# The How to Expand My Chord Progression Thread



## Poltergeist (Mar 26, 2014)

The purpose of this thread is to bounce ideas off of each other while experimenting and writing progressions. Perhaps when writers block sets in, posting our progressions will enable us to think about it collectively, and maybe help each other make some break throughs when we get stuck theoretically, creatively, or help us learn something from sharing knowledge, suggestions, or ideas. 

Some reasons for a thread like this:
1) Writers block
2) Unsure of what key the progression is in 
3) Suggestions to make a key change(s) from the specific idea 
4) Lack of harmonic and theortical knowledge to sort it out (potentially where the theory wizards can come in and lead you in right direction(s);if willing to do so, of course).
5) Give suggestions of chord embellishments(ie.adding 9ths, 7ths, b5ths, #11 etc) to make a basic progression come alive. 
6) You dont know the name of a chord in the progression
7) You want to add tension to the progression but dont know how to approach it. 
8) other misc applications and topics like inversions, voice leading, substitutions etc. 

Example of a Chord Progression I would like to develop further:
e|-----------0------0-------0------------0----------------------------0--------------|
B|---------3------3--------3-----------3-----3----------1----------3------------------|
G|-------0------0---------0----------0------0---------0----------0--------------------|
D|------4------4---------4----------4------4---------2----------4---------------------|
A|-----2------0---------3----------2------5---------3----------2----------------------|
E|----0----------------------------0------5---------3----------0----------------------|


The chords in order: Em9, Em11/A, Em9 (b13)/C, Em9, Dadd4/A, G/C, Em9 . 

I guess this progression is kinda static in a way, but I like the way these chords sound together for some kind of intro to a ballad song... I think it's in the key of E minor since the only present sharp is an F#. Kinda not so sure what is going on harmonically and how to take something like that further.

Here is some blank tab sheets to copy and paste for your progression. 
Standard Roman Numerals are welcome also to communicate our progressions!

e|---------------------------------------------------------------------------|
B|---------------------------------------------------------------------------|
G|---------------------------------------------------------------------------|
D|---------------------------------------------------------------------------|
A|---------------------------------------------------------------------------|
E|---------------------------------------------------------------------------|

e|---------------------------------------------------------------------------|
B|---------------------------------------------------------------------------|
G|---------------------------------------------------------------------------|
D|---------------------------------------------------------------------------|
A|---------------------------------------------------------------------------|
E|---------------------------------------------------------------------------|


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## Mr. Big Noodles (Mar 26, 2014)

You are indeed correct that your succession* is static. I feel like the usual functional labels are going to be inadequate in describing what you're doing, so I'm going to break out some less conventional ideas. In common practice harmony, we usually conceive of chords as tertian structures. For example, your first chord, if put in a tertial order, is spelled E G B D F#, which is Em9 (Not Em7add9; that's redundant. A chord with a root, third, maybe a fifth, seventh + anything else is an extended tertian harmony, not an added member chord.). In the next two chords, you add the eleventh (A) and the thirteenth (C). I don't think the chord changes at all between those first four, and the fifth is tenuous as well. You pretty much have an Em11(&#9837;13) going through most of this, and we're getting the extensions as they come. I say f*ck that. What all of these chords have in common is that if you smush their pitches down into the smallest possible space, you end up with what look like scale fragments.

* I'm not using "progression", because that term implies functional harmony, of which you have none.







Of course that's all out of the E natural minor scale. If you want to expand that, I'd say you need more pitches. A way to go might be to take some pentachords or otherwise scalar chunks from other keys and rearrange their pitches. Let's get an F natural in there, to combat the F#'s. Maybe get some other pitches that are even more foreign to the key.






You see I have chords that follows what you're basically doing: taking a scale chunk and rearranging and spacing out the notes. To the right of each chord is its constituent pitches. The first one is from D minor and the second is from B&#9837; major. Try it out: make rich sonorities out of secundal collections and jam them in there when you feel the succession is getting stale. This way, you can have chromaticism that is non-functional and is still using the same language as the chords you're already using.


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## Poltergeist (Mar 26, 2014)

Mr. Big Noodles, as always, your posts are diligent, enlightening and demystify the confusion that are present for most in the finer details. I knew something was a bit odd in that "succession" as you mentioned ( so much for a progression huh, lol?).I cant believe the first 4 chords are all still basically Em with extensions added throughout.. I was trying to perceive each one as separate chords but sharing similar chord tones and that was confusing me. I'm going to play around with the idea of adding more pitches and rearranging them from outside keys.. I may have some questions later regarding it once I try to apply your suggestions. Thanks man!


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## Mr. Big Noodles (Mar 26, 2014)

It's what I do. Happy writing.

Also, don't be afraid to lay on a chord for a while. I personally like fast harmonic rhythm, but as long as you have a groove going, you can stay as long as you like.

Rush - La Villa Strangiato


0:27 - 2:05 is a C major triad.

Rush - Xanadu


Another Rush song. The introduction is one big E triad. Please don't think this gives you license to have an entire song be one chord, because that kind of stinks. But yeah, having a single chord for a while is alright if you use the rest of your time to kick serious ass while wearing a kimono.


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## The Reverend (Mar 27, 2014)

Yo, like, hold up.

When did SW become Mr. Big Noodles??
I refuse to venerate the talents and skills of a man named Mr. Big Noodles!


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## AugmentedFourth (Mar 27, 2014)

The Reverend said:


> Yo, like, hold up.
> 
> When did SW become Mr. Big Noodles??
> I refuse to venerate the talents and skills of a man named Mr. Big Noodles!





To be fair, the name "Schecter Whore" isn't particularly commanding either.


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## ElRay (Mar 27, 2014)

SW/MBN:

Given a group of notes, how do you "put [them] in a tertian order"? How do you know G3-B3-E4-C5 is supposed to be an inversion of a CM7 and not something else? It gets "messier" because in a "C"-Chord, a "D" could be a 2nd or a 9th, an "A" could be a 6th or a 13th, etc.

Ray


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## Mr. Big Noodles (Mar 27, 2014)

ElRay said:


> SW/MBN:
> 
> Given a group of notes, how do you "put [them] in a tertian order"? How do you know G3-B3-E4-C5 is supposed to be an inversion of a CM7 and not something else?



Simple: because that _is_ an inversion of a C&#8710; and not something else. 



> It gets "messier" because in a "C"-Chord, a "D" could be a 2nd or a 9th, an "A" could be a 6th or a 13th, etc.
> 
> Ray


Of course, it gets more complicated when you put more and more tones in a chord. If there is functionality, then you can suss it out fairly easily. If not, it can be quite difficult. The simplest solution is often the most elegant, though. Very often, I will look for recognizable structures within the chord. That Dadd4/A is a good example: the pitches are A D F# G D. Okay, you could maybe say it's G&#8710;sus2, but then you're overlooking that there is a D major triad right there. In fact, most of it is a D triad: you have a doubled root, a third, fifth, plus something that can only be described as an added tone. You can also look for context. Most of the succession suggests very distinctly an Em chord, with all the fixin's. This is why I cast doubt on the _harmonic _identity of that same Dadd4: it shares a lot of common tones from voices of chords that preceded it, and those are all pretty much that Em thing. If you hear it, it sounds like Em with something moving around in the bass.

I also find that my ears help me a lot. Try this: go to a piano or keyboard and start banging out random chords with all ten of your fingers. Just smash them into any old keys. I suppose you can do the same on the guitar, but keyboards work better for the purpose of what I'm suggesting. Anyway, keep going with this and listen to each chord you play. What you're listening for is dominant sonorities. Keep grabbing random notes until you hear something that sounds like a dominant chord. You might have a very clean G7 or something, but we don't want that: go until it doesn't look like a dominant chord, but it _sounds_ like one. Once you have that chord, keep your fingers where they are and have a look. Somewhere in that mess of notes, there is probably a tritone. Locate that tritone. That is the third and seventh of some V7 chord. Look around you, see if you can figure out which is the third and which is the seventh by the context of the other notes you're clutching. If you can, great. If not, play just the tritone and let your ear decide which note is the leading tone. A half-step above that leading tone is some sort of tonic. Go from the chord you're holding to the major triad whose root is on that tonic. Does that sound like a proper resolution? For me, it does about 50% of the time. The other 50%, I find that my nonsense chord is really some polytonal thing, so going to just one major triad doesn't quite cut it.

Anyway, when you do get a dominant-ish chord, start naming it according to the tritone. You might get some wacky name that looks completely unintelligible, but that's just proof that harmonic functionality can exist in very extended circumstances. I actually encounter these pretty often: I compose almost exclusively with a mind toward counterpoint, and I really don't care for pitch centricity, so my vertical sonorities can be a mashup of tones that do not have a traditional label. Sure enough, some of them sound like dominant chords, despite having tones that would seemingly contradict that sonority, or not having tones that would confirm it. My friend is preparing one of my piano pieces right now, and we get together once a week to collaborate. Half of our time is spent figuring out the resolutions of these things and making great guffaws of music nerd laughter. 

Lastly, not everything fits neatly into our box of labels. If you're pounding out chords that nobody can put a name to (least of all yourself), maybe they don't have names yet. Recognize the process that got you there, not some arbitrary naming convention. For me, I run into "wtf i dont even" chords all the time, but I can tell you exactly how I make those chords. If that process is "making a bunch of vertical sonorities from an E minor scale", then that's what's going on. Mind you, you should know all that thirteenth chord stuff, but if tertian spellings don't really explain the music very well, don't be afraid to come up with an alternate explanation.

Somewhat related:



Arnold Schoenberg said:


> A triad standing alone is entirely indefinite in its harmonic meaning; it may be the tonic of one tonality or one degree of several others. The addition of one or more other triads can restrict its meaning to a lesser number of tonalities. A certain order promotes such a _succession_ of chords to the function of a _progression_.
> 
> A _succession_ is aimless; a _progression_ aims for a definite goal. Whether such a goal may be reached depends on the continuation. It might promote this aim; it might counteract it.
> 
> ...



That book is incredibly dry, but it has some very interesting, useful, and intuitive ideas. Doesn't deal with non-tertian harmony, though.


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## ElRay (Mar 27, 2014)

Thanks again. One day this will (mostly) all click.

Ray


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## innovine (Mar 27, 2014)

Can someone teach me how to make this stuff sound decent? For instance, I decide to play in A, then I can strum I-IV-V or ii-V-I or whatever, but it just sounds poppy, lame, whatever. How can I spice this up a bit? Better rhythms, picking, etc? Or inversions or something else.. 

I don't really like any of the progressions, and don't see how this can be applied.


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## ghost_of_karelia (Mar 27, 2014)

innovine said:


> Can someone teach me how to make this stuff sound decent? For instance, I decide to play in A, then I can strum I-IV-V or ii-V-I or whatever, but it just sounds poppy, lame, whatever. How can I spice this up a bit? Better rhythms, picking, etc? Or inversions or something else..
> 
> I don't really like any of the progressions, and don't see how this can be applied.



Non-diatonic chords. *nod*

bVII is my personal favourite. That is to say, if you're playing in C, the chord built on the seventh scale tone (that is, B), would be B diminished (viiº). If you flatten it and make it major instead (Bb) it sounds fantastic in a cadence (in my own opinion). If we take that in D:

D - G - D - A - Bm - G - D - A - Bm - G - Bm - C - D

or

I - IV - I - V - vi - IV - I - V - vi - IV - vi - bVII - I

I like to add suspended chords here and there. I'm not 100% on the theory behind it but the suspended 2nd or 4th pulls towards the triad, so it gives the music suspense (hence the name). In that particular progression, I'd probably throw an Asus4 before the first A or something to that effect.

Probably being an idiot, but it's my own take on how to spice things up.


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## Mr. Big Noodles (Mar 27, 2014)

Poltergeist said:


> I knew something was a bit odd in that "succession" as you mentioned ( so much for a progression huh, lol?).



In response to this and the rep ElRay left me (thanks!): recognize that I'm not pulling out technical jargon for its own sake. I think it is helpful to recognize chords that have a direction and chords that are there solely for color. Having that distinction allows you to change things when you don't like how they're going.

When I came out on the other side of my harmony courses, everything I wrote sounded epic. If I was only using three chords, they were the three biggest chords on the planet. Each progression sounded like it was reeling inexorably toward the sun, such was the strength of their tonal gravity. This was really annoying, because not everything needs to sound like that. I realized later that this was the combination of a small number of factors: strongly functional progressions, bad harmonic rhythm, weak form, and overly simplistic presentation. In other words, I was not a very good composer. I knew chord progressions, and that was about it.

This kind of bring me to this next point:



innovine said:


> Can someone teach me how to make this stuff sound decent? For instance, I decide to play in A, then I can strum I-IV-V or ii-V-I or whatever, but it just sounds poppy, lame, whatever. How can I spice this up a bit? Better rhythms, picking, etc? Or inversions or something else..
> 
> I don't really like any of the progressions, and don't see how this can be applied.



There is a lot that goes into [good] composition. Harmony by itself is not very exciting. It can get you far, but you need more. Let's start with harmony first, though. It's important to set goals for your harmonic progressions. In traditional harmony, this means that you are either trying to get to a dominant or a tonic. Everything in between is fluff. Don't think of I IV V as just I IV V. It should be more like, you know...

I IV V

or

IV V I

The chords are not equal. Nor is their value constant. That is why this is a succession: I vi V iii ii I IV vi I
And this is a progression: I iii vi IV ii V I
The progression states that some of those chords are more important than others. You need to feel the direction of a chord progression.

The Specials - A Message To You, Rudy


^ An extremely simple example. The chord progression is I IV V, which is really IV V I. Notice that they hang out on the tonic chord for a whole measure, then IV and V each get half of the measure. The IV and V are really just there to expand on the I. Compositionally, there is much more going on than just the chords: there is rhythmic syncopation, lots of melodic content, many different timbres, and sectional form (despite the fact that the harmony is the same thing throughout). This contributes toward a sound that is not so bare and devoid of nuance. Is it the greatest thing on earth? No, but it's still a good song. I don't feel like anything is really missing, but it's not much to listen to.

On these stock chord progressions that everybody tells you about (ii V I, I IV V, I vi IV V, etc.): when you take a chord progression and try to make music by repeating that chord progression over and over and over, you're a slave to the chords. Harmony has push and pull, currents and eddies. Think of ii V I as a skeleton, or a cell of a larger harmonic organism.

Part of what you can do in harmony is to expand upon what Schoenberg calls different "regions" of a tonality. This contributes to harmonic complexity. Unfortunately, Schoenberg doesn't do such a great job of explaining what a 'region' is, and it took me a while to realize what it was he talking about, but it's something that I knew was there, and probably every good composer in the history of Western music knew it intuitively.



Arnold Schoenberg said:


> Richness and greater variety of harmony are based on the relationship between a tonality and its regions, on the substitutions which are produced in the harmonies through the influence of this relationship, and on the possibility of using harmonies in a manner different from their original derivations.



Confused? Don't worry, it's actually a lot simpler than he's making it sound. I'm in a band with a keyboardist right now. He does the lion's share of the writing, and I pepper him with suggestions. One of the things he likes to do is this:

&#9837;VI-V-&#9837;VI-V-&#9837;VI-V-&#9837;VI-V-&#9837;VI-V-&#9837;VI-i6,4-V-i

Cool. What's with all this &#9837;VI-V stuff? Can we explain that away as merely a bunch of deceptive resolutions? Kind of a weird progression, if that's all it is. Try this explanation on for size: dominant wants to go to tonic, that's a given; all of that dominant not going to tonic builds our expectation for tonic, and emphasizes the dominant, especially since the other chord he's using is a predominant chord. Here is another way of looking at that progression:

*V* - i

Of course it's not just those two chords, but that's where the emphasis is. Now here's where I come into this equation. I recognize that he does this a lot, so I help him expand these progressions and use some other chords. He wants to emphasize that dominant, we're going to emphasize that dominant. I pull out every predominant chord in my book for this guy: VI, iv, ii°, V7/V, vii°7/V, N, +6, every variation on those that I can possibly think of, until that V chord almost sounds like a tonic. It's not a tonic yet, but we do so much expanding on it that its role in the harmony is elevated. Has it modulated? No. The tonality is the same. All of those fancy chords are not part of the dominant tonality, but of the dominant _region_ that we are expanding. Before you dismiss this as some high concept thing, know that this guy doesn't know jack shit about music theory. One of those "I do it all by ear" types, and he _still_ modulates (as should all of you ).

So let's think of regions this way: a region is the collection of chords relating to any chord that relates to a given tonic. This can be the tonic itself (I), the dominant (V), the subdominant (IV), the mediant (iii), the submediant (vi), the supertonic (ii; which Schoenberg labels as "dorian", which I don't quite get, but wuteva), and all the chromatic variations of those such as minor harmony (i ii° &#9837;III iv v &#9837;VI &#9837;VII) and other chromatic chords like the Neapolitan chord (N). Any of those can be expanded through use of their related harmonies. Here is a much-discussed example from Bach in which he briefly settles on the subdominant region:

J.S. Bach - Invention No.1







Here's some guy talking about it in an analysis: Last Measures

Right at the end, Bach pulls out a few V7/IV's. We would say that he is "tonicizing" the subdominant, and the fact that he does it multiple times would lead me to say that he is visiting or expanding the subdominant region.

If you have just a diatonic chord progression, it is automatically expanding the tonic region. That Specials song I posted, it exists solely in the tonic region. As soon as you get some expansions of the other harmonies, you are extending the music into other harmonic regions. When you modulate, you have a completely new set of regions to work with, and they all relate to a new tonic region.


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## Mr. Big Noodles (Mar 27, 2014)

jarvncaredoc said:


> Non-diatonic chords. *nod*
> 
> bVII is my personal favourite. That is to say, if you're playing in C, the chord built on the seventh scale tone (that is, B), would be B diminished (viiº). If you flatten it and make it major instead (Bb) it sounds fantastic in a cadence (in my own opinion). If we take that in D:
> 
> ...



This is what we call a "borrowed chord". They are indeed quite nice, and can be used in a number of ways.



> I like to add suspended chords here and there. I'm not 100% on the theory behind it but the suspended 2nd or 4th pulls towards the triad, so it gives the music suspense (hence the name). In that particular progression, I'd probably throw an Asus4 before the first A or something to that effect.


Er, not quite. A suspension (and also a retardation) is a tone that is a chord tone in one chord, then is held over to another chord where it is not a chord tone. It is "suspended" from the first chord onto the second chord before resolving.

Read about it here: Lesson

In pop theory, there are sus chords, which may or may not involve actual suspensions. When I see such a chord as a standalone sonority (such as in a progression like Dm G7sus4 C&#8710, I prefer to call the fourth a substitute tone. Nobody writes chord symbols like this, but I put G7sub4 on my leadsheets all the time. I'm a stickler. If it's a progression like Dm7 G7sus4 G7 C, where the C is being held over from Dm7 and then resolving, then I will accept that as a suspension.



> Probably being an idiot, but it's my own take on how to spice things up.


Don't sell yourself short, you have valid suggestions.


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## Poltergeist (Mar 28, 2014)

MBN I'm at work right now, but I can't wait to read your last two responses. Thanks for all your help and setting this thread off in a stellar direction


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## JustMac (Mar 28, 2014)

NoodleWhore...i mean. Mr Big Noodles, what is it that means that the initial chord progression has NO harmony? Or "functional" harmony? Much love!


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## ghost_of_karelia (Mar 28, 2014)

Dude, I'm in your debt for that lesson on sus chords. I use them a hell of a lot but I've never really understood them, thank you so much!


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## Mr. Big Noodles (Mar 28, 2014)

Welcome.



JustMac said:


> NoodleWhore...i mean. Mr Big Noodles, what is it that means that the initial chord progression has NO harmony? Or "functional" harmony? Much love!



Functional harmony means that the chords are of a type and are ordered in such a way that they point toward a tonic. Non-functional is... not that.

The main unit of the functional relationship is the V-I relationship. In other words, if you take a major scale and go up 5 notes from the tonic, C D E F G, you can numerate them as 1 2 3 4 5, then take just the 5 (G) and the 1 (C), and you have the basic building block of functionality. Build the chords that correspond to those root notes and you get a G major triad (G B D; V) and a C major triad (C E G; I). Play G and C all day long, and you're nice and functional. You can strengthen the pull from V to I by adding a seventh onto the V: G B D F is V7. This works because this chord contains the tritone B F, which wants to resolve to C E. Any major triad with a minor seventh attached has functional implications. G7 wants to go to C. A7 wants to go to D. B7 wants to go to E. So on and so forth.

In harmony, we tend to focus on functional progressions (as opposed to non-functional successions) in the beginning because the rules are hard and fast. Non-functional harmony is wild and has no rules. Yeah yeah, I know, rock 'n' roll, down with the man. But hold your horses, Bill. There is an aphorism that goes something like this: "Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it." I have one of my own: "Those who do not learn harmony are doomed to write shitty progressions and never modulate (and you really should modulate )."

And it's really disappointing when you hear bad harmony. Couple that with bad form, which is likely to be perpetrated by the same crowd, and you end up with music like this:

Kohei Tanaka - Paladin's Quest - Staff Roll


0:00 - Pedal tone A. "Space: the final frontier. These are the voyages of the starship _Enterprise_. Its five-year mission: to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man has gone before."

1:00 - Pedal tone C.

1:20 - Pedal tone C. Then something flashy that should be modulatory.

1:36 - Pedal tone C. Oh, come on!

2:30 - Pedal tone B.

2:42 - Pedal tone B.

3:01 - Big ol' B triad. Woohoo.

From the get-go, Mr. Tanaka is giving this piece an epic air, like a Strauss tone poem or something. All of that pedal tone stuff is alright to a degree, but when he repeats the same harmony over three sections in a row, it's like hitting a wall at 100 miles per hour. Not very epic. And that bugs me, because I know this composer has chops. A good chunk of this game's soundtrack is monothematic. There are composers with a higher pay grade and far more exposure who can't handle a theme half as well. I really cannot understand why he develops so well from theme to theme, but this end credits medley has absolutely no development and sounds like a copy paste job (although that could have been for a number of other reasons, but I'm still disappointed).

Back to harmony.

Nonfunctional successions sometimes have functional components, at which point they become progressions. To give you an idea, here's a 12-bar blues:






First four bars are E7. In functional harmony, this would be the V7 of A. In bar 5, it does go to an A of some sort: A7. That's admissible under functional standards, but then we expect that A7 to act as V7 of D. Bar 7, we get E7. Okay, so that A7 is non-functional. We're now expecting this E7 to go to A again. Bar 9, we get B7. That E7 was non-functional. This B7, by functional standards, should go to E. Does it? Bar 10 is A7, so no. Same story: that A7 is non-functional, then the E7 after that is non-functional, but that last B7 (the turnaround) is functional, because it's going back around to E at the beginning.

These sorts of progressions use what is called a "constant structure" meaning that the chord quality being used is the same throughout, so you almost have to ignore the chord quality and look just at the root movement to get an idea of what's going on. If you analyze this just as an E, A, and B triad, you get this:

I I I I
IV IV I I
V IV I V

It actually looks quite functional, except for the V going to IV in the last system, and you could even make an argument for the authentic resolution of V-I being delayed by the plagal resolution of IV-I there, so it's really all very functional. That last V is the most functional thing in the world though, without a doubt.

I don't really deal with a lot of non-functional harmony, so if you have a progression that you have a question on, maybe you can find a better example of something non-functional than I can. Something like G E B F A, that has no rhyme or reason.


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## Mr. Big Noodles (Mar 29, 2014)

ElRay said:


> SW/MBN:
> 
> Given a group of notes, how do you "put [them] in a tertian order"? How do you know G3-B3-E4-C5 is supposed to be an inversion of a CM7 and not something else? It gets "messier" because in a "C"-Chord, a "D" could be a 2nd or a 9th, an "A" could be a 6th or a 13th, etc.
> 
> Ray



I think I answered a different question than the one that was asked the first time around. Sorry. The way we know whether to call D a second or a ninth in a C chord depends on one factor: whether the chord has a seventh.

C E G B D = C&#8710;9
C E G D = Cadd2

add2 and add9 are interchangeable in popular practice, but I think it's better to leave the simple interval in the chord symbol if there is no seventh. The exception is the 6/9 chord, because that has always been the 6/9 chord.

But with a seventh, you would never call D "2" or F "4" or A "13".

C E G B D = C&#8710;9
C E G B&#9837; D = C9
C E G B&#9837; D&#9837; = C7(&#9837;9)
C E G B A = C&#8710;13
C E G B&#9837; A = C13
C E G B&#9837; D&#9837; A&#9837; = C7(&#9837;13, &#9837;9)
C E G B&#9837; D F# = C9(#11)

Always strive to eliminate ambiguity. I try to be as consistent and informed as possible with my chord symbols.


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## fantom (Mar 30, 2014)

Poltergeist said:


> Example of a Chord Progression I would like to develop further:
> e|-----------0------0-------0------------0----------------------------0--------------|
> B|---------3------3--------3-----------3-----3----------1----------3------------------|
> G|-------0------0---------0----------0------0---------0----------0--------------------|
> ...



Forgive me for not reading all the replies and possibly repeating someone, but I don't agree with this naming. As I see it, this is vertical thinking and limiting you.

You have 2 voices.

Voice 1:
Em9 x4
D x1 (yes, there is a G in here, but that is a drone from the tonic key, so I don't think it really "adds" to anything here)
C x1
Em9 x2

So 8 bars are:
Em9 Em9 Em9 Em9 D C Em9 Em9

It's just every 80s rock/metal progression reincarnated. i VII VI i
This is probably the "rut" you are hearing.

The second voice is just a bassline dancing around the Em9 chord. It is essentially playing E (or B) A C B. It's just a melody that isn't staying 100% harmonically in charge (which is totally normal).


How to break the rut? From a playing standpoint, don't rely on open strings. From a composition standpoint, vary the droning notes as you change the bass notes. This will allow you to move out of the tonic. Example (which is still heavily Em, but has more "color" IMO).


```
e|---------0------2--------3------7----|
B|--------3------3--------3------5-----|
G|-------0------0--------5------7------|
D|------4------4--------4------5-------|
A|-----2------0--------3------7--------|
E|----0--------------------------------|
```
Em9 -> D/A -> Csus9 (+b5) -> Em7

No idea what to call that C chord... You could also just play a straight CMaj7 here effectively. The D still has that droning G, so you could throw an "add 11" to the name if you want.

These revised notes kind of follow the same idea as the 2nd half of your progression, which makes me think that your "bass melody" is really just "preparing" the listener for the chord change that comes the 2nd half.

So how to really break the cycle? Try to analyze your music and completely obliterate one of the chord that you use. For example, try writing something in Em that never uses a C chord. You can force something like Dorian to do this...

```
e|---------0------0---------0-----------|
B|--------3------2---------3-------2----|
G|-------0------0---------4-------2-----|
D|------4------4---------2-------2------|
A|-----2------5---------4-------4-------|
E|----0------------------------5--------|
```
Em9 -> DMaj7 -> C#mb9 -> A
i VII vi IV

I also kind of like the D->C#->D->C# motion on the B string, but meh.

And ya, I'm probably not 100% on the theory part, but trying to help with the writing part.


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## octatoan (Jul 25, 2014)

Resurrectump.


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## axionjax (Jul 25, 2014)

Few more hours till work is over. Looks like I have alot of weekend reading material. Really good theory material here! Keep it going!


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## Augmatted (Jul 25, 2014)

If you are talking minor chord progressions. and you want to add some pizazz, throw in bII (also known as a Neapolitan Sixth if used in inversion) and II (also kown as V/V) chords acting as a subdominant in the chord progression (before the dominant chord).
Ex. i - bII - V - i 
i - II - V - i 
Some other cool minor progressions : i - V - VI - i
i - IV - V - i
i - VII - IV -i
i - #iii(diminished) - IV OR iv - V - i
i - #VII+ OR #VII - i

Theres plenty more that sound good just use your ear and don't forget to use plenty of inversions to spice up that bassline


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## Gregory Frus (Jul 26, 2014)

Love this stuff!! The timing of this thread is great (for me). I'm studying with someone privately to learn to write for orchestra and digging into this topic now.


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## Poltergeist (Jul 27, 2014)

fantom said:


> Forgive me for not reading all the replies and possibly repeating someone, but I don't agree with this naming. As I see it, this is vertical thinking and limiting you.
> 
> You have 2 voices.
> 
> ...



Hey man! thanks for that suggestion and help, just now saw your reply after all these months.. I'm still tinkering around with this succession and havent worked on it in awhile and kinda forgot about my own thread too lol. Really good idea of approaching it from a dorian perspective, I'll have to give it a try and see where it takes me. I guess I really like the tonal color of the Em9 chord and it through me into a rut because my harmony knowledge is very limited and I didn't know how to break out of the regions between those few chords. Thanks for giving me a different perspective.

It's also good to see others are interested in this topic still... I'd love to see other progressions/successions created by others as well. Very interesting to see how you guys approach this kinda stuff and how you go about adding variations. I kinda take a scale and just build chords from it and sometimes one scale becomes my "comfort zone" and its sometimes hard to break outside of them because I don't know what I'm doing harmonically. You guys kinda push me to think about it differently and that's awesome and much appreciated.


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## iamjosan (Aug 4, 2014)

Oh the neapolitan sixth, how I miss that chord. Chord progressions are great as a template but they shouldn't be a means to an end, IMO. For anyone who is just starting out with chord progressions, and theory, I suggest starting out with the famous ii - V - I progression. A good exercise is to transpose the ii V I over and over and over again. That was really good on the piano too. 

When I play guitar I'm always improvising and all of my playing is based on a melody and the chords follow. I guess the main reason for that is because I have been studying Jazz and chord melodies, but even when I was studying Classical guitar it was the same - there is always a melody on top. 

ii V I may seem mundane, but once you have it down, you can start using chord extensions to make things interesting. With an arsenal of chords and exciting rhythms, you will surely not run out of great ideas.


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## octatoan (Aug 4, 2014)

How could I possibly use Abmaj9 and Ebmaj7#11 together?


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## octatoan (Aug 4, 2014)

Mr. Big Noodles said:


> 0:00 - Pedal tone A



How do you know it's an A? 
Isn't relative pitch only the ability to get intervals and stuff?


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## Mr. Big Noodles (Aug 4, 2014)

I used a pitch reference. As soon as you know that the first note is A, you know what to call the rest of them.


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## iamjosan (Aug 7, 2014)

Awesoham said:


> How could I possibly use Abmaj9 and Ebmaj7#11 together?



Play Eb after Ab


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