Chord progression nube :/
 

Hi all,

I'm new to music theory and recently started teaching myself how to play the piano. I discovered the concept of chord progression and can't seem to wrap my head around what seems to be a simple concept.

I read common pop progression is I-IV-V. So, does this mean a song in the key of C should repeatedly cycle through C-F-G? Are there general laws for understanding this concept? When can one break the laws?

I plan to write songs of my own soon, so, any help simplifying this will help me tremendously.


:beer:

Break the laws as much as you want. A lot of artists tend to use the same chord progressions, but that's just because some progressions sound better than others. There's no strict rule, at least not as far as I know (though you should ask a music teacher, and not me).

Another MB member posted this on the forums, it might be of interest to you:


And by the way, welcome to the forums :)

The rules you speak about vary from genre to genre. If you are writing rock or pop songs, break them as much as you want as long as it sounds good to you. Jazz and classical (the traditional kinds anyways, not counting minimalist or avant garde classical or fusion jazz, etc) are less forgiving when it comes to breaking rules. Like in classical music there is generally a structure to be followed when composing certain kinds of pieces, and it can sound real funny or weird if the chord structure is not followed. However, to add colour or texture to the music you can borrow chords from another key (modal interchange or mode mixture), as long as you make your way back to the original key. This happens in rock and pop music all the time. That might be beyond you right now though since you are fairly new to this.

Thanks for the responses! I'm curious as to why the I - IV - V prgression is so popular and in which cases do I use this pattern? And does the order alternate or is this order pretty standard?

It's popular because it's been used since Bach's time and even before then. Our brains like it and this is something that is continuously being studied.

The order can change depending on the song, the way you write, how you want it to sound, and most importantly, what kind of cadence you want or need to use (again this depends on genre). It happens a lot in pop music - the typical pattern in a verse might be I-IV-I-V(7)-IV-I. It may help you to read up on cadences - Cadence (music) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

I usually just improvise and go by ear. If you follow the I-IV-V-I mold, try to stick as many interesting chords in between, go on a bit of a tangent, then come back to the key. Or maybe go to the relative major or minor, or the tonic major or minor. Im particularly a fan of the Napolean flat VI leading to a V7 then I. Lots in Beethoven's works I think. Circles of fifths progressions work nice too to create predictable yet very pleasant and driving music.

There's a lot of great music theory tutorial sites out there, just google "music theory" and go from there. Little by little you'll start understanding it. As far as why I-IV-V, or different variations on that "work", like it was said above it's just what your brain has gotten used to, from being exposed to that type of music from the time and place you grew up in. In order for something to be music and not just random sounds there has to be some sort of pattern that your brain can latch on to and say "that's where this is going". Those patterns or rules are to a large extent just cultural. It's alot like language.

But you also want to break the rules periodically, and create tension. That's what makes a peice of music interesting and unique. But if you stray too far from the rules, it becomes less a peice of music and more just random sounds. So experimenting with chord progressions are a game of playing by the "rules" while occasionally straying from that here and there. Ultimately just keep playing around with them until you hit on something that sounds right to your ears.

Welcome aboard by the way.