Chords and Chord Progressions 101

Disclaimer: the MIDI keyboard in these classes can display sharps or flats.  In the case that the class has examples that use both sharps and flats, the MIDI keyboard will only show one or the other (often flats only).  While it is rare that this issue comes up, it needed to be address from the start of the course.  Trust the information that's being discussed over note information on the MIDI keyboard when this discrepency arrises.

Knowing the distance between two notes, AKA intervals, is super important for understanding the structuring of scales. This course outlines the most important intervals to help you build both scales and chords in the upcoming classes.

Knowing your major, minor, diminished, and augmented chords is fundamental to understanding the harmony within major, natural minor, and harmonic minor scales. This class breaks down how these chords are constructed and the unique sound each one brings to a progression.

Now that we have some fundamentals covered, we can start to build scales.  Major, natural minor, and harmonic minor scales are the usual starting point when it comes to learning scales within western harmony.  This class breaks down the three types of scales, how they sound, and how they are created.

Now that we can make a major scale, let's see which chords are available within the scale, and which order they are placed.

Similar to our last class, we're going to be extracting chords out of a scale, but this time we'll be using the natural minor scale as our tonal center.

With its inherently classical and dramatic sound, the harmonic minor scale provides chords that have been used across countless styles of music. As its name suggests, the harmonic minor scale plays a fundamental role in our exploration of harmony.

Cadences act as the punctuation at the end of chord progressions. It could be argued that how a progression ends is more important than how it begins, and this class will give you several solid ideas for how to finish your progressions effectively.

Let's now discuss expanding our chord progressions into four chord progressions by introducing predominants.  The idea of sneaking in a chord before (pre) the V chord (dominant).  This class explores 3 predominant chord progressions in a major key context.

We now venture into minor predominant chord progressions.  This set up the student to now know four chord progressions in both major and minor keys.

Another fundamental progression studied within western classical harmony is the i-vii°-i.  This progression, as well as some variations of it, are examined within this class to give the student more harmonic options to work with.