Are You Just Beginning Guitar and Looking to Expand Your Knowledge with Guitar Chord Theory? If that is the case for you, reading up on guitar chord theory may provide useful guidance as to which chords to learn next. In this article we will look into some of this theory to provide pathways for exploring specific chord combinations that belong together.
A chord consists of three or more notes that form an orderly relationship based on your scale.
Major Scale
To begin learning chord progressions, familiarizing yourself with the major scale is a good place to start. Each key has a corresponding major scale which contains all of its chord root notes as well. Knowing this allows you to determine which chords go together based on their qualities (major, minor or diminished) as well as any associated progressions they create.
As part of your scale practice, try playing patterns from each fretboard position – known as box patterns – using each string a tone or semitone higher or lower; for example a 6-4 box pattern on the 5th string could be changed with a hand shift to become a 5-2 pattern on 2nd string and vice versa.
Once you have mastered these patterns, they can be moved up or down the fretboard for multi-octave patterns allowing you to play any major scale using them.
Minor Scale
Chord progressions are an integral component of music, which is why so many people begin studying guitar. From aspirationsal players striving to emulate Jimi Hendrix to just wanting to cover songs they love – chord progressions play an integral role in any composition and are key for creating memorable music experiences.
Determining which chords work well together requires understanding chord scales and how a specific key works. For instance, chords in a major key can either be major or minor depending on their relationship to the tonic note of its key signature.
As knowing this information enables guitarists to quickly find chords appropriate to a song’s key and discover which pairs work well together, musicians can avoid having to waste their time trial-and-erroring their way through a composition and instead focus on creating and composing.
Major Progression
As you learn new chords, music theory provides pathways that show which ones should come next – for example if you know C major, E and G would make good follow up chords to learn next.
Transposition can also be relatively straightforward as most chords can be easily moved up or down the scale by one or two steps if necessary to stay within key. Many guitarists prefer power chords because their chords can easily be extended with just a couple additional notes.
As you work your way through these progressions, keep in mind that notes closest to a key are most consonant (most consonant), while those further from it (less related or dissonant). For greater dissonance in chords, add another note – say F or A by creating sus4 chords; suspended chords don’t require this addition since they already fall outside of key.
Minor Progression
As part of learning guitar chords, understanding which chord progressions go together is a good way to identify which ones you need to master next. Your aim should be to build a chord progression that harmonizes with and sounds pleasing to your discerning ear; harmony provides an appealing tone which resolves in your mind; thus some chords pair better than others.
As evidenced by the circle of fifths, it’s easy to see that chords such as IV and V in minor keys often work well together. By adding major 7th intervals between them, these chords become major chords instead.
Trey Anastasio of Phish incorporated this technique in both the intro and verse progression to his stunning acoustic ballad Waste, while Oasis used this approach in their classic Don’t Look Back in Anger pre-chorus. You can apply this same approach in any key. Remember that an iv chord in a minor key can also function as a diminished chord; that will add yet another layer to your harmony creation process.