Colouring your chord progressions

Transcription

1 Colouring your chord progressions A simple Step to Step guide by Honesty/Liebra Why this little handy guide to colouring your chord progressions? In today's pop music most of the songs stick to all the tones of one tone scale and a lot of them are very predictable and boaring. Of course simplicity can be very beautiful as well, don't misunderstand me here! If you really want to make a difference and want to create beautiful melody lines with colourful chord progressions than this guide will help you. It is of great importance that you already know something about chord progressions, the degrees per scale and the possibilities for the melody lines for the bass instrument (inversions etc.) I will explain one type of chord progression, step by step, starting easy to more difficult further on. Level 1: Simple chord progression in major: Imaj7 - ii7 - V7 - Imaj7 We use the C major tone scale with septime chords with following degrees: iii7 E-G-B-D Emin7 IVmaj7 F-A-C-E Fmaj7 vi7 A-C-E-G Amin7 vii7b5 B-D-F-A Bmin7b5 Try to understand the progression Imaj7/Cmaj7 This is your home, your base ii7/dmin7 Belongs to the subdominant group (it contains the subdominant F) and is a substitute for IV. These two chords contain all the different notes from C major. The ii7 and the IVmaj7 always try to get away from home. V7/G7 This chord really wants to go home. It contains the tritone B-F which sounds very unstable. They only wish to resolve, B upwards to C and F downwards to E. Bass movement If you play the chords in first position you get: C-D-G-C in step movement: a major second-a perfect fourth and a perfect fifth

2 Always listen and decide if you want to have smooth intervals for the bass or larger intervals. If you want a smooth interval then you could decide to play G7 with a D in the bass, so you get the following bass progression: C-D-D-C Level 2: Chord progression in major: Imaj7 - ii7 - substitute for V7 - Imaj7 With this progression we make a difference comparing to the first one by taking a replacing chord for the V7. A nice substitute for the dominant G7 chord is a major chord which lies a semitone above the Tonic. In C this is the Db7. This chord we an use as a substitute for G7. In a minute I'll explain why? Db7 Db-F-Ab-Cb(B) Db7 Try to understand the non diatonic progression Everything stays the same with the exception of the substitute for V7/G7 being Db7. Db7 contains 2 notes Db and Ab which do not belong to the C major scale but it sounds great! Why? Let's see what happens here: Resolution movements: Db wants to go down to C F wants to go down to E Ab downwards to G B upwards to C Every part of the chord resolves with an interval of a semitone. In fact they all are leading tones. The important Tonic C gets approached from above Db and from beneath B. Bass movement You also get a very nice and smooth bass progression: C-D-Db-C Note! If you use harmony notes which do not belong to the scale we call this a non-diatonic progression. Level 3: Chord progression in major: Imaj7 - dominant V7/ii - dominantv7/v7 - Imaj7 It is also possible to use other temporary Tonal centres. As you already know you have to confirm a new tonal centre with the progression V-I (major) or V-i (minor). The progression we did in the beginning at level 1 is still the starting point at every level. I just explain to add more colours. So, what we are doing here at level 3 is nothing more than to add the dominant chords for Dmin and G7. These 2 chords are the new TEMPORARY tonal centres, nothing more than that. So we are not modulating!

3 Find the dominant chords for ii/dmin and V/G dominant chord for ii/dmin As you will notice I changed this minor 7 chord into minor Here is why but be aware it is traditional harmonic theory! The septime in Dmin7 is note C. The dominant chord must be a major chord, so with a major triad. We see D minor as a temporary new tonal centre. D minor natural is D-E-F-G-A-B-C. The dominant chord should be major, but is minor A-C-E. Here we miss the important leading tone C#. As you probably know the 7th tone due to this reason is raised in harmonic minor so C to C#. This is the official theory but feel free doing something else and use natural minor. Ok back to the dominant chord for Dmin. We use harmonic minor so we add A-C#-E-G being A7. dominant chord for V/G7 Here I do it my own way by not letting me guide by the F# I need for G major. For G the dominant chord is D7. dominant V7 for ii A-C#-E-G A7 ii D-F-A Dmin dominant V7 for V D-F#-A-C D7 Step 3 Try to understand the non diatonic progression Now we temporary created a new tonal center, first D natural minor and secondly Gmajor. At the end we confirmed the C major mode. Although we played total strange notes C# and F# it still sounds great. So using V7 dominant chords for all the degrees on the C major scale gives you extra colours. Be aware never to use the vii chords in major because of the diminished fifth. Level 4: Chord progression in major: Imaj7 - substitute dominant V7/ii - V - Imaj7 For the new temporary Tonal centre ii/dmin we can replace the extra dominant chord by a substitute dominant chord we've seen at level 2. Find the substitute dominant chord for ii/dmin D harmonic minor is our temporary new tonal centre. We've seen that the dominant V7 chord is A7. We also saw that the substitute dominant chord is a major chord lying a semitone above the tonic.

4 Seeing that D harmonic minor is our temporary new tonal centre, Eb7 is the substitute. substitute dominant V7 for ii Eb-G-Bb-Db Eb7 ii D-F-A Dmin You easily could do the same for the dominant V7/V7 chord D-F#-A-C/G-B-D-F. G major is our temporary new tonal centre. The major chord lying a semitone above the temporary tonic G is Ab7. So we get Cmaj7-Eb7-Dmin-Ab7-G7-Cmaj7. Level 5 : Chord progression in major: Imaj7 - ii(7) from which substitute dominant, V7, is - substitute dominant V7/ii - V - Imaj7 What do we say here? Do not forget we still use level 1 as a base being Cmaj7-Dmin-G7-Cmaj7 We wish to colour things up: First with a substitution chord for the dominant chord V7/G7 being Ab7 Level 2. Secondly with non diatonic progressions where we added dominant chords for our temporary new Tonic centres A7 for Dmin and D7 for G7 Level 3. After that we replaced the added dominant chords with the substitute chords (we've seen at Level 2) Eb7 for A7 and Ab7 for D7 Level 4. The new final colour we are going to add is by looking at the substitute dominant Eb7 being the real dominant V7 chord of the scale it belongs to. In other words Eb7 is the V7 from which scale? Seeing that the ii-v-i progressions souind great we will use the second degree ii(7) from this scale. Please be aware that the target is still going from Cmaj7 to Dmin where Dmin is the new temporary Tonic scale! Find the scale where the substitute dominant chord is the real V7 chord We've seen the substitute dominant is Eb7. Eb7 is the real dominant V7 chord in Ab. Find the ii from this scale We always use the major scale so Ab major. This has to do with the second degree we are looking for. In minor the second degree contains always a diminished 5th. So the ii in Ab major is Bbmin. We could also use Bbmin7 for example.

5 Step 3 ii7 from scale substitute dominant Bb-D-F-Ab Bbmin7 substitute dominant Eb-G-Bb-Db Eb7 ii D-F-A-C Dmin if we use the same trick for G7: Dominant is D7 Substitute dominant is Ab7 Ab7 is the real V7 chord in Db major The second degree ii in Db major is Ebmin (or Ebmin7/9/11 whatever you want) So we get UNCOLOURED: Cmaj7-Dmin-G7-Cmaj7 COLOURED: Cmaj7-Bbmin7-Eb7-Dmin-Ebmin7-Ab7-G7-Cmaj7 HAVE A BEER OR A CUP OF COFFEE OR TEA BECAUSE YOU DESERVED IT!!!!! Cheers Honesty-Liebra