I was asked by the folks over at Songwriting.net to write an article for their website. They posted it yesterday, entitled “7 Ideas for Creating Chord Progressions.” I hope you’ll take a look. I’ve put a short excerpt below:
There are basic principles about the way chords work that aren’t much affected by genre. What that means is that whether you write rock, heavy metal, country, folk or some other style of music, most chord progressions are interchangeable between genres, with a few minor considerations.
If you’re a chords-first kind of songwriter, you can find your process grinding to a halt if you can’t come up with a progression that you like. So if you find your ideas for chords are drying up, the following seven ideas will help, regardless of the kind of you music you typically write.
Those seven ideas include “borrowing” from already existing songs, trying existing chord progressions backward, creating progressions that are palindromes, and more.
Please read that article, and feel free to put a comment at the bottom, especially if you have a tried-&-true method for creating progressions that I haven’t mentioned in that article.
Written by Gary Ewer. Follow Gary on Twitter
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