Satriani
I did a mini lesson on harmonising a scale. This is where it comes in handy. You should by now know that when you harmonise a Major scale, you get this:
I) Major
II) Minor
III) Minor
IV) Major
V) Major
VI) Minor
VII) Diminished
VIII) Major (OCTAVE)
What we'll discuss now is called Chord Leading. Certain chords just naturally flow into other chords, and will NEVER sound bad when you mix them together. Here are a few typical and common progressions:
I Chord leads to Any Chord
ii chord leads to IV, V, vii dim
iii chord leads to ii, IV, vi
IV chord leads to I, iii, V, vii dim
V chord leads to I
vi chord leads to ii, IV, V, I
vii dim chord leads to I, iii
What on earth does all that mean I hear you saying? If you take any Major scale, and play it's 7 notes, you will get 7 different scale degrees. Give each of them a number (as I asked you to do in previous lessons), and assign those number to roman numerals. Note I used smaller case for Minor chords, and Upper case for Major chords. Try out some of these chord progressions starting on whatever key you like, and see how nicely it all fits together ?
Now each of these chords actually has a relationship to one another, and they also have names. It's not life changing if you don't learn these names, but hey, never hurts to learn what's going on, right?
1 = Tonic is the primary pitch of the key (HOME BASE)
2 = Dominant
3 = Mediant
4 = Subdominant
5 = Submediant
6 = Supertonic
7 = Leading Tone
These are all DIATONIC, meaning in the Key of whatever note you choose. If C is your Tonic, then D is your Dominant and so on.
likotzeseasalt
That is just SUPER GREAT STUFF man, thank you. I write my own songs but i have no clue as to how it works and why! I just do it because it sounds good and then i let my friends add in more chords or less or whatever.
I will try it for sure!! In the process of writing another song after many years of not doing ANYTHING ☹
Satriani
Glad I could help clear up some sadly mysterious theory ?
If you listen to just about any huge hit from the 70's onwards, and break down the chord progressions in those songs, you will almost ALWAYS find that these are the little tricks they use!
likotzeseasalt
Cool, so I will keep doing what I have always done, play by ear!! The only diff is that I will be listening to the chord progressions in order to write my own tune instead of just jamming to them! 8)
