The Complete Idiot''s Guide to Music Theory

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Key Signature Chords

B ***INSERT FIGURE 10FIG14

C
***INSERT FIGURE 10FIG15

Creating a Progression

Let’s see how you can use these Roman numerals to create a chord progression.

For the time being we won’t pay attention to the underlying harmonic theory;

we’ll just concentrate on the mechanics of creating a progression.

I mentioned earlier the popularity of the G, C, and D chords. In the key of G

Major, these chords happen to fall on the first (G), fourth (C), and fifth (d)

notes of the scale. This makes these the I, IV, and V chords—or, more techni-

cally, the tonic, subdominant, and dominant.

If you’ve ever played any folk songs, you know that one of the more common

chord progressions goes like this:

G / / / C / / / G / / / D / / /

(Naturally, the progression repeats—or ends with a final G chord.)

Because you know that the G = I, C = IV, and D = V, it’s easy to figure out the

Roman numeral notation. It looks like this:

IIVIV

There—you’ve just written your first chord progression!

The benefit of using this type of notation is you can apply the chord progres-

sion to other keys. Let’s say you want to play this I-IV-I-V progression in the

key of C. Referring back to the Scale-Based Chords table earlier in this chapter,

you can translate the progression to these specific chords:

C / / / F / / / C / / / G / / /

This definitely makes things simpler.

It’s All About Getting Home

The goal of most major chord progressions is to get back to the home chord—

the tonic chord, or I. All the other chords in the progression exist as part of a

roadmap to deliver you back to the I chord. The route can be simple (just a

chord or two) or complex (lots and lots of different chords), but ultimately you

want to end up back on I.

130

These examples use slash

notation,where each

slash (/) equals one beat.

Measures are separated

by spaces.

Note

continued