Good Chord Progressions

[F#m7sus4]

Yeah well im got a chord composition task i have to do for music its only short 16 or whatever bars using 5 different chords just thinking of some good chords to use together are i found cadd9 em a2 am work nicely what out of the basic chord progressions could i encorperate with that ??

[_jimmy_]

well i came up with this for the chorus of one of my songs

Em,Cmaj,Gmaj,B7

[Sammas]

Ive been messing around with a A7-Am7-D9-Dm9-G7-C7-C#7-D7 progression.

'tis good fun...

[_jimmy_]

there's always the blink 182 progression, for example dammit.

C,G,A,F

[Jawn]

Not only THE "Blink 182 progression" but the chord progression that has spawned millions of pop songs before Blink. Why does Blink get credited with so much?

[_jimmy_]

thats what i've thought about before they are a good band but they are'nt very good at guitar and bass, the reason behind their sucess would probably because all their songs a very catchy and pop sounding

[Lutman]

A good one I came up with is A7 - C#min7 - F#min - Dmin.

BTW the 'Blink' chord progression is C, G, Amin F.
There's also the standard 1-4-5 progression.

[BonesTLE]

Ah yes, the old I-IV-V... Where would we be without it? The forty's maybe?

[Disease]

BTW the 'Blink' chord progression is C, G, Am, F.

Yess, I was about to point that out.

[damo0945]

I am personally an overly huge fan of the I-IV-V powerchord progression, almost always in the key of A, been just using guitar pro a lot lately. Tends to get a lot more interesting when i screw around on an actual guitar. Get a better feel for various keys that way.

[Jawn]

Ah yes, the old I-IV-V... Where would we be without it? The forty's maybe?

I'd say more the 1800s.

[Sammas]

Even further than that. Its used a lot in Baroque era music from the 1600s.

It probably extends all the way back to Pythagorean tuning. Yes, the same dude that made the triangle equation from the six century BC (2600 years ago). In Pythagorean tuning the interval of the perfect fourth and the perfect fifth have the simpliest ratios other than the octave of course. They determined that the simpler the ratio, the more consonant (ie musically nice sounding) the interval. Thats one of the reasons why they are called "perfect" intervals. The octave is a 2:1 ratio interval, the perfect fifth is a 3:2 ratio interval and the perfect fourth is a 4:3 ratio interval. I'd assume they were commonly used because they were more musically intervals. There is documented use of it from the 9th and 10th centuries in written guides on how to build organs.

Compare that to an augmented fourth interval which has the ratio of 729:512, or a minor second that has the ratio of 256:243. Clunky ratios and much more disonant invervals.

We don't use Pythagorean tuning much today. We use whats called equal temperament. Pythagorean tuning was made simply by stacking perfect fifths on top of each other to form the whole 12 tones in music. But when you do this using simple ratios the notes aren't consistent. IE E flat and D Sharp are exactly the same pitch in the music that we commonly use (equal temperament) but with Pythagorean tuning they aren't, they are seperated by 25cents or so.

Cents are a measurement of pitch, in equal temperament every semitone is seperated by 100cents. This means in Pythagorean tuning E flat and D sharp are a quarter tone different.

[Disease]

Dude. Where do you learn this stuff?

[mel_bound]

Wow, thanks for that info! I wonder if I'll be able to remember ANY of it though! :p

[hillaas]

Even further than that. Its used a lot in Baroque era music from the 1600s.

It probably extends all the way back to Pythagorean tuning. Yes, the same dude that made the triangle equation from the six century BC (2600 years ago). In Pythagorean tuning the interval of the perfect fourth and the perfect fifth have the simpliest ratios other than the octave of course. They determined that the simpler the ratio, the more consonant (ie musically nice sounding) the interval. Thats one of the reasons why they are called "perfect" intervals. The octave is a 1:1 ratio interval, the perfect fifth is a 3:2 ratio interval and the perfect fourth is a 4:3 ratio interval. I'd assume they were commonly used because they were more musically intervals. There is documented use of it from the 9th and 10th centuries in written guides on how to build organs.

Compare that to an augmented fourth interval which has the ratio of 729:512, or a minor second that has the ratio of 256:243. Clunky ratios and much more disonant invervals.

We don't use Pythagorean tuning much today. We use whats called equal temperament. Pythagorean tuning was made simply by stacking perfect fifths on top of each other to form the whole 12 tones in music. But when you do this using simple ratios the notes aren't consistent. IE E flat and D Sharp are exactly the same pitch in the music that we commonly use (equal temperament) but with Pythagorean tuning they aren't, they are seperated by 25cents or so.

Cents are a measurement of pitch, in equal temperament every semitone is seperated by 100cents. This means in Pythagorean tuning E flat and D sharp are a quarter tone different.

And i thought my 5th grade theory knowledge was pretty advanced...

[Sammas]

Dude. Where do you learn this stuff?

Its an area of study within the music composition degree that I did. I don't know if its part of every composition degree, but the one I did taught you that in first semester of the first year. I found it very interesting because it places everything in context.


I just noticed a mistake in what I wrote, a unison has the ratio of 1:1. An Octave has a ratio of 2:1. For example, playing an open E note on the bottom string of a guitar has exactly twice as much string vibrating as playing the E at the 12th fret which is one octave higher.

The low E uses twice as much string as the E one octave higher... 2 to every 1. It becomes harder to explain via writing from here, but I can do it later if anyone is interested in fourths and fifths and how todays equal temperament varies ever-so-slightly from Pythagorean tuning.

[tanguyen]

Dude. Where do you learn this stuff?

He made it up :p

Did you actually memorise all that stuff or were typing with a textbook in your lap because that'd be a mouthful even for an avid scholar

[Disease]

.....

He made it up :p

Did you actually memorise all that stuff or were typing with a textbook in your lap because that'd be a mouthful even for an avid scholar

Its an area of study within the music composition degree that I did. I don't know if its part of every composition degree, but the one I did taught you that in first semester of the first year. I found it very interesting because it places everything in context.

.....

Yep.

[Sammas]

He made it up :p

Did you actually memorise all that stuff or were typing with a textbook in your lap because that'd be a mouthful even for an avid scholar

I remembered most of it, I did have to double check the figures for the large fractions though. I've found that if I just read something I won't remember it but if I apply it, it seems to stick so I wrote some stuff entirely in pythagorean tuning which I realised via midi with software called Pure Data. This software allows you to construct a complete music system from the ground up, including defining your own tunings.

Another reason why its pretty easy to remember is because it ties in with other aspects that are the rationale behind not just western tonality but some microtonal music like that from india. Aspects like the harmonic series which expresses not just the mathematic rationale behind what has developed into equal temperament, but also an explanation to the timbreal traits of certian instruments. Like why does a clarinet sound like it does? Because it produces only the odd order harmonics of the harmonic series. In synthesized music a waveform with only odd order harmonics is a square wave.

In the guitar world, a gentleman named Howard Alexander Dumble made guitar amps that shifted even order harmonics to odd order harmonics. This made the overdrive smooth like a squarewave or clarinet tone. He no longer makes amps which has pushed the value of second hand dumble amplifiers to around $30,000US.

[Fritz]

very nice contribution to this topic sammas

[BonesTLE]

I think the point that i tried to make was it was the keystone of modern music and you don't actually have to be all that musically savvy to write a cool-ish sounding song using this progression.
It still gets done to this day.
I'm not saying that's a bad thing - well not all the time.

I didn't expect a kind of spanish inquisition... :D

[Loo C]

Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!!!






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So.....how about those chord progressions hey?

[BonesTLE]

Yeah they're great