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Building Chords and Progressions of The Major Scale

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Knowing how to build chords and chord progressions is a really great tool for writing your own songs and communicating with your fellow musicians on how to play a certain piece of music, “Let’s play a 1 4 5 progression in the key of…”

You can create the most beautiful chord progressions and songs by ear and you don’t necessarily need to know music theory for that, but it makes the life of a musician a lot easier if you do know some music theory on this part.

It’s nice to know what other musicians are talking about and how you can create chord progressions in a more effective and efficient way.

Adding music theory knowledge will reveal a lot of secrets you wish you had known before, so don’t wait for later or you’ll miss out on all the good stuff. Music theory will definitely make you a better musician!

Now let’s dive in:

From the major scale you can build 7 diatonic chords. The major scale consists of 7 notes, so that’s one chord of each note.

Let’s take the C major scale for example.

5 Beautiful Ways to Play a II-V-I Jazz Chord Progression

By Klaus Crow 24 Comments

I just love figuring out different ways to play a jazz chord progression or just mixing up jazz chords with other styles of music.

It can add nice flavors to a song and give it some extra magic. It’s really fun to experiment with that.

Learning jazz expands your guitar vocabulary to a whole new level if you are ready for it.

In the meantime it’s just fun to play some beautiful jazz chord progressions and it will certainly contribute to your playing skills and creativity as well.

There are also more advanced II-V-I’s than the ones I show here but these are really nice to start out with and get your feet in the dirt. It can be a little bit overwhelming if you learn to play jazz chords and progressions for the first time, but after a few runs you’ll get the hang of it. You’ll be amazed!

3 Juicy Blues Chord Progressions to Be Prepared

By Klaus Crow 38 Comments

When I learned my first blues progression it wasn’t something I really got excited about.

It was okay but it didn’t make me want to play it over and over again.

I would rather prefer cool or mind blowing. Later when I started adding a sprinkle of jazz to it things became more interesting.

Blues chord progressions start to change from mediocre to superb.

So why should you learn blues chord progression in the first place?

Well first off, blues chord progressions are the foundation of blues rhythm and essential for accompanying a great blues solo.

Or you could put it the other way around, where would a great lead guitar player be without some awesome accompaniment?

This is where you come in.

So now anytime you’re in front of a lead guitar player you are cool, confident and prepared because you’ve mastered these 3 juicy blues chord progressions.

Being able to play the blues is a great tool for guitar players and musicians in general to get together, jam, explore, evolve and have a great time.

I urge you to practice these chord progressions in every key through the cycle of fourths.

Experiment with playing different rhythms, different key signatures and tempos.

It’s important to learn all 3 chord progressions by heart.

You will develop a great skill you will use the rest of your musical life.

Enjoy!

MAJOR BLUES PROGRESSION

10 Ways to Play the Most Beautiful Open Chord Shapes

By Klaus Crow 90 Comments

The Most Beautiful Open Chord Shapes – Part I

A great way to make your chord progressions and songs sound awesome is to use open chord shapes.

I always love to use these chords to add some flavor to my chord progressions. One of my favorite chords is Fsus2, it contains the complete package. It’s sounds beautiful, gentle, tight, cool and rough at the same time.

Moving Open Chords

When you move an open chord up the neck the name of the chord changes and the chord gets extended with 1 or 2 notes. This way you can get beautiful sounds.

While you can play barre chords at any fret on the fingerboard, open chords can only be played at certain frets. If you play them at the right frets they sound amazing, if you don’t… well they just sound terrible. So be careful.

Because of all the extended chord names I didn’t bother to name every single one of them. That’s not the point here.

Experiment

It’s all about incorporating these chords into your songs and chord progressions, putting your creativity to the test, experimenting with all the possibilities, replacing some basic chords for these extraordinary ones, learning to hear what sounds right and what feels good.

Check out the youtubes Part I, II & III and the corresponding chord fingerings below.

Have a great time!

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