San Ramon CA Chord Progressions – Guitar Lesson
I was giving a guitar lesson to a student in San Ramon who wanted to know about chord progressions.
When learning a new song, it’s best to first analyze the chords of song known as the chord progression. This will help with your memorization skills to learn and remember the song much quicker. You will also start to recognize typical chord progression patterns in songs that are similar to other songs you have already learned, which will make it easier to assimilate the information.
For instance, a common progression like the one used in La Bamba in the key of C would start with the C chord followed by F and G.
Chord progressions are typically notated with Roman numerals such as I, IV, V. In this progression, C would be the I (1), F would be the IV (4) and G would be the V (5). You would call this song a I, IV, V progression. The reason to use this system is because you can quickly transpose the song to any key.
Let’s say you want to play the song and the key of C is a little out of your vocal range. You can then easily transpose the progression to let’s say the key of G. G would now be the I chord, C would now be the IV chord and D would now be the V chord.
If you know scales, you are simply taking the starting note of the scale as your I Chord, the fourth note of the scale as your IV chord and the V note of the scale as your V chord. Taking our example above, the G major scale is G, A, B, C, D, E, F#. So as you can see, G is in the 1st position, C is in the fourth position and D is in the fifth position. More to come.
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