Learning guitar progressions is easy and will help you become better as a guitar player. The big secret to learning and playing guitar player is first learning and practicing basic chords and then learning to play songs with the chords you have mastered. It is the easiest and fastest way to learn to play the guitar.
That is the big secret to learning the guitar! Learning how to put the chords together through chord progressions in a systematic way will help you with your chord groupings and chord changes and you will become a good guitar player!
You do not need to be an expert in music theory to play guitar. Many rock guitarists are not experts in music theory. They have trained themselves to play the guitar by ear – that is, by listening to other musicians and building on their skills by playing along to songs. I have heard interviews from guitarists joking around about how little they know about music theory.
There is a common-sense element to playing music and playing guitar. That is, if it sounds good, it is right. The other side is true as well. If it sounds terrible, then it is wrong! For many, that is the extent of their music theory.
There are elements of music theory that are easy to learn and are essential for building your guitarist skills. Although you do not need to be an expert in music theory to start playing guitar, it is important to learn music and music theory fundamentals.
The key fundamentals that you should learn are:
- The notes on the neck of the guitar. Know how to find any note on the neck of the guitar. See Guitar String Notes
- Major Scales and Minor scales.
- Pentatonic scales
- Chord Progressions
In this lesson, we will focus on guitar chord progressions – but we will first start by learning about chords.
What Is A Guitar Chord?
Learning the fundamentals of a guitar chord is important for learning chord progressions. Before diving into learning about chord progressions, let’s cover the basics of a guitar chord.
Guitar chords are a big reason why playing the guitar has become so popular. Almost anyone can learn basic chords and be able to play a song on the guitar.
A chord is the layering or stacking of several musical tones played simultaneously. In another way, we can say that we produce a chord when we play two or more musical notes simultaneously. Guitar power chords are typically played with just two notes.
This also means that chords are not limited to instruments like the guitar or piano; when several vocalists, trumpeters, or even trombonists come together to sound different musical notes simultaneously, a chord is produced. We can also safely call it harmony.
When a choir or an orchestra sings different musical pitches simultaneously and then keeps moving to other pitches with every other player or singer, singing or playing a complimenting pitch, then we can safely say that there is a chordal or harmonic movement.
Chords are built from the grouping of three notes called triads. A triad is a set of three notes stacked in thirds. Playing thirds means that you start on the 1st degree of the scale and count it as one. You then count to the 3rd degree of the scale and then the 5th degree of the scale.
So, for example, if you look at the A major scale guitar, you have A-B-C#-D-E-F#-G#. The first degree in the A major scale is A. Then count to the 3rd from A, and you have C#. Count to the 3rd (5th degree) from C#, and you have E. Below, see the open A chord with notes A-E-C#.
Another example is the G major scale guitar of G-A-B-C-D-E-F#. If you start counting from the root of the scale, which is G and count to the third, you have B. Count to the third from B, and you have D. So, the chord of G is G-B-D.
When you look at the chord chart, you will see the chord’s notes identified on the bottom of the chart. You will notice that there are only three notes in the chord. Most new students are surprised by this!
Polyphonic instruments (such as the guitar or piano) can produce more than one note at a time, while monophonic instruments are limited to making one note at a time. Even though chords are typically played on polyphonic instruments, it is still possible to create chords when several monophonic instruments (such as a woodwind quintet) play together in harmony. Now let’s look at what a chord progression is.
What is a Chord Progression?
A chord progression is any series of chords played in a song. It refers to the order in which chords are played in a song/piece of music. When you play different songs, you will see other ways in which songwriters order chords.
We can also say that chord progressions are a series of chords played in a set order on a scale, usually comprising of at least 2 or 3 chords. A chord progression plays a big part in how your song turns out to sound at the end.
A particular chord at a certain point in a chord progression can drastically change the form of your song from happy to sad with one simple chord choice.
Just one major, minor, or augmented chord can’t do much for a song. A chord must be combined with other chords to create a song. Even the most simple, repetitive progressions of chords have the power to present a very complex array of emotions and musical ideas.
We have happy chord progressions, sad chord progressions, simple chord progressions, and very complex chord progressions.
With a solid and engaging chord progression as your base, other elements of your song—like lead melodies or bass lines become much easier to come up with based on the chords you’ve chosen and where they sit.
If you have some trouble writing a song and don’t know where to start with your arrangement, chord progressions are absolutely the way to go. I have written many songs by just first creating a good sounding chord progression.
Many pop stars and songwriters use this method too; all they have to do to get started is to create a clear and sweet-sounding chord progression.
How to Create Chord Progressions
You will notice as you play along to songs, different songs have the same type of chord changes. There is a pattern to the way chords are used in songs. A chord progression is a series of chords and the sequence of chords used in a song. They can go together in all sorts of ways, but they are typically drawn from a scale.
Remember the Roman Numerals
Chords grow on scales just like plants grow on the soil. Because all the note-to-note music relationships remain the same, you can use symbols or roman numerals as a timesaving shorthand to understand chord progression. Roman numerals are the symbols most commonly used to describe how chords work within different keys.
What makes this so great is that if you’re like most players who are not very fond of complicated music theory concepts: All of music’s major and minor keys feature the same repeating sequence of chords.
All you need to do is to memorize just two sequences, and you’ll have a straightforward way to understand chord progressions. The following chart is a useful guide to use for building your chord progressions. It is a helpful chart to know the notes of your scales.
The first line in the chart is the A major scale. The notes of the A major scale are A-B-C#-D-E-F#-G#. As you use this chart to build out your chord progressions, you will see which interval of the scale is a minor chord and which chord is a major chord.
Major Chord Progression Chart
The following are the chord types based on the interval of the scale. You will see the major chords are the intervals I, IV, V
● I– Tonic – Major Chord
● ii – Supertonic – minor Chord
● iii – Mediant – minor Chord
● IV – subdominant – Major Chord
● V – Dominant – Major Chord
● vi – Submediant – Minor Chord
● vii – Leading Tone – Diminished Chord
The major scale intervals are:
1 W 2 W 3 H 4 W 5 W 6 W 7 H 1
W stands for a whole step (distance between 2 guitar frets), while H stands for a half step (or one fret interval). Using the C major scale as our example (You can apply this major scale intervals to any musical note; what it means is that you have changed the key you’re playing in.)
C W D W E H F W G W A W B H C
All you have to remember now is that the 1st, 4th, and 5th chords of a major scale chord progression will always be major chords (showed by capitalized roman numerals), while the 2nd, 3rd, and 6th chords will always be minor (lower roman numerals).
The 7th chord is usually either minor or diminished, depending on which sounds acceptable to you. Remember that this is for major keys. What this implies is that the chords in the key of C major are as follows:
C W Dm W Em H F W G W Am W Bm H C
In summary, we can say that;
- C is the Tonic Chord- I (Major)
- Dm is the Supertonic – ii (minor)
- Em is the Mediant – iii (minor)
- F is the Subdominant – IV (Major)
- G is the Dominant – V (Major)
- Am is the Submediant – vi (minor)
- Bm is the Leading chord – vii (minor)
From all we have learned so far, you can see that if we’re using the chords in C major as an example, our very basic chord progression will look like this:
C-Dm-Em-F-G-Am-Bdim
The example below shows the chords in the key of C, but chord progressions can be in every other major key as well.
For B Major, see our page on the B Major Chord.
Five Fundamental Rules of Chord Progression
If you follow these five fundamental chord progression rules, making music and creating chord progression will become a lot easier for you.
- Choose a key to compose in (Keys like the C major, G major, A minor, and E minor are useful keys to start with for beginners)
- Work out the primary chords (I, IV, V). Build your progressions with these primary chords. Then, move on to include some secondary chords (ii, iii, vi) to develop your chord progressions further.
- Always begin and end your chord progression on the first chord (chord I -the tonic).
- Try using some common chord progressions.
- Try adding some circle progressions.
Most Common Chord Progression
Now that we have discussed the chords in the key of C, you can start playing some cool chord progressions using those key of c chords. It doesn’t matter if you are a beginner guitarist or a seasoned player, you can play any chord progression you want in any key since it’s just a matter of substituting the chosen notes key learning the chords required to play a progression.
Here are a couple of some very common chord progressions in C major. Remember that the 1st, 4th, and 5th chords are major, and the 2nd, 3rd, and 6th chords are minor.
- I – V (C – G)
- I – vi – ii – V (C – Am – Dm – G)
- I – IV (C – F)
- I – vi – IV – V (C – Am – F – G)
- I – vi (C – Am)
- I – vi – ii – vii (C – Am – Dm – Bdim)
- I – IV – V (C – F – G)
- I – vi – IV – vii (C – Am – F – B dim)
- I – ii – V (C – Dm – G)
- I – vi – V (C – Am – G)
Circle Progression
Whenever you hear the name circle Chord Progressions, know that they are progressions where the chords seem to follow each other naturally. We can also say that circle progression is where the chords’ roots relate to each other, specifically by ascending 4ths or descending 5ths.
We consider circle progressions to be harmonically powerful because they pull our ear toward one chord being the tonic or root chord.
They’re very satisfying; you’ll probably see an innovative use for circle progressions in the choruses you write because they’re so strong and easily identifiable. Good examples are;
- I – iv – vii – iii – vi – ii – v – i – C – F – Bdim – Em – Am – Dm – G – C
- I – iv – v – vi – C – F – G – Am
Quick Reference Sheet For Chord Progressions
Minor Scale Chord Progression
The above explanations were specific to major scale chords. Still, if you wanted to experiment with minor chord progressions, you would first need to specify what chords are in the given key, based on the minor scale intervals:
1 W 2 H 3 W 4 W 5 H 6 W 7 W 1
In the minor realm, the order of chord qualities is different. The minor scale kicks off from of the 6th note of the major scale, so these are the chord qualities you would use for minor scale progressions:
- i – minor
- ii – diminished
- III – major
- iv – minor
- v – minor
- VI – major
- VII – major
And here is a table to make things easier. A (minor) is highlighted to give you a reference point:
Note; even though it’s not very common, there are still plenty of songs out there built on just two repeating chords.
If you’re a beginner to songwriting, I would recommend starting with the simple method by building a chord progression with just two or three chords. Give yourself the time and freedom to explore putting chords together because it is the only way to compose something that works. Use the charts above to play some basic progressions, then build your own based on what sounds good. There are no actual rules for progressions. It’s up to your ear to decide in the end.