Guitar Lesson - Introduction to Chord Progressions.
When you listen to one of your favorite songs you become aware to the fact that it is built up of notes and chords that are changing and causing the song to evolve in a way that is pleasing to the ear. The question that I want to look at today is: why do some chords sound good together and others sound absolutely terrible?
To answer this, we need to look at root notes as they are the base that chords are built upon. If we take the notes of a scale and number them from 1 to 8, you will find movements between notes 1, 4 and 5 consistently sound better and stronger than between any other number. Let’s take a look at a scale (for learning purposes we will use the C Major Scale):
It might be a good idea to get your guitar out at this point and just have a play around with the notes in the above scale so you can hear what I mean about strong movement between numbers 1, 4 and 5. Also, play around with some of the other numbers to see what some weaker movements sound like.
So, now that we have established the above fact, let’s use it in some chord progressions.
A turnaround progression is a sequence of chords that can be continually repeated due to strong sounding chord movement between the ending and starting chords. In the following turnaround progression we use the F chord (F being 4 in the C major scale) to get back to the starting chord C (C being 1 in the C major scale):
Try playing the above chord progression using a strum of your own. If you don’t know the chords, they are shown at the bottom of this page - you will hear that the progression sounds good and repeats itself through a strong chord movement.
Here are some more turnaround progressions for you to practice:
Whether or not you should take private lessons to learn to play guitar is a tough subject for me. Some individuals really do need someone to get them pointed in the right direction, but I think that the majority of people will learn to play guitar faster by learning on their own. IF and I do mean IF they are learning the right things. What happens with weekly instruction is as follows:
Student goes to weekly guitar lesson
Student learns weekly guitar lesson at home
Student practices weekly guitar lesson for 5 more days until his next guitar lessonYou see, unfortunately the amount of material that your instructor can cover in a half hour lesson can usually be mastered by someone in one to three days. Then the student is left to simply improve their speed or technique for a few days but they’re not learning anything new on the guitar. So I’m not a big fan of private lessons, but perhaps you would feel better if you took some along side of covering this course. It’s really a matter of your personal choice.
Pentatonic Scales are a great way to introduce yourself to theory, they are also good for helping you make sense of the fretboard. A Pentatonic Scale is a series of notes played in a certain key 5 notes per octave. If this sounds like gibberish to you don’t worry it will all come in time! For now just take what you can, most people learn best with a hands on approach so lets get right into playing!
The first scale you are going to learn is G Major Pentatonic, so grab your guitar and memorize this pattern…
Pentatonic scales are 5 notes per octave repeated to cover all six strings. Click Play to hear how it should sound…
How to jam with a scale:
When you are making up music on the spot. I.e. Jamming over a chord progression, you are ‘Improvising’. Improvising (on Guitar) is the act of creating music in the moment with feeling and influences coming from wherever you see fit to make the music sound good using notes from a scale or notes in a certain key. When you start improvising you will soon find that you quickly learn what to do and what not to do to make it sound good, that’s the great thing about it.
To help you get started jamming, here are a few licks using notes from the G Major Pentatonic scale you can use to jam along to the jam track.
Here is a short example of what jamming over the progression can sound like. I have incorporated all 3 of the above licks in the audio below…
So dive in and give it a shot, here is a progression in G Major, use the licks above and make up your own to create your own feel.
So how was that? Easier than you thought? If you could not seem to find anything that sounded good, just stick at it, it will come with practice.
Now use what you learnt using the G pattern to jam with to the D pattern below…
D Major Pentatonic Scale
Now use that scale to jam along to this jam track…
Now use what you learnt using the G pattern to jam with to the D pattern below…
D Major Pentatonic Scale
Now use that scale to jam along to this jam track…
Note: If you move the first pattern you learnt (G) down so the first note is starting on the 7th Fret you can jam along to the D progression as you have moved the scale down into the key of D Major. You can also move the D pattern down to the 5th fret and use that to jam in G Major (The first progression).
Here is a demonstration (using mostly the licks I showed you earlier) of a jam in D Major using both the patterns you learnt.
Hope you liked this short introduction to Pentatonic Scales, remember to practice hard and you will see the benefits!
