harmonic progression

The key-note of music is called chord one so that, if we play in the key of C, the progression E minor - F - G can be generally described as a three - four - five progression.

A chord progression (or harmonic progression) is a series of musical chords, or chord changes that "aims for a definite goal"^[1] of establishing (or contradicting) a tonality founded on a key, root or tonic chord.

Chord progressions offer a shift of level or harmonic simultaneity succession essential to the harmony that is fundamental to the music of Europe (at least since 1600CE), Oceania and South/West Africa. A change of chord generally occurs on an accented beat, so that chord progressions may contribute significantly to the rhythm, meter and musical form of a piece, delineating bars, phrases and sections.^[2]

The basics

A chord may be built upon any note of a musical scale, so a seven-note scale allows seven basic chords, each note becoming the "root" or "tonic" of its own chord: a chord, for example, built upon the note "A" is an "A" chord. However, since any piece or progression, generally, may be played in any key, the fundamentals of harmony are best grasped by numbering the chords according to the step of the scale they are built upon, upwards from the key-note. In western classical notation this is done with Roman numerals. A "D" chord will be figured I in the key of D, for example, but it will be figured II in the key of C. A minor chord is signified by lower case Roman, so that D minor in the key of C would be written ii. The structural meaning of a harmony depends exclusively upon the degree of the scale.^[1]

Diatonic scales such as the major and minor lend themselves particularly well to the construction of common chords such as triads because they contain a large number of perfect fifths. For this reason such scales predominate in those regions where harmony is an essential part of music, as, for example, in the Common practice period of western classical music. On the other hand Arab and Indian music have a greater number of available scales because the music has no chord changes: it remains always upon the key-chord, as does a certain amount of hard rock, hip hop, funk, disco, jazz, electronica etc.

Simple progressions

Erik Satie, self portrait 1924

A major scale gives three major triads that together include, and so can harmonise, every note of the scale. They are based on the first, fourth, and fifth scale degrees (the tonic, subdominant, and dominant—see three chord song).

The same scale also provides three relative minor chords, one related to each of the three major chords. These are based upon the sixth, second and third degrees and stand in the same relationship to one another as do the three majors. Although all this allows for a large number of possible progressions (depending upon the length of the progression), in practice progressions are often limited to a few bars' length and certain progressions are favoured above others: there is a certain amount of fashion in this and a chord progression may even define an entire genre.

The interchange of two chords may be thought of as the most basic chord progression and many well-known pieces are built harmonically upon the mere repetition of such a cadence,^[1] basically oscillating between two chords of the same scale—for example, Erik Satie's first Gymnopédie for piano and the Velvet Underground's "Heroin" are both built upon a repeated I - IV, while The Isley Brothers' "Shout" and Bob Marley and King Sporty's "Buffalo Soldier" both use I - vi. Much ragtime and the more straightforward melodies of classical music (e.g., the Trumpet Voluntary) are built, mostly or entirely, upon chords I and V.

The three-chord trick

Beethoven imagined composing his Pastoral Symphony

Three-chord tunes, though, are more common, since a melody may then dwell on any note of the scale. Often the chords may be selected to fit a pre-conceived melody, but just as often it is the progression itself that gives rise to the melody. In the Major tonality the three-chord I - IV - V progression can be placed into a four-bar phrase in several ways: these have been put to endless use in popular music. Ottman^{[3][clarification needed (what page?)]} gives examples of favoured progressions:

• I - IV - V - V. (The basis of Ritchie Valens' "La Bamba", this progression also provides the refrain of Bob Dylan's "Like A Rolling Stone" and John Lennon's "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds".)

• I - I - IV - V. (Millie Small's "My Boy Lollipop" (usually credited to Robert Spencer, Morris Levy, and Johnny Roberts), "Heartbeat" (written by Bob Montgomery and Norman Petty for Buddy Holly), The Rolling Stones' "Get Off Of My Cloud" (refrain), Paul Simon's "Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes", Van Morrison's "Madame George", ...)

• I - IV - I - V. (Common in Elizabethan music (Scholes 1977), this also underpins the American college song "Goodnight Ladies", Solomon Linda's "Mbube"/"Wimoweh"/"The Lion Sleeps Tonight" and Desmond Dekker's "Pickney Gal" among many others.)

• I - IV - V - IV. (The Isley Brothers' "Twist and Shout", Chip Taylor/The Troggs' "Wild Thing", etc.)

This basic harmonic pattern occurs in many other pop songs—the output of Phil Spector might also be cited. It may also be varied by the addition of sevenths etc. to any chord or by the substitution of the relative minor of the IV chord to give I - ii - V. This last is heard, for example, in The Beach Boys' "Good Vibrations" ("Got to keep those...."). This sequence, using the chord based on the second scale degree, is also used cadentially in a common chord progression of jazz harmony, the so-called ii-V-I turnaround, on which are based the more ornate Coltrane changes. Such progressions provide the entire harmonic foundation of much African and American popular music, and they occur sectionally in many pieces of classical music (such as the opening bars of Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony).

Where such a simple sequence does not represent the entire harmonic structure of a piece, it may readily be extended for greater variety. For example, an opening phrase of the type I - IV - V - V, which ends on an unresolved dominant, may be "answered" by a similar version that resolves back onto the home chord, giving a structure of double the length:

• I - IV - V - V
• I - IV - V - I

Additionally, such a passage may be alternated with a different progression to give a simple binary or ternary form such as that of the popular thirty-two-bar form (see musical form).

Shang-a-lang-lang (Oo-ee-oo-ee)

The Mills Brothers' recording of "Till Then" looked forward both to the end of World War II and to the popular music of the 1950s. (Courtesy of the Fraser MacPherson estate c/o Guy MacPherson)

Another common way of extending this sequence is by means of the chord of the sixth scale degree, giving the sequence I - vi - IV - V or I - vi - ii - V. Sometimes called the 50s progression, this sequence has been in use from the earliest days of classical music: after generating popular hits such as Rogers and Hart's "Blue Moon" (1934), Jerome Kern and Dorothy Fields' 1936 "The Way You Look Tonight" and " Heart and Soul" (composed by Hoagy Carmichael in 1938), it became associated with the black American vocal groups of the 1940s, The Ink Spots and The Mills Brothers ("Till Then"), and thus later became the entire basis of the 1950s doo-wop genre, generating records as otherwise disparate as The Paris Sisters' "I Love How You Love Me" (written by Mann and Kolber), Boris Pickett's "Monster Mash" and The Monotones' "The Book of Love". It continued to be used sectionally, as in the refrain of The Beatles' "Girl", and also to generate further new songs for decades ("Every Breath You Take" by The Police, "Don't Get Me Wrong" by The Pretenders).

Introducing the ii chord into these progressions emphasises their appeal as constituting elementary forms of circle progression. These, named for the circle of fifths, consist of "adjacent roots in ascending fourth or descending fifth relationship,"—for instance, the sequence VI - ii - V - I ascends to the fourth note above each time (returning to I after VII). Such a motion, based upon close harmonic relations, offers "undoubtedly the most common and the strongest of all harmonic progressions".^[4] The succession of cadences gives an impression of inevitable return to the key-note of the piece.

Short cyclical progressions may be derived by selecting a sequence of chords from the series completing a circle from the tonic through all seven diatonic chords^[4]:

• I-IV-vii^o-iii-vi-ii-V-I (in major) Circle progression in major (help·info)
• I- V-I = I-V-I Circle progression excerpt: I-V-I (help·info)
• I-IV- V-I = I-IV-V-I Circle progression excerpt: I-IV-V-I (help·info)

This felicitous type of progression was much used by classical composers, who introduced increasingly subtle inflections. Particularly, substitution of major for minor chords giving, for example, I - VI - II - V allowed a more sophisticated chromaticism as well as the possibility of modulation. These harmonic conventions were taken up by American popular entertainers, giving rise to many variations on those harmonic staples of early jazz that have been dubbed the ragtime progression and the stomp progression. All such progressions may be found used sectionally, as for example in the much-used "rhythm changes" of George Gershwin's "I Got Rhythm".

Blues changes

The twelve bar blues and its many variants use an elongated, three-line form of the I - IV - V progression that has also generated countless hit records, including the most significant output of rock and rollers such as Chuck Berry and Little Richard. In its most elementary form the blues progresses as follows:

• I - I - I - I
• IV - IV - I - I
• V - IV - I - I

Again, the blues progressions have formed the entire harmonic basis of many recorded songs but may also be confined to a single section of a more elaborate form, as frequently with The Beatles in such songs as "You Can't Do That", "I Feel Fine", and "She's A Woman". They have also been subjected to densely chromatic elaboration, as in the work of Charlie Parker.

Steedman (1984) has proposed a set of recursive "rewrite rules" which generate all well-formed transformations of jazz; both basic twelve bar blues chord sequences, and, slightly modified, non-blues I-IV-V sequences (such as the "rhythm changes"). Important transformations include:

• replacement of (or addition to) a chord with its dominant, subdominant or the tritone substitution.
• use of chromatic passing chords.
• extensively applying the ii-V-I turnaround.
• chord alterations such as minor chords, diminished sevenths, etc.^[5]

Harmonising the scale

As well as the cyclical underpinning of chords, the ear tends to respond well to a linear thread; chords following the scale upwards or downwards. In the 17th CCE descending bass-lines found favour for "divisions on the ground", so that Pachelbel's canon, the Bach orchestral suites (the famous Air on a G String), and Handel's organ concerti all contain very similar harmonisations of the descending major scale. When this was reintroduced into mid-20th century pop music, it brought with it many baroque trappings (The Beatles' "For No One", Procul Harum's "A Whiter Shade of Pale", and The Steve Miller Band's "Dear Mary" and "Baby's House").

At its simplest, this descending sequence may simply introduce an extra chord, either III or V, into the I - VI - IV - V type of sequence described above. This chord allows the harmonisation of the seventh step, and so of the bassline I - VII - VI.... This strategy underlies Percy Sledge's "When A Man Loves A Woman" and Bob Marley's "No Woman, No Cry". The baroque examples descend for an octave, while "A Whiter Shade of Pale" manages a stately two octaves, before "turning around" through the dominant chord to re-commence upon the key-note.

Ascending major progressions are not as common but many exist: the verse of "Like a Rolling Stone" ascends by steps to the fifth, I-ii-iii-IV-V before descending again to the key-note, IV - iii - ii - I—the latter is another common type of harmonisation of a descending major scale. The Four Pennies' hit "Juliet" and The Beatles' "Here, There and Everywhere" both use similar progressions.

The descending chromatic scale has also formed the basis of many progressions, from the "Crucifixus" of Bach's B Minor Mass, through Beethoven's Thirty-two Piano Variations, to songs such as Bob Dylan's "Simple Twist of Fate", George Harrison's "Something" and Lucio Battisti's "Paradiso", a hit for Amen Corner when translated as "(If Paradise Is) Half as Nice".

Minor and modal progressions

Needless to say, similar strategies to all the above work equally well in minor modes: there have been one-, two- and three-minor-chord songs, minor blues from the time of Benny Goodman ("Why Don't You Do Right?") to The Doors' "(Riders On The Storm)". A notable example of a descending minor chord progression is the four-chord "Malaguena" sequence, i - VII - VI - V, which appears in Ray Charles' "Hit the Road, Jack", the verse of "Good Vibrations", the instrumental section of David Bowie's "Moonage Daydream", etc. Similar descending minor sequences are heard in Jimi Hendrix's version of Bob Dylan's "All Along the Watchtower", Dire Straits' "Sultans of Swing" and Neil Young's "Southern Man".

Furthermore, the minor-third step from a minor keynote up to the relative major encouraged ascending scale progressions, particularly based on an ascending pentatonic scale. This is audible in Huddie Ledbetter's "Black Girl" and was taken up into the British pop of the sixties with such recordings as The Animals' version of the traditional "The House of the Rising Sun" and Graham Gouldman/The Yardbirds' "For Your Love". Typical of the type is the sequence i - III -IV (or iv) - VI.

With heavy rock, this type of pentatonic minor "modal" sequence was applied to major chords, thus introducing extra dissonant notes into the music. The use of modal harmonies came about because of the similarity of the blues scale to modal scales and probably from the characteristics of the guitar when played with simple chord-shapes—this is also linked to the rise in the use of power chords.^[6] Progressions of the general type I - Flat III - IV are audible, for example, in Deep Purple's "Smoke on the Water" and Fleetwood Mac's "Green Manalishi".

Further, folk and blues tunes frequently use the Mixolydian scale, which has a flat seventh degree, altering the position of the three major chords to I - Flat VII-IV. For example, if the major scale of C, which gives the three chords C, F and G on the first, fourth and fifth degrees, is played with G as the tonic, then the same chords will now appear on the first, fourth and seventh degrees. These "Mixolydian" harmonies also appeared in the pop music of the 1960s, notably with The Beatles' album Help! and The Rolling Stones' Beggar's Banquet.

See also

• Chromatic mediants
• Ragtime progression
• Sixteen bar blues
• Coltrane changes
• Backdoor progression
• Passamezzo moderno
• Chord chart
• Tonality
• Harmony
• Functional harmony
• Ear training

Sources

Further reading

• Middleton, Richard (1990/2002). "Studying Popular Music". Philadelphia: Open University Press. ISBN 0-335-15275-9.
• Nettles, Barrie & Graf, Richard (1997). The Chord Scale Theory and Jazz Harmony. Advance Music, ISBN 389221056X.
• Sutcliffe, Tom. "Syntactic Structures in Music". http://www.harmony.org.uk/chord_progressions_in_tonal_music.htm. Retrieved on 2008-07-22.  Discusses how chord progressions work in relation to musical phrases.

External links

• Google spreadsheet [1] of hundreds of 3 chord songs
• Guitarz Forever's Three Chord Progressions For Guitar website
• Hot Fret's Chord Progression Generator a useful tool for building chord progressions.
• Guitar KnowledgeNet's Chord Progression Generator contains over 200 Major and Minor chord progressions in every key, these progressions can be random generated from user’s input or selected manually from a drop down list.
• Robert Walker's Chord Progression player - paste a chord progression into this Windows tool and it will play it for you (in any tuning you like)
• Impro-Visor plays chord progressions, and suggests and generates melodies over them