Week 5 - Chord Progressions

A chord progression is sometimes also called a harmonic progression.  It is a series of chords that are based on key signature of the music.  Chords and chord progressions are the basis of harmony.

A chord is a group of usually 3 or more notes that are played together and so a chord progression is then a group of chords that are played in a certain order.  Chords are numbered with Roman numerals and they also have technical names such as dominant, subdominant and tonic.  The tonic is the root note of a scale e.g. the C Major scale root note is C and a chord built on C - C, E, G is so called the tonic chord.  The fifth note of the C Major scale is the dominant note which is G, so the dominant chord of C Major is G, B, D.

My weekly task involved composing a melody over a chord progression and this meant thinking about what notes sound like when played together and also about what sort of feeling I want to convey with my composition.  If I choose notes that sound nice together then the music will sound resolved and if I want to create tension I can perhaps choose notes that don't blend together so well.

Here is a chart of common chord progressions that I found at Easy Lead Guitar

In most popular songs there are the same basic chord progressions.  It appears to be very easy to compose songs around these chords and make them sound good and ultimately sell songs.

Check out this video that is a fantastic example of how so many songs that we hear on the radio can be built around the same chord progressions.  (Please note that there is some swearing in the video)  This video features many songs built around the I, V, VI, IV chord progression.