Chords for Understanding Chords: Building Progressions with Chord Families

_ _ _ _ Welcome back to another lesson and in this lesson I'd like to give you a
simple little nice way of thinking about chords and how to group them together.
So sometimes the way I think about chords and chord progressions is that I think
about families of chords.
So these are groups of chords which you can jump _ from
one chord to another in the group and it will usually sound good.
So let me
introduce you to one group of such chords.
I'm going to do this in the key
of C _ _ [C] _ _ _ and I have my notes C D [D] E F G A B C and I'm going to this group of chords
is a major group of chords I mean it's a group of major chords to be more exact
and the chords in this group are C [Eb] _
E flat [F] _ F [Ab] _ A flat _ [Bb] B flat [C] _ and well C again.
So _ _ _ [Bb] _ [C] _
_ _ _ _ _ now in terms of scale degrees it's the first _ [Eb] three flat [Fm] four six flat seven
[D] flat and well first again.
_ Let me just play you just string along these chords
and I'm just making this up as I go along just to convince you sort of that
they actually do sound pretty good when strung together.
[C] _
_ _ _ _ [Cm] _ E flat [Bb] B flat _ [F] _ F _
_ [C] C so I
have this C root _ bass kind of like a pedal bass going on.
[Cm] E flat _ _ [Ab] A flat _ _ [F] _
F _ [C] C B _ _
[Bb] _ flat [F] F _ [Eb] E flat [Bb] B flat.
_ [C] _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ [C] _ So I hope this sort of gave you an idea that you can
actually do string these different chords together and I really didn't make
any sort of effort in deciding which chords are going to be my next I [Eb] was
just simply randomly picking the next chord as I was playing.
The secret
sometimes is in using the right inversion so always use the correct
chord inversion that minimizes the distance between the chords.
So if I'm
going to play an E flat and follow this way a B [Bb] flat I'm going to use an
inversion of B flat that [Eb] just is spatially [Bb] close to the E flat.
You see I'm
not I'm barely moving my hand from one to the other [Eb] instead of doing something
like this E [Bb] flat to B flat [C] although sometimes this might be also an
interesting sound.
Let me give you another example of using this family and
in this case I'm going to use slightly more complex versions of the chords so
they're going to be some sevenths and ninths and elevenths and you'll see it
running on the screen as I play along.
_ _ _ _ _ [Ab] _ _
_ _ [Eb] _ _ _ _ [F] _ _
_ _ [C] _ _ _ _ [Eb] _ _
_ _ [Cm] _ _ _ _ [F] _ _
_ _ [C] _ _ _ _ [Eb] _ _
_ _ [Ab] _ _ _ _ [F] _ _
_ _ [C] _ _ _ _ [Eb] _ _
[Eb] _ _ [C] _ _ _ _ [F] _ _
_ _ [C] _ _ _ _ _ _
_ All I did was play these five chords one
after the other.
There were some major sevenths in there and some major ninths
I've written out the chords and the notes on the screen so you can actually
follow along.
_ So I hope this idea kind of gave you a way to organize maybe the
chords that you know into families that work well and I actually urge you to sit
down and try to find these families by yourself.
Let me give you just one last
example before signing off and here this is going to be a small family.
[Am] Let's take
Am, _ [G] _ G, _ [F] _
F, _ [Dm] _ Dm, _ [Em] _
Em.
_ _ _ Now I'm not saying this is a you know this is some sort of
universal family that this is the family of chords and there's no other chord that
fits in there it's just a personal group of chords that I find fit well together. _
Let me just try and play them string them together so you can get an idea.
[Am] _
Am, _ [F] _ F, _ [G] _
G, _ [Em] _ Em, _ [Am] _
Am again, _ [F] _ F, _ [Dm] Dm, [Em] Em, [Am] _ Am. _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ [Ebm] _ _