What are progressions? How are they used? What is the meaning of this? This is a very interesting topic and it’s one that I have been thinking about for a little while. And so I have decided to write about this. Let’s start with a definition from Wikipedia:
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A chord progression (or harmonic progression) is a series of musical chords, or chord changes that “aims for a definite goal” of establishing (or contradicting) a tonality founded on a key, root or tonic chord and that is based upon a succession of root relationships.
This definition is very good, and helps to outline that chord or harmonic progression is based on the fact that they are used in a sequence to help tell a story. The beauty of chord progressions is that you could use the same chords in a progression to tell a different based on your what you have to say – But that’s another blog post for later – 🙂
Basically a chord progression is a series of chords that are played in sequence that you would play in time. There are so many chords and variations on those chords in that you could take a very simple song and make it very complex by using more advanced chord progressions. Or you could take a complex song and simplify it by using simpler chords and chord progressions. Here’s a youtube clip I made just for this post – Mary Had A Little Lamb:
The object of this post is to introduce chord progressions in a non threatening way and to let you know that now matter how complex and simple your “progression” may be through life, it can still be beautiful. It depends on how you “Play It By Ear”
2 thoughts on “Progressions…”