Understand music by understanding chord progressions!
Popular music, especially composed on the guitar, is mainly practiced by musicians who are not big on music theory.
Instead the approach is often, if it sounds cool it’s right.
Because of this we have a musical culture that, through evolution, has created variations to a chord progression we today experience as normal.
In the beginner routine we learned about diatonic chord progressions, this is here at intermediate completed with the 2 Chord Loops.
It would be fair to say that a combination of diatonic progressions and the most common variations like IVm, IIIx and bVII is what makes up chord progressions of popular music.
The Guitar Conspiracy examine this in much greater detail.
As well as this there is another, very common variation and that is the variation that comes form The Blues.
The Blues created the early chord progression variations!
When the Blues first begun to evolve, being accompanied by a guitar, the instruments were of low quality with very high string action.
Therefore, the early blues musicians tuned their guitars to open major chords such as E, D, G and A.
A bottleneck slide was then applied to swap between the different chords in order to form a progression for the singer to tell their story to.
If the first chord was a dom7 chord they simply moved that whole pattern to fret 5 to get the IV chord and did the same thing there: A7 – D7 for example.
Back in standard tuning and the clue is in the chord shape:
A7
Notice that the third is a C# (2nd string, 2nd fret)
A singer would choose to melodically phrase using these chord notes since they feel most comfortable to sing.
So over the A7 a singer naturally hits the notes: A, C#, E or G.
When we move to the next chord; the IV7, or in the key of A; a D7, we can see that the b7th interval is a C, not a C#.
D7
in D7, the b7 is a C, in relation to the A chord this is a minor third
Moving from A7 to D7 is not harmonically correct. It should be Amaj7 – Dmaj7 (I to IV)
What happens is that the D7′s b7th interval, the C, is a semitone away from the A7′s major 3rd interval; the C#.
To move between C# and C is like moving from A major to A minor.
This has had an incredible influence on vocal melody and the blues guitar solo where we constantly move between minor and major.
The video below demonstrate this in more detail.
How To Play Minor Over A Major Chord Progression
In the video lesson I play this chord progression in 6/8 time:
| A7 | A7 | D7 | D7 | A7 | A7 | E7 | E7 | D7 | D7 | A7 | D7 | A7 | E7 | A |
From A7 to D7 I play on C# to C, from D7 to A7 I play C to A, resolving from “minor” to the root.
From A7 to E7 I play the b7 of A, a m3rd or E, which resolves up to a major third.
The last A7 to E is quick, but it does go b7 of A, up to 3rd of E, that’s G to G#.
Popular music’s chord progressions are a combination of:
- Diatonic movements
- Common Variations such as IIIx
- The Blues
Find out more in the Guitar Conspiracy.
