7 Tips For Making Better Use of Chord Progression Charts

Like anything in music, chord progression charts still require you to use some imagination.

Once in a while, all you really want are some chord progressions that can get you going right away in the songwriting process. For this reason, many of you have collections of chord progressions that you keep nearby as you work on your songs. Since chord progressions themselves are not protected by copyright, you can in fact use any chord progression that you hear in any song.

Occasionally, I get emails from songwriters who are using my collections of chord progressions, asking questions like the following:

• “Your charts don’t tell me how many beats to hold each chord for…”
•  “Do these chords work for country music, or are they just for rock and pop?”
  
• “I don’t see any indication of tempo for your chords…”

And of course that doesn’t include the very common “Am I allowed to…” questions that seem to assume that there’s only one way the music world will allow you to use a certain progression (i.e., “Am I allowed to use the same progression for a verse as I do for a chorus”).

Chord progression charts should be seen as a starting point. If all you’re doing is playing through the chord progressions that you see written down for your use, you’re missing out on great opportunities to be creative.

Here are seven tips for what you can do to make the most of a chord progression chart:

1. Move forward and backward in the progression. If you’re working with something like this: C  G Bb  F  Dm  G  C, don’t assume that playing through the progression as it appears is your only option. Pick two chords and move back and forth several times before moving on. (Ex: C  G  C  G  C  G  C  G  Bb  F  Bb  F…)
2. Select the middle part of a progression and focus on it. It can yield very interesting results to pick two chords from the middle of your progression, play with them a bit, then move to the end before finally playing the progression from the start. (Ex: F  Dm  F  Dm  F  Dm  F  G  |C  G…)
3. Play a progression backwards. This doesn’t always work, and the theory behind why a progression might work in one direction but not the other is a bit involved. But you may find that going backwards gives you something of a “partner progression” that could work in another section of your song. (Ex: Try this for a chorus: C  G Bb  F  Dm  G  C, and then see if you like its reverse for a verse: C  G  Dm  F  Bb  G  C)
4. Try different tempos. You might be surprised that the overall effect of a chord progression changes at different tempos. That’s because at faster tempos you give the listener less time to “settle” on a chord before moving on, and so the end result is a different final effect.
5. Try different time signatures. In popular music styles, 4/4 time is most common. But why not try a triple meter like 3/4. To do this, play each chord for 6 beats, where beats 1 and 4 are the strong beats with a strong bass note, and beats 2 and 3, then 5 and 6, are the weaker parts of the bar.
6. Experiment with inverting some of the chords. To invert a chord means that a note other than the letter name of the note is going to be your lowest-sounding (i.e., bass) note. Most of the time, you’ll want to use an inversion to help smooth out a jumpy bass line, or to add a bit of variety if you choose to hold one chord for a long period of time. (Ex. Change this — C  G  Bb  F — into this: C  G/B  Bb  F/A. It keeps the same basic progression, but gives you a descending bass line.
7. Try adding some non-chord-tones. A non-chord-tone (NCT) is a note that doesn’t belong to the basic triad version of a chord. ‘Sus’ chords are an example of an NCT. So experiment with adding some to the progression, particularly the middle part. (Ex: Change this — C G Bb F  Dm  G  C — to this: C  Gsus4  G  Bb  Fsus4  F  Dm  G  C(add9).

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Written by Gary Ewer

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