What is a chord progression?
All songs have a key center, this means that a song is “in the key of.”
Every key has seven chords and you can number them from 1 to 7.
In the key of C we have these chords: C – Dm – Em – F – G – Am – Bdim.
To replace this with roman numerals you simply number them:
C (I) – Dm (II) – Em (III) – F (IV) – G (V) – Am (VI) – Bdim (VII)
Song Example
Let’s take the song The Drugs Don’t Work as an example.
The first part of the verse chord progression is: C – Am – Em – F – G – C
That means the roman numerals are: I – VI – III – IV – V – I
Since there are only 7 chords we can start seeing different combination’s, these are called “Chord Progressions”.
As long as we translate a chord letter to a number we can hear and even predict musical movement.
Learn more about chord progressions in the Guitar Conspiracy.
