LESSON 7: CHOOSING THE RIGHT CHORD

OVERVIEW

When a chord progression is working, it's often not even noticeable. And that's usually a good thing. A good chord progression is like a good piece of land upon which you build your house, in the sense that it provides a good foundation. Once your chords get going in a certain direction, predictability plays an important role in how it all works. And if things get a little too predictable, you can always make substitutions. This lesson is all about how to do that.

"My enthusiasm for songwriting has just come back with a vengeance! Many thanks!"

GET EXCITED ABOUT SONGWRITING AGAIN!

Get the whole picture! “The Essential Secrets of Songwriting,” updated for 2017, is part of a 10- eBook Bundle that will clear up the mystery behind chords, melodies, lyrics, hooks, motifs... everything to take your songwriting to a new level of excellence! 10 songwriting ebooks, and right now at a discount price.

The 10-eBook Bundle (HIGH QUALITY PDF FORMAT)

by Gary Ewer
IMMEDIATE DOWNLOAD
$37 USD for the ENTIRE BUNDLE.

Plus, get a FREE COPY of "Use Your Words! Developing a Lyrics-First Songwriting Process" (See below)

READ MORE ABOUT THIS DEAL

NOTE: For a limited time, Gary's newest eBook, "Use Your Words! Developing a Lyrics-First Songwriting Process", is being offered FREE OF CHARGE with your purchase of “The Essential Secrets of Songwriting” 10-eBook Bundle.

"Use Your Words" helps you get a handle on lyrics. It's a partner text to “The Essential Secrets of Songwriting", showing you how to start songs by working out the lyric first. Songwriters that aspire to establishing a legacy need to place lyrics front and centre. "Use Your Words" suggests three easy ways to start with lyrics, and once you've practiced those methods, the possibilities are endless!

Click on "Buy Now" above to take advantage of this limited-time offer.

PROGRESSIONS, NOT SUCCESSIONS

Making a chord progression work means understanding the term progression. For struggling writers, the problem is that the series of chords that might be better described as chord successions: the chords just don't seem to relate with each other too well.

For chords to work, you need to more fully understand how one chord likes to move to another. And you need to know what chords will naturally exist in a given particular key. This is a bit involved to describe here in great detail; the best plan right now is to get a copy of "The Essential Secrets of Songwriting" and go right to Chapter 4 - Harmony.

The short version of the chord story is that if you know what key your song is in, write the scale for that key, and then build chords. For example, if your song is in A major, write an A major scale, then write chords above each note of the scale. If you do that, you will get the following chords:

I- A major (the "tonic" chord)
ii- B minor
iii- C# minor
IV- D major (the "subdominant" chord)
V- E major (the "dominant" chord)
vi- F# minor
vii- G# diminished.

WHAT TO DO WITH THOSE CHORDS

Those are the chords that naturally occur in the key of A major, and you would do well to stick to them as your most common chords. In fact, most songs will work quite nicely by using primarily the I, IV and V chords. Those chords are known as the tonic, subdominant, and dominant chords, respectively.

Here are some chords from major keys, with common substitutions that can add variety to your music:

BE CAREFUL WHEN YOU SUBSTITUTE

Substituting one chord for another can be a bit unpredictable, so you'll want to make sure that it works for you. And substituting chords also strongly impacts on the form of the song, so you'll want to be sure that you make any chord substitution happen at structurally strong places in your song.

Here is an example of chords and some substitutions (Example in A major):

(I IV V I) A - D - E - A.
Substituting the final I-chord with vi gives: A D E F#m
Substituting the D chord with a ii-chord gives: A Bm E A
Both substitutions: A Bm E F#m

Looking for some chord progressions? "Essential Chord Progressions" gives you hundreds of them!

ACTIVITIES for CHORD SUBSTITUTIONS

1. Take the following chords and make substitutions as indicated in the table above. For each progression substitute one or more chords, and make note of your changes. (For chords with a slash, the letter name before the slash is the chord name; the letter name after the slash is a bass note):

• A D F#m Bm E A
• A F#m Bm A/C# D E A
• F#m D A Bm E A
• E7 A D A/C# Bm E7 A
• A E D A/C# Bm F#m E A

2. Take a song that you've written and go through the chord progression. Try substituting chords one for another, and make note of the effect on your song.

3. Write a short melody of two or four bars. Now harmonize it in as many ways as you can. Some choices won't work as well as others. Make note of all progressions that you find, and rate them from 1 (poorest) to 10 (best).

Proceed to Lesson 8: MIXING STRONG AND FRAGILE PROGRESSIONS

©2017 Pantomime Music Publications
Contact: info@pantomimemusic.com | Contact Gary Ewer: gary@pantomimemusic.com