A Million Songs - Same Chords

Yes, you're right, I haven't counted them. But look at enough Lead Sheets and written down songs through the eyes of a musician and it's easy to reach this conclusion.

The One-Six-Two-Five chord progression is everywhere in music, even though at first glance it may not be obvious. This is because it's a great shape-shifter and can be twisted into some really weird ones when you apply harmonic chord substitution

This is the basic One-Six-Two-Five chord progression in the key of C:

C | Am | Dm | G7

These four chords can easily be substituted just by changing the root notes. For example, what if I play the C chord, but use the 3rd Interval (from C scale) as the root instead of C - it turns into an E minor!

Em | Am | F | G

Or look at this example where the four chords have deconstructed to just 2 by substituting the C for Am and the Dm for the Gsus4.

Cycle of 5ths

Am | Am | Gsus4 | G

You can make it Jazzy by using the Cycle of 5ths to get more tension and stronger resolution. So in this next example I will substitute the Am with A7 to strengthen the resolution to D:

Em7 | A7| Dm7 | G7

Tri-tone Substitution

Now that we have what look like 2 two-five progressions I can turn up the jazz by using 'tri-tone substitute' on the Five (Dominant 7) chords. This means my A7 turns into Eb7 and my G7 turns into Db7

Em7 | Eb7 | Dm7 | Db7

chord triads

A really good way to get your head around this is to look at chord Triads. For example take a Cmj7 and remove the root (C). You're left with a G, B and E triad. The 5th, 7th and 3rd intervals from C scale.

If you replace the C root note with an A root note, your chord is no longer Cmj7, it has become Am9.

What if you move the root note (C) up just a semitone? Now your chord has become C#m7b5

What if you use E as your root note? Now your chord has become E minor.

Now look at this full-on Jazz version of the basic one-six-two-five that uses tri-tone substitutes on the Am and G7 before resolving to a simple C with natural 6th and 9th added

Em7 |Eb7b5 | Dm11 | Db9b5 | C69

"Once you understand chord harmony you can see that there really are only 3 chords!"

So the principle here is to justify modifying the basic progression by using one of these common musical mechanisms (cycle, tritone,diatonic subs,natural extensions,)

In more practical terms, as a guitarist in a band, what if you only play the G, B and E triad from the Cmj7 chord, while the bass player plays an E note. Together you make E minor, of course, but what is more useful to know is how you can use this simple 'triad' whenever you see an Em chord or a C#m7b5 or an A9.

Its this kind of thinking that really comes in handy when trying to improvise over chord changes. Visualising chord triads on the neck when I play Jazz, Blues or Rock, helps me make better musical phrases because the notes in each triad remind me where I can land.

In this short example I play a blues turnaround and expose the Triads and Dyads that I see on the neck.

Deconstructed

One of the most useful things I know is how to de-construct chord progressions to make them easier to improvise over.

Stand back from the sheet of music and look at the shape or it. The harmonic movements that make it what it is. We've all seen the 3-chord songbooks with hundreds and thousands of popular songs. A lot of these songs have more than 3 chords but have been simply deconstructed to make them simple to play. Their harmonic shape is unchanged and they still sound right.

So the trick with deconstruction is knowing which chords are fundamental to the harmonic shape of the piece, and which aren't. For example, look at the basic One-Six-Two-Five chord progression again. This is often used as a turnaround and in this context it's job is to return, to turn-around back to the beginning. This means it will work just as effectively as One-Five because we keep the Five chord which is the real 'turn-around' mechanism. So 2 chords are removed , but the song is still the song!

repertoire

From a songwriters perspective this is, of course, very interesting, but from a guitarists viewpoint it is essential to learn basic chord harmony and study the repertoire. A great best place to start is with a Real Book. This book is full of lead sheets for musicians with popular repertoire from all the great composers of the last century (Gershwin, Rogers & Hart, Cole Porter, Oscar Peterson etc.)

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