An Introduction to Chord Progressions

There’s an almost endless number of ways to put chords together to create new and interesting sounds. Most musicians rely on intuition and experience to arrange them so that they move “hand in hand” through a song.

Understanding this movement is essential for composing and improvising. The sequence of chords in a piece of music is called a chord progression, and it’s what gives any composition its harmonic movement.

The harmonic functions

In a progression, each chord has a harmonic function: some give a feeling of stability, others of setting off, others of tension. There are three:

• Tonic: rest, stability and resolution.
• Dominant: instability and tension — it wants to go back to the tonic.
• Subdominant: the middle ground between the two. It prepares, but with less intensity, and can move either to the dominant (building tension) or to the tonic (coming to rest).

Roman numerals

Progressions are written with Roman numerals, which show the position of each chord in the diatonic scale (the seven-note scale).

For example, the C major scale has the notes C, D, E, F, G, A and B. The progression I – IV – VI (one, four, six) corresponds to the chords C major, F major and A minor.

The chart below shows the basic progressions in major and minor keys. You can also download it here: Key Chord Chart (free download).

Four chords, hundreds of songs

The comedy video below shows how a single progression is enough to write countless songs. It’s in D major, so think of the D major scale: 1 D, 2 E, 3 F#, 4 G, 5 A, 6 B, 7 C#.

The progression is I – V – VI – IV: D major, A major, B minor and G major. Count the notes of the scale and you’ll see they match the numbers: 1, 5, 6 and 4 = D, A, B and G.

Why do so many artists around the world use the same progression (in different keys)? Is it plagiarism? It really has more to do with the sound: it’s easy on the ear and most people like it — and, in my opinion, with the way the chords function together. Watch the video and notice how many famous songs fit into these four chords:

Starting from scratch

A chord progression is directly tied to scales and their intervals. If these terms are still new to you, I recommend these three videos, in this order:

The videos are in Portuguese. You can turn on auto-translated subtitles on YouTube.

1. The musical notes

2. Intervals

3. How chords are built (triads)

Then study the progressions in C major first. With this foundation you’ll understand the logic of progressions, build your own and, little by little, start writing your own songs.

Happy playing!

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