I don’t want to hear Am-F-C-G! Argh, I hate that one.
Musicians, please share your favorite chord progressions…and the songs they came from. I’m looking for those progressions that give you chills every time you hear the song…when the instrumentation and the progression leads to a perfect resolution that just makes everything feel good inside.
One of my favorites is the old IV-I “Amen” type of plagal cadence. You hear it a lot with the word Halleluyah as well in liturgical music, often at the end of a piece. Especially when sung by a full voiced choir, it can be riveting. Also, iv-I. In chords I’m thinking like f minor - C major.
Another one is v-I, the minor-five to major one, like you would hear in something maybe more European, British, English, with that modal feel to it. Think Ralph Vaughan Williams, Percy Grainger.
That progression helps truck my blues away if I throw in some bass with my thumb. If I’m hungry, though, I change the timing a bit and toss in some melody notes.
Ok, weird quirk. Typing this post on my iphone, and even though the letters are all caps, when I hit submit, the board seems to autocorrect them to lowercase.
My first example is the least interesting harmonically as it’s one of the most basic, most often used progressions but here you go: Am-Em. It works. All. The. Time.
Then, there’s the famous “Take a minor chord with the third in the bass and move it down one half step with each measure”. So for instance:
5 - 5 - 5 - 5
5 - 5 - 5 - 5
5 - 5 - 5 - 5
7 - 6 - 5 - 4
X - X - X - X
X - X - X - X
Finally there’s the progression found at the beginning of My Man’s Gone Now. Like all jazz standards, there’s a bazillion ways to play it but I was very fond of a version I had found in some book or magazine in the 90s. It started like this:
X - 3 - X - X 7 - 5 - 3 - 3 7 - 5 - 4 - 2 5 - X - 2 - 1 7 - 5 - 3 - 2
X - X - X - X
(Going from memory, I hope I got it right).
Anyway, the movement between the first to chords is lovely. Very slow, one chord per mesure, let it ring.
I hate the fact that I will have to sit down and take time to noodle these out, vs. just speaking written music fluently enough to parse it out based on what you wrote.
Keeping on that simplistic note, I will nominate E to A. Yep, two chords. The E to A bit enables me to practice technique and work on groove. I set up a James Brown groove, then move to slower R&B, then a blues back and forth, then something rockabilly or reggae - toss in a B every now and then to mix it up ;). When I am noodling in the background with friends, some of the guitar types will ask what I am playing. I tell them E to A. They say “yeah, but you put those little bits in the middle that makes it hard, don’t you?”
Or D G A G - La Bamba. I set that up and move between simple arpeggio’s to pseudo-flamenco. Fun to lose yourself in the strumminess, then back it off and back again.
I guess my point is: I love a super-simple set of chords that enable me to move across grooves.
Beyond that, I love chord progressions that include a Cadd9 (is that right? a C, but with your pinky and ring on high E and B at the 3rd fret). Love that chord.
Sorry, my/this notation doesn’t lend itself well to this forum.
“I/7th” means play the “one” dominant 7th chord with the 7th as the bass note, so, consequently, F7/Eb means play an F7 chord with an Eb in the bass.
I usually play “Ain’t Nobody’s Business” in C, so…
C - E7 - Am7 - F7 (add an F#dim7 after if you want) - C - A7 - D7 - G7 - C - G7
#IV diminished 7ths that follow IV chords are common; the easiest way to accomplish this (on a piano anyway) is just to raise the root note a half-step from the IV ; i.e.
F7’s notes are F A C Eb
F#dim7’s notes are F# A C Eb
I wish more progressions used Major 7ths. They are such beautiful chords. Barbara Mandrell’s I was Country uses a C Maj7. Dan Seal’s You Still Move Me uses a G Maj7 (capo on the 2nd fret).
I always enjoy playing Major 7ths. D Maj7 is barring the 1,2,3 strings on the 2nd fret. It’s a pretty chord too. Johnny Rivers used it in Tracks of My Tears.
Funny, I was thinking of that, too. More Am-Em7, but same idea. “Things We Said Today” is the song I was thinking of, and it has one of my favorite chord changes over the “some day you will find me part” where it goes from Am-Em7 to C-C9-F-Bb and back to Am-Em7. That little chromatic melody part that goes from the D in the C passing into the Db then the D in the C9 always gets me.
I’m also a sucker for the ol’ cliche I-V-bVII-IV (or, depending on the context, some other Roman numeral analysis). For example, Eb-Bb-Db-Ab. You’ll hear it in Duran Duran (“Her name is Rio…” E-B-D-A), Phish (the choruses of “Fee” and “Bouncing Around the Room”), Smashing Pumpking (“Who wants honey/as long as there’s money”, D-A-C-G), Joe Jackson (verses of “Is She Really Going Out With Him?” Bb-F-Ab-Eb), Pink Floyd (the chorus of “Comfortably Numb” repeats it, but same idea, D-A-D-A/C-G-C-G), and a slew of other songs I’m forgetting at the moment.
You tricked me! I thought you were referring to a C9. I’ve got a little trick for a C9 that might work well for your Cadd9. I spent a lot of my youth fingerpicking so I paid a lot of attention to the bass strings. For a C9, I got in the habit of fretting both the 5th and 6th strings at the 3rd fret with my middle finger. That way I had the root and the 5th available. And if you barre the 5th & 6th like that AND you barre the 3rd, 2nd, and 1st on the 3rd fret with your ring and pinky fingers, the whole chord becomes movable.
Oh, in Music Theory, after the teacher told us never to do this, we really enjoyed ending the things we’d write with an inverted I followed by V7 6/4 (that’s the inversion).
Seconded. These chords always sound great. They sound “open” to me, for lack of a better word. I like these:
X - X 2 - 2
2 - 3
2 - 4
0 - 5
X - X
No problem. It just goes to show that it’s a neat progression ;).
Thinking about noodling, I like moving back and forth between these two chords:
X - X
**8 - 8
7 - 7
7 - 7
7 - 8 **
X - X
So again a chromatic movement in the bass - I’m so predictable. But if you barre with your first finger on the 7th fret, you should be able to have your pinkie free to play little passing notes on the E and B strings.