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Guitar Tutorial

Chord Progressions

Instructor: Robert Mussatti
Topic: Theory
Style: Any Style
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  • Instructor: Robert Mussatti Level: Intermediate Topic: Theory Style: Any Style

    Excerpt: Many times, people put together chord progressions based off of how they sound together. Some people rely on intuition. Others base their progressions off of songs that they already know. The latter is what I tend to gravitate towards a lot of the time. Many professional musicians who work as songwriters understand the basics of music theory and how chor...

    Media Length: 1:55

  • Instructor: Robert Mussatti Level: Intermediate Topic: Theory Style: Any Style

    Excerpt: The main propulsion for harmonic movement in your chord progression will usually occur between the bass notes which are either a perfect 4th or perfect 5th apart. Here is a version of a I, IV, V again showing how the bass notes move in 4ths and 5ths. When only power chords are used, the bass notes usually determine whether the song is either major or mino...

    Media Length: 1:15

  • Instructor: Robert Mussatti Level: Intermediate Topic: Theory Style: Any Style

    Excerpt: Hello and welcome to part 3 of this exciting tutorial on Chord Progressions, where we will be talking about Common Tone Substitution. *cue dramatic intro music* Any harmonized scale contains notes that are shared within other chords found in this scale. This is the basis for common tone substitution. In the major scale, the I, iii and vi chords have 2 notes...

    Media Length: 1:01

  • Instructor: Robert Mussatti Level: Intermediate Topic: Theory Style: Any Style

    Excerpt: "...and now back to 'Chord Progressions' where we last left them..." Putting chords together isn't really enough. You also need some good harmonic rhythm, which is how long a chord will last within your progression Here's an example of poor harmonic rhythm: Because this is such an unusual rhythmic pattern, we can rearrange the pattern to give us someth...

    Media Length: 2:04

  • Instructor: Robert Mussatti Level: Intermediate Topic: Theory Style: Any Style

    Excerpt: Another technique involves inserting dominant chords before other chords to create a stronger sense of movement to the next chord. The root of a secondary dominant is going to be a perfect 5th away from the chord that the secondary dominant is going to lead to. (i.e the V of ii is going to be a perfect 5th away from the ii chord.) Here is an example with ...

    Media Length: 1:40

  • Instructor: Robert Mussatti Level: Intermediate Topic: Theory Style: Any Style

    Excerpt: Now, in the previous lesson, we learned that both V chords and vii chords can function as Dominant chords, but when using diminished chords, these can be put in the place of a V chord and that diminished chord can resolve up a half step to the root of the chord that is being resolved to. Think of it as a "diminished-secondary dominant". Here is an example ...

    Media Length: 1:13

  • Instructor: Robert Mussatti Level: Intermediate Topic: Theory Style: Any Style

    Excerpt: Now, one thing we have to understand is what exactly the tri-tone substitution is. It's basically where we substitute a dominant chord that is a tri-tone away (#4/b5) from the root of the original dominant chord. An example of this would be substituting a Db7 chord in place of a G7 chord in a C major chord progression. Shown below is the original progress...

    Media Length: 2:00

  • Instructor: Robert Mussatti Level: Intermediate Topic: Theory Style: Any Style

    Excerpt: This is the final installment of this tutorial, and this one is going to be a very simple way of enhancing your chord progressions, which is changing the quality of any chord, whenever you like. Experiment with making a Major chord minor or dominant or whatever works for you. The main thing you have to keep in mind is that the bass notes of the chords stay...

    Media Length: 1:07