How To Write A Chord Progression On Guitar

1. Introduction: How's it going? I'm Dave and welcome to this class on building core progressions on your guitar. The main outcome I want for you with this course is to be able to write chord progressions on the spot without any sort of writer's block. I want you to be able to churn out core progressions non-stop because you know, exactly the right court to go to in any situation. I'm going to show you how to do that. I'm gonna show you how to spice your chord progressions up with awesome jazzy extended chords and passing chords that will really get your core progression sounding really sophisticated. This isn't full, complete beginners. Let's say this is maybe sort of an intermediate. So of course, you do want to know how to find notes on the fretboard, even if you're not the fastest, as long as he can do it, then that will be good for this course. You also should probably have a good idea of the codes that are already in a key. So the seventh chords that are in a KM, whether their major, minor or diminished, and also a decent understanding of intervals, even if you don't know them off by heart, a decent understanding is gonna be very useful. If you really liked understanding and any of those things, then I'd highly recommend you check out my other course on Skillshare, which is called music theory 101 for guitar, that will clear all of those things up for you. At the end of the course, I've got a project for you. And that project is to build a chord progression using the techniques I've shown you in this course. So more on that later. But let's get straight into the lessons. 2. Chords In A Key: Now in this video, I'm going to quickly run through the seven chords in the key. If you are familiar with them, then that's fine, but I'm just going to quickly run through them very quickly. We've got seven chords and our key, each chord is based around each note in the major scale. So if we take the major scale, C, D, E, F, G, a, and b, there is a code associated with each note of the major scale. For example, in the key of C, the first chord, C is gonna be a major chord, C major. The second chord is D minor. Third chord is E minor. The fourth chord is F major. The fifth chord is G major. The sixth chord is a minor. Seventh chord is B diminished. Now, no matter whatever key you're in, whether that's G major, a major, B major, C-sharp major. This formula is always the same chords 145 are always major, chords 236 are always minor, and chord seven is always diminished. Now to save you having to work all this out if you want to play in different keys. I've included a PDF down below with every single key and all the chords that are contained within that K to help you out. 3. How To Play Barre Chords: In this video, I'll be showing you how to play barcodes. These are gonna be really essential because this is what we're going to use to create our first chord progressions. If you already know how to play sixth string and five string, major and minor barcodes. And you also know how to play diminished chords with the root note on the sixth string and the root note on the fifth string, you can feel free to skip this video and jump into the next one. But if you don't know all of those things, then it's going to be handling to watch this video, we're going to start at the fifth fret. We're gonna bar our finger on all six strings. Now this is a course on writing chord progression. So I'm not gonna spend too much time on the technique of bar chords. I'm just gonna be showing you how to play them. And we're going to borrow the fifth fret with our index finger. And what we're gonna do is we're going to place ring finger on the seventh fret of the D string, sorry, the a string. We're going to place our little finger on the seventh fret of the D string. And we're going to play some middle finger on the sixth fret of the G string. And then we're going to keep borrowing the other strings. And the fifth fret, like a kapo. That's a major chord. Okay? Then to play a minor chord, what we're gonna do is just take our middle finger off. That's the major and minor chords with the root note on the sixth string. Okay, I'll root node is our lowest note, which in this case is a fifth fret of the low E string, then supply a diminished chord with the root node at the sixth string. We're gonna apply 5675. What we're doing is we're borrowing again the fifth fret, replacing a middle finger on the sixth fret of the a string and the seventh fret of the D string. We're going to place our ring finger on and we're going to borrow that G string with the index finger. That's a diminished chord with the root note on the low E string, the sixth string. And let's take a look at how we can play major minor and diminished chords with the root note on the a string major chords. What we're doing is we're borrowing the fifth fret, playing the seventh fret of the D string with our middle finger. Seventh fret of the G string with our ring finger. And seventh fret of the B string with our little finger. I'm keeping that ball on the top. Fifth fret with our index finger as a major chord, a D major chord because the lowest note is that we're playing minor chord. A case for D minor, what we're gonna be doing is placing borrower the fifth fret with our index finger. We're going to place our ring finger on the seventh fret of the D string, or little finger on the seventh fret of the G string and our middle finger on the sixth row, the stream that we're going to maintain that bar on the top string. Stuff. And then for a diminished chord, what we're playing is we're playing fifth fret of the a string with the index finger. Middle finger plays the sixth fret of the D string, and it will finger plays the seventh fret of the G string, and ring finger plays the sixth fret of the B string. Now these codes can be moved around. So let's say we play our sixth string major chord. We play the first fret. That lowest note is that, so that's f, okay? And the first grab the low E string, that is gonna be an F-Major chord. If it was here, and we played a minor chord, rather the eighth fret. The lowest note. Eighth fret is a C minor chord, so it's a C minor. And then the same thing on the a string as well. So if I play on the seventh fret of the a string and play diminished chord, seventh phrase in a diminished chord. So it's gonna be an, a diminished. Okay? Now hopefully you have a good idea of how to play any major minor or diminished chord. 4. Identifying The Chords In A Key On Your Fretboard: In this video, I'm gonna be showing you a little hack that you can play all the chords in any key really, really quickly and locate them really, really quickly. What we're gonna do is we're going to play the major scale, but we're gonna play it in a bit of a different way than you probably know that if you already know how to play the major scale, what we're gonna be doing is we are gonna be using the G major scale. And we're going to play first note the third fret of the lobby strength than the fifth fret of the D string. Then the seventh fret below E string. We're gonna apply this exact same fret of the a string, 357, okay? Then we're gonna apply threatened nine on the a string as well. Each one of these notes represents a different coordinate keys. The first note is the first quarter and second mode is the second coordinate, r, k, and so on, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh. Now as I said earlier, chords 145 are major, so 145, those are our root notes. And if we play major chords there, those are the major chords in Arcade, then courts to 36 are minor. It's always got do is take the second, third, and sick points of our major scale and play minor chords there. Then 2.3rd and the endpoint. And then at the seventh we can play diminished chord. That's how you can identify any chord in the key. Now, this shape is movable, so let's take the key of C, for example. So we're starting at the eighth fret playing a 10128101214. Okay. That's 1234567. Okay. So one is major into his minor. Minor. Major. Major. Six is minor, and seven is diminished. Now this is not the only way to find all seven chords in the key, but this is something that helped me out when I was first starting out trying to write chord progressions and work with keys. And you will, in your own time find your own little patterns for thinking out chord six. It's gonna be over here called five's gonna be over here called one's gonna be over here and so on. So hopefully that's helpful. Hopefully it wasn't explained in too much of a complicated way, and now you're able to hopefully locate any chord in any key. 5. Method 1: Chord Functions: I'm gonna be giving you three different methods for writing a basic chord progression. This is the first method and this is to use code functions. Every chord in the key has a specific function that allows you to create tension and release in your core progressions. Okay, now there are three types of functions of chords. We've got tonic chords, we've got Subdominant chords and we've got dominant chords now, codes 136 fall under the tonic category. And tonic chords are the chords that feel at home. They feel stable, that nice to resolve on that also really nice to start your core progressions on. They feel at home and that's where you resolve the tension. Then we've got the second category of codes, and that's the subdominant chord. Now Subdominant chords add a little bit of attention to the core progressions. They take your listener on a bit of a journey, so called 24 are your subdominant chords. Then we move on to our final category, and that's the dominant chords. And dominant chords. That function is that they add a lot of tension to the core progression. And you can't really land on these chords and stay there. You have to resolve the tension that these chords and chord 57 are dominant chords or a dominant function chords. And then from that you want to go back to tonic, tonic chord to kind of resolve your co-op question. So I have sort of a diagram here. You can save gonna play chords 13 or six, move to court two or four, and then move to code five or seven. Chord five or seven creates a lot tension that wants to resolve back on tonic chord, either 13 or six. So let's create a chord progression in the KFC, or tonic chords or one, three-sixths. So C, a minor, a minor, subdominant chords, according to enforce it, that's D minor and F. And our dominant chords accords 57, so that's J and that's B diminished. Okay, so let's create a chord progression. Let's take a tonic chord first of all. So I'm gonna take core number one to start off with. Let's keep things very simple code. One is C major, I'm gonna move to a subdominant chord, and that could either be two or four. I'm going to play a chord for as f. And then I'm going to play the dominant chord, which adds a lot of tension. And that is going to be caught five, I'm going to use, and then I'm gonna resolve that tension back on the tonic chord. And that's going to be cold, warm against implying a 1451 in the key of C. So let's take a listen to how that sounds. Now can you hear how throughout the chord progression that was a lot of tension being built. So we start off here. I was sound at home. This is our tonic chord. Chord kind of takes us on that journey adds a little bit of attention to the core question or subdominant chord. Then we get to our dominant chord. Here, how we can't stay there. Yeah, font just finished the song like that. It needs to go somewhere and it needs to go back to a tonic chord. It could go back to any tonic chord. I can go back to the sixth chord. It would work, yeah, it can also go back to a three-quarters. So that's how the code functions work. What you can also do is you can play two chords in one section if you want to. So I can play called three and code six for my tonic chord. Then I can move to code form and five and then back to one. For example, let's try that 36451. I think the chord progression is gonna base. So there are a few different things you can do. You don't just have to follow that. You can start on the subdominant chord and work your way through to a tonic chord. You can completely skip the subdominant chord and just play a tonic chord than a dominant chord, then back to a tonic chord again. And you could maybe even go around the cycle a couple of times, one chord progression, so you can go tonic subdominant dominant, tonic subdominant dominant tonic. And add a little bit more variety to your chord progression. So that's something you can do. So I want you to try and experiment and create a few chord progressions before moving on to the next technique. 6. Method 2: Stepwise Progression: The next method for creating chord progressions is stepwise chord progressions. Now this is really, really simple. We're just moving up the scale in a stepwise fashion, one-quarter at time in order of how they appear. So, for example, we could maybe start on code for witches in the key of C, F. Then we can just go to the next chord, which is called five. Then up to the next chord which is called six. We're just going up playing adjacent chords in the key 456. Then maybe we can come down again. Very simple. Maybe we could go 4321. I don't think any further explanation is really needed for this one, just a very, very quick one, but you can create some really awesome results as you just heard from the two little core of aggression is I've just created, so give that a go as well. The stepwise progression, not to be slept on, definitely use it in your core progressions. 7. Method 3: Cycle Of 4ths: The next method for core progressions is the cycle of fourths. So what you can do is you can start on any code you like really. And you can count up four chords, including the one you adjust on, and then you land on the next code in your core progression. So for example, if we started on E minor, if we were in the key of C, So that's called Three E minor, then we count up for to the next one. So E minor is one, f is two, G is three. And then a minor is for applying E minor to a minor. A minor from Amy than the next quarter is gonna be four quarters up, including the a minor, a minor, B diminished, C major, D minor from a mine, and we're playing D minor. Then if we play from D minor, we can go D minor, E minor, F, G from D minor, we're playing G. And then from j, what we could do is we could count up for or against a G minor beam diminished, safe, we'd have a chord progression that would be E minor, a minor, D minor, G, C. Let's take a listen to that. You can start at any point you like. And because it's a cycle, it will just keep going. You'll just repeat itself over and over again. So it's a great method for creating your core progressions. It builds lots of tension. It's the core progression develops. You can just keep it going on forever if you really want to try writing a few chord progressions using the cycle of fourths. And I'm sure you'll come up with some really great ideas. In the next videos, I'm gonna be showing you some ways to spice up your core progressions with some passing chords and with some cool extended chords, some jazzy sounding chords, and also some passing chords that are really going to take your chord progressions to the next level. 8. Embellishments And Extensions: The next topic is extensions and embellishment. So what we can do is with our major and minor chords and diminished chords, we can make them sound a little bit better. So major and minor chords, they sound a bit boring by themselves. But if we add things like ninths, elevenths, thirteenths, that kind of thing to them, then they get really, really interesting sounding. So what I've got here is a chart. And this chart shows you all the options you have available for a particular chord in your key. For example, called one. We can play a sauce to code. We can play sus4 chord, we can play a major sixth chord, may just 69. We can play a major seven, major, nine, major 13 chord. There's lots of different options there for us. Well, I've done is I've included a document in the document section for you to download. It's got all of the court shots for every single chord that is mentioned in this chart. And it's got the chart itself as well. You don't need to come back to this video, but let's create a simple chord progression, and I'll show you how powerful this is. Let's create a 456 stepwise chord progression. Going to play in the key of C. Again, some playing F-major. I'm playing G major, and I'm playing a minor. For the F, There's lots of different options I have. I've got things like the major seven chord. This is quarter four. I could play a major nine quarters to play major 69 chord. 69 sharp 11, a major seven sharp 11. Lots of different options there. But what I'm going to choose, I think I'm going to choose a major nine. I am coming up with this on the spot, so called five, lots of different options as well. Lots of different dominant chords. I'm going to choose. I think a dominant 11 sounds quite nice. Okay, so let's try F Major nine, chord four, chord five. And then for chord six, let's choose an a minor. So I've got all these different options. I'm going to choose a minor nine. Very neo soul inspired. Sounds, really, really nice. I've just done that by making a basic chord progression like we've just done in the last three videos. And just messing around with the different options I've got for each one of the chords. Now memorizing all of these chord shapes is gonna be a bit of a mission. So what I suggest doing is maybe starting off with the seventh chords then moving on to the ninth chords than the 11th chords than the 13th chords, and then all the other ones afterwards in terms of memorizing. But once you're creating chord progressions and experimenting, feel free to use any particular code, as I said, if you're trying to memorize them, do them in that order, That's the embellishments and extensions part of this course. Definitely come up with a few chord progressions. Maybe you, some of the core progressions you came up with in the previous videos. And apply these extensions and embellishments to them and see what happens. 9. Secondary Dominants: This video is all about secondary dominance. And secondary dominance is one of my favorite techniques for spicing up chord progressions. It really adds just a level of emotion and epic myths to your core progressions. Let's take a look at basic chord progression in the key of C. We're gonna play a 1 sixth, 4, or five in the key of C. And I'm gonna use some open chords this time, I'm going to play C minor, F and G. We're going to apply what are called secondary dominance to the core progression. A secondary dominant is where we play a dominant seventh chord, a fifth above wherever the next chord in the core progression is, let's forget that chord progression for a second. Let's just pretend on next chord in our co-op question was C. So before that C code, we're going to play a dominant seventh chord. And a dominant seventh chord is going to be a fifth above C. So we've got to work out what a fifth above C is. Let's take a C third fret of the what's called a strength workout. A fifth, what you can do is you can play the same fret string below software, or two frets higher on the next string, like a power port. Guys are fifth. We'd play a G dominant seventh chord before we play the C code. So let's just take a listen to that here, how that dominant seventh chord adds intention before I go into the C chord. So let's apply this concept to every code in that one hundred six hundred forty five chord progression. So applying a safe, then we'll move into a minor. A fifth above a is a, so we play an, a dominant seventh before we play the a minor. Here. How that works, sounds really, really cool. Then we move into F. So a fifth above F is see it play a C dominant seventh chord just before we get to the F. And the final code, and the core progression is J, a fifth above G is D. So what we're gonna do is we're gonna play a D dominant seventh chord before we play the G. Then we resolve back on, say, We can play a G7 just before we land on that. Okay? That's how you use secondary dominant chord. Again, try and use these in your core progressions for moving on to the next topic. I really want you to understand everything before moving on to another topic. You have any issues if you're struggling at all with any of these topics, feel free to just get in touch with me and I will help you as much as I can. 10. Altered Dominant Chords: Now let's talk about altered dominant chords or two dominant chords. Again, one of my favorite things to do, they really add a jazzy elements to your chord progression. So what are altered dominant chords? Well, let's first examine a standard dominant chord. Okay, so a dominant seventh chord consists of root note, a major third, perfect fifth, and a flat seventh. So to get a altered dominant chord, we're going to alter the fifth over, going to add a ninth, but we're going to alter that ninth. What I mean by that is we're going to have a flattened the fifth or we're going to augment the fifth, turn into a sharp fifth. Or we can play a flat ninth on top of the chord, or sharp ninth on top of the chord. Or we can play a mixture of one of the altered fifths and one of the auteur nights as well. For example, we can play a dominant seventh, sharp fifth. We can play a dominant seventh, flat fifth. We can play a dominant seventh flat nine. We can play a dominant seventh sharp nine. Chord diagrams for all of these chords are gonna be down in the download section for you. So you can check all the chord shapes out there. But here are a few that I like. I like the dominant seventh sharp five. Dominant seven flat nine. Yeah, I like the dominant seven sharp five sharp nine. That's a really nice one. Really, really cool. So let's try that in a chord progression. So what we would usually do is do it on our five chord. Let's take a 251 chord progression in the key of C, that's D minor. And then C. Sorry one more time. We could also play it here. I think I'm gonna play it here because I like playing the altar dominant chord, the root level and the sixth drink a bit better. Okay, so we're going to play a G seven sharp five instead of our standard G major chord because that's all our five quarter case. So sounds really cool. Warfare tried it may be a dominant seventh flat nine, so a G7 flat nine. Sounds very good. Maybe I could try a G7 with a sharp fifth and a flat ninth. We can use it as our five chord, but we can also use it for our secondary dominant chords. Let's say we're playing C major, meeting into an a minor. The secondary dominant is E7. Can also play an E7 sharp five, for example. We could also play an East seven flat nine. Let's try that. Sounds really, really beautiful and adds even more attention than just a standard secondary dominant chord. So again, I'm going to try using some altered dominant chords in your core progressions and coming up with some really cool jazzy sounding progressions. And then we can move on to the final topic. 11. Diminished 7th Chords: In this video, we're gonna learn how to use diminished seventh chords in our chord progression is really, really, really great way of adding some spice to core progressions. Let's take a look at how to play diminished seventh chord. First, there's a few different shapes. It's going to take a look at how to use it with the root note on below eastern. Some playing with the root node at the fifth, fifth fret. We're playing middle finger on the fifth fret of the E string. We're borrowing the D GNP strings with our index finger for threat. And then we've got our ring finger at the fifth fret of the G string and we get something that sounds like this. Notice it's quite a dissonant sounding chord by in contexts that sounds really, really amazing. Let's take a look at how we can play it with the root note on the fifth string. But we're gonna do this. Now we play the fifth fret of the a string with our middle finger, sick for of the D string, with our ring finger. For fret of the G string with our index finger. Sixth fret of the B string with our little finger, diminished seventh chord. So it's a really, really simple method to use diminished seventh chords in your chord progressions. We use them as a passing chord if you want to get off them, as soon as you get on them, relate, what we're gonna do is we're going to play diminished seventh chord one fret below. Wherever the next coordinate chord progression is, let's say Up. Next chord is F. The fret below is a. So we'd play an E diminished seventh chord. Simple as that. Let's play an F, G, a minor chord question. F, leading into j, we are going to play an F sharp diminished seventh, one fret below G. Then one fret below a minor is G-sharp, so we're gonna play G-sharp, diminished seventh, leading into our a minor. Let's take a listen to that. Okay, So you can do that. You can also play your diminished seventh chords, two frets higher than whatever the next coordinate chord progression is so far, next chord is F. Two frets higher than that is j. So we can play a G diminished seventh for the F. Okay, so let's try that with the same chord progression. We're going to play F, going to play a diminished seventh, j. Then we're gonna play a B diminished seventh into an a minor diminished seventh chords. Really, really simple codes to use and really, really effective parts and coords in your chord progressions. 12. Homework!: Now we'll have a project for you to take part in, and I'd really love to see you get involved. So the task is really, really simple. All I want you to do is write a chord progression using the techniques from this video. So you can use one of the first three methods, whether that's the chord functions, whether that's the stepwise chord progression or whether that's the cycle of fourths. And then spice it up with maybe some altered dominant chord, secondary dominant chords or diminished seventh chords. You'd have to use all of them. But once you've got a chord progression that you're happy with, post it down as a video in the project tab of this course. And I'll get back to you with some feedback. I'm really looking forward to seeing your chord progressions and hopefully seeing all that you've learned from this course. 13. Outro: I really hope you've enjoyed this course on writing chord progressions on guitar. I hope it's kind of open up some new kind of pathways for your chord progressions. And I hope most of all that is going to really eliminate a lot of your writer's block. This is sort of a system I've created to be able to just write chord progressions on the spot. And not really have to worry too much about fiddling around the fretboard, trying to find the right chord because you know what the right chord is going to be. Or at least you've got options that, you know, uh, definitely going to work. So if you enjoyed this course, then you might want to check out my book called charisma to point O, the topics covered in this course only really touch the surface when it comes to all of the things you can do with your core progressions and your chord voicings and everything. And my book covers it all is absolutely the best resource when it comes to writing chord progressions. Check out, there'll be a link somewhere for you to check it out. I hope you grab a coffee because it's really, really going to help you out with your guitar playing and your songwriting and your knowledge of codes and progressions. Also, if you want to see more content for me, I've obviously got more Skillshare courses and I've got a YouTube channel called David Lovejoy, just my own name. So go and check that out as well. And hopefully I'll see you then Have a good one and I'll see you in the next course.