CHORD PROGRESSION

What is a chord progression?

This ‘chord progression’ web page was until December 2012 Lesson Five of the Musicarta Pyramids Variations series of online keyboard creativity lessons.

The Pyramids Variations has now been released as a digital download home-study pack comprising a 150-page PDF text file, 200-plus audio and MIDI files of the musical examples given in there, a free MIDI-player ‘virtual keyboard’ app and 26 videos showing the key musical examples in the PDF playing with simultaneous scrolling music manuscript.

Skeleton series web pages like this one have been left on the site to show you how the Pyramids Variations can boost your ability to simply make music at the keyboard. This page now shows you briefly how Lesson Five of the Pyramids Variations introduces the 32-bar AABA chord structure (the heart of the ‘Great American Songbook’ of jazz standards), with some sophisticated seventh chords in the new material.

The page then hosts a more general look at chord progressions and links you through to other relevant material on the Musicarta site.

Explore the other pared-down pages using the old series navigation link table in the right hand column, click through to the Pyramids Variations home page to learn more, or be totally irresponsible and just…

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32-bar AABA form

Up to this point, the Pyramids versions you have played have all been only 16 bars long. To make the piece any longer without simply repeating the same music, we need new material. This new material is the ‘B section’ of the new, extended four-strain ‘AABA’ form. To make things easy, the keyboard pattern in the new material is mostly the pattern you already know – the six notes of the basic music-making position (BMP) with a melody note on top.

The new material is made more interesting by the melody note NOT, in some cases, being one of the BMP notes. This creates two ‘seventh chords’. The basic music-making position notes are the root, the third (of the scale), the fifth; the melody note of the new seventh chords is seven scale-tones above the root – follow the counting on the illustration below.

The new chords are presented in the usual Musicarta all-avenues-covered style:

The F major seventh chord (Fmaj7, bar 17)

chord progression

(Key: L = LH note R = RH note M = melody note – also right hand)

(The audio plays all four non-BMP B section chords.)

Remember that all the musical examples in the Pyramids Variations also come with MIDI files which you can play on the MidiPiano (Windows) application included on the Pyramids variations package. Here is the MidiPiano performance of some of this lesson’s material.

There is more Pyramids variation material on the Mister Musicarta YouTube channel.

Use the Musicarta YouTube links page to find it quickly and easily!
Subscribe to Musicarta YouTube using the highlighted ‘FEED’ button: on the YouTube channel home page.

Seventh chords make music sound interesting and generate harmonic movement. The Pyramids Variations ‘B section’ introduces seventh chords gently into a framework you already know. If you want a more head-on introduction to seventh chords, visit Musicarta’s seventh chords page. Chord progression and structure Experienced musicians as well as successful songwriters and keyboard composers take an ‘aerial view’ of chord progressions. They are not stepping through a song chord by chord but seeing the overall picture so they know where they are and where they are going.

Chord progressions in popular music display a number of structures which make them satisfying and make improvising and composing easier. The 32-bar AABA chord progression is one such structure. It forms the basis of most jazz standards and the hits of the 'Great American Songbook'.

Working with the Pyramids Variations material you already know makes understanding this important chord structure easier. ‘Hearing it for real’ is a big step forward in your popular music education and will prime you to recognise other important chord progression structures.

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Other chord progression material at Musicarta

Johann Pachelbel’s Canon in D is probably one of the best-loved and most-played chord progressions of all time. Musicarta’s Canon Project is another Musicarta Publications home-study digital download. Click through to the Canon Project home page to take a closer look.

Chord progressions in popular music use a fairly limited number of chords, which are grouped in keys. If you approach learning these chords methodically, you will quickly find you can play a substantial amount of the pop music repertoire – and tell just by listening what chords are being used.

The Musicarta Chord Progressions series offers that methodical approach – and also coaches you beat-for-beat to a CD-full of keyboard grooves! Click through to the Chord Progressions home page here to get started.