Very good to know!👍
Thank you.
Denise

Certainly fascinating John, I think quite a few of us could be guilty of concentrating too much on the techniques of playing melody etc. especially when it comes to blues.
I’d seen the ‘Four Chord Song’ sketch before but David Bennett took this subject to a different level. Thanks for the posting …..

Richard

That’s fascinating!

Wow that’s amazing.

Lots of lightbulb moments!

I think everyone needs to watch this there is something here for everyone.

Thanks for sharing.

Liam.

Good video, but like so many similar videos, it just lists a few common progressions and doesn’t really analyze them.
Granted, this is a HUGE topic!

Before going further, we need to remember two things:
– music theory (at least, tonal music theory) is the result of an analysis of what worked best for the composers of the Common Practice era (roughly, from 1600 to 1900), i.e. the Baroque, Classical and Romantic periods. It provides a set of guidelines that may or may not be relevant for contemporary music.
– the form of tonal music is conceived as an harmonic journey from the tonic chord back to the tonic chord, and usually proceeds through pre-dominant chords, and then dominant chords before resolving back to the tonic.

One very effective guideline for building strong chord progressions is to remember the following “rule”:
– the roots of the chords should progress by ascending 2nds, or descending 3rds, or descending 5ths.
– exceptions: any chord can go to the tonic chord, the tonic chord can go anywhere, any chord can go to the V chord.

Please note that we are talking about the movement of the roots; the chords can be inverted.

Let’s analyze the most common progressions of the video using this “rule”:
– I vi IV V: the doo-wap progression
Two descending 3rds, an ascending 2nd and a descending 5th… This progression clearly obeys the rule
– I V vi IV: the pop progression
The root goes to V, V goes to vi by an ascending 2nd and vi goes to IV by a descending 3rd. OK.
– vi IV I V: the San Francisco progression
Here also vi descends to IV by a 3rd, IV goes to I, I goes to V, and V goes up to vi by a 2nd. No problem.
– i bVII bVI V: the Andalusian cadence
This one doesn’t obey the rule at all. But it is not strictly speaking a tonal progression either. It comes from the flamenco (with Arabic influences), which is modal music, not tonal.
– I IV V IV or I V IV I
This progression would also be frown upon by classical composers because of the V to IV movement which doesn’t really make sense. V is supposed to be the extreme far end of the musical journey and is not expected to go back to the chord that introduced it in the first place…
But hey, somehow we’ve come to accept it!

There is of course much, much more to say about chord progressions, but the simple “rule” above can go a long way already!

Thanks John, I’m going to check it out.

Interesting video John. Thanks for posting.

That’s very interesting thanks for sharing!!

I really enjoy this guy’s videos. His explanation on just intonation and equal temperament is excellent.
Thanks for posting