Chapter Six
Chord Progression
Let us assume that you picked up your new guitar and you want to create a simple song based on the keynote C. What chords should we use? One option is to stumble around and hope we guess at chords that complement one another. A second option is to think about the major, minor, and diminished chords in the key of C.
The Major triads are I, IV, and V.
The Minor triads are ii, iii, and vi.
The Diminished triad is vii*.
We will use the major chords from the key of C. The chords will be C (I), F (IV), and G7 (V).
We will now add chords and notes from C's relative minor scale to give the music a bit more character. What is
the relative minor of C? The answer is A minor. The sixth tone of a major key is the first tone of the relative
minor key. Again, we will use the first, fourth, and fifth intervals of A minor. So we build chords using A minor,
D minor, and E7.
