] resolves to d minor five of d this feels like home a little bit but now to the second part of the of the chord progression the paradigm shift chromatic line to f major the four chord to the sharp four diminished we see that a lot in blues and often that f sharp diminished resolves back to the one which goes back to the sixth chord played as a dominant seventh chord which is the five of two which is the five five which is the five of one and when i say five of one it means the secondary dominant of that chord i'm talking about so it's such an elegant chord progression and i hope oh actually when you play the tune you don't even think about all these things that happen but you just know it sounds great nobody would say hey that's a weird chord in the key nobody thinks about that you don't have to think about it to play it but if you know how it works and why it sounds so great you can use all these little things in your own music way more easily and also explain it for yourself why it works why does it sound great or maybe if you want to spice up something you have lying around you can use these same tricks as well so it's a lovely play between tension and release still feeling very down to earth and bluesy and above all it's so much fun to play so if you're interested into learning to play it how i did it you can check out the tutorial on my second channel where we go over it note for note and for now please hit that like button if you're just as excited about this chord progression as i am of course subscribe hit that bell icon for all the good stuff and i want to thank you so much for watching have a nice day cheers

Channel: Paul Davids

Views: 1,411,181

Keywords: paul davids, nobody knows you, analysis, great chord progression, blues chord progression, clapton, acoustic, Martin D28, acoustic guitar, greatest chord progression, of all time, nobody knows you when you're down and out, lesson, tutorial, video, secondary dominant, tabs, chords, 12 bar blues, dominant 7th chord, chromatic bass, tonic, dominant, sub dominant

Id: o4QZfg4oQA4

Length: 11min 37sec (697 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 03 2021