LESSON
7
CHOOSING
THE RIGHT CHORD
PROGRESSIONS,
NOT SUCCESSIONS
Making a chord
progression work means understanding the term progression. For
struggling
writers, the problem is that the series of chords that might be better
described as chord successions:
the chords just don't seem to relate with each other too well.
For chords to work, you need to more fully understand how one chord
likes to move to another. And you need to know what chords will
naturally exist in a given particular key. This is a bit involved to
describe here in great detail; the best plan right now is to get a copy
of "The
Essential Secrets of Songwriting"
and go right to Chapter 4 - Harmony.
The short version of the
chord story is that if you know what key your song is in, write the
scale for that key, and then build chords. For example, if your song is
in A major, write an A major scale, then write chords above each note
of the scale. If you do that, you will get the following chords:
I- A major (the "tonic" chord)
ii- B minor
iii- C# minor
IV- D major (the "subdominant" chord)
V- E major (the "dominant" chord)
vi- F# minor
vii- G# diminished.
WHAT TO DO WITH THOSE
CHORDS
Those are the chords that naturally occur in
the key
of A
major, and
you would do well to stick to them as your most common
chords. In
fact, most songs will work quite nicely by using primarily the I, IV
and V chords. Those chords are known as the tonic, subdominant, and dominant chords,
respectively.
Here are some chords from major keys, with common substitutions that
can add variety to your music:
This
chord...
|
...can
often be substituted with...
|
| I
(A) |
- vi (F#m), if melody note is
on 1st or
3rd scale
degree.
- IV (D), if melody note is
the tonic note
- flat VI (F), if melody is
the tonic note.
|
IV
(D)
|
- ii (Bm), if melody is on 4th
or 6th
scale degree.
|
V
(E or E7)
|
- iii (C#m), if the melody is
on 5th or
7th scale
degree.
|
BE
CAREFUL WHEN YOU SUBSTITUTE
Substituting one chord for another can be a bit unpredicatable, so
you'll want to make sure that it works for you. And substituting chords
also strongly impacts on the form of the song, so you'll want to be
sure that you make any chord substitution happen at structurally strong
places in your song.
Here is an example of chords and some substitutions (Example in A
major):
(I IV V I) A - D - E - A.
Substituting the final
I-chord with vi gives: A D E F#m
Substituting the D chord with
a ii-chord gives: A Bm E A
Both substitutions: A Bm E F#m
Looking for
some chord
progressions?
"Essential Chord Progressions" is now available.
ACTIVITIES
for CHORD SUBSTITUTIONS
1.
Take the following chords
and make substitutions as indicated in the table above. For each
progression substitute one or more chords, and make note of your
changes. (For chords with a slash, the letter name before the slash is
the chord name; the letter name after the slash is a bass note):
- A D F#m Bm E A
- A F#m Bm A/C# D E A
- F#m D A Bm E A
- E7 A D A/C# Bm E7 A
- A E D A/C# Bm F#m E A
2.
Take a
song that you've
written and go through the chord progression. Try substituting chords
one for another, and make note of the effect on your song.
3. Write a short melody of
two or four bars. Now harmonize it in as many ways as you can. Some
choices won't work as well as others. Make note of all progressions
that you find, and rate them from 1 (poorest) to 10 (best).
...on
to Lesson 8 - MIXING
STRONG AND FRAGILE
PROGRESSIONS
Get Gary's songwriting
e-books and learn to make songwriting FUN AGAIN! Read
more here.
|
I'd love to hear from
you! If you find these lessons useful, or if you have any questions,
please don't hesitate to write me (Gary Ewer): gary@pantomimemusic.com
©
2005-2008 Pantomime Music Publications
"The Essential
Secrets of
Songwriting
Online Free Songwriting Course" is the copyright property of Pantomime
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