 Welcome to another art of composing vlog. I'm John Brandingham and I believe this is episode number 10 We are going to be composing a chord progression today. I figured this would be interesting Now if you've never seen this chart here that I've got in front of me This is my chord progression chart and I've built it up over the last few years and I'm working on a version 2 right now But what it is is it effectively shows you how you can write a chord progression in one key That is logical. It makes sense, but it allows you to add Chromatic harmony modal borrowing things like that Automatically and I figured I'd go over how it works and why I think it's just a really useful tool So we're gonna start off and we're going to pick a key and grab a pencil so first we have to pick a key and You know, it's important that you understand the chords that are in that key now This chart isn't transposed right now one of the new things that I want to do with version 2.0 If I can get to that that point is create an app that will automatically transpose any key that you want That makes reading it a little bit simpler. However, right now We're just going off of the Roman numerals now if you're not familiar with Roman numerals I would recommend checking out my my free course on YouTube and where you can sign up for the full free course at my website Where I go over what Roman numerals are basically They're effectively ways of representing scale degrees and the chords built off of them in any key. It's it's keyless really So you've got You've got six chords that we use that we call functional chords in any scale. These are one six four two Seven So and what this chart does is it lays it out in a direction that you can always go with your harmony so that you it always feels Like you're making forward progress one of the the things that will make your music feel Incorrect, which it's not really incorrect There's usually times when you want to use non-functional harmony that doesn't necessarily have this, you know, very classical forward motion However, if you're trying to write a diatonic chord progression You want it to feel like a standard chord progression Then you do want to follow some of these rules for for the direction that your harmony should go And if you notice everything goes from left to right, so I'll play that progression again that I played One and I'm doing this in the key of C major just make get your head wrapped around it a little easier Now the beauty of it is that I can go from left to right as much as I want like I can skip as many steps So I can very easily go one two four to seven back to one and what That allows me to do is is start to create a different variety of chord progressions You know, I don't have to always do the one six two five kind of thing every time And then what you'll see here as well are some big arrows that show you the motion that you can go Backwards on the chart so you can get back to the beginning of the circle and now the big one obviously is five Right that that cadential sound but five can also go back to the sixth chord All right That's known as a deceptive cadence and it can also go back to a four six chord. It's got some of the the same motion It's got that g to a in the base. So Kind of a softer sound it's less dramatic than the The traditional deceptive cadence um Now what that allows us to do is effectively create like a rotation on the chart one harmonic rotation and within a theme Let's say you may have multiple harmonic rotations. You'll go from one to the end of the chart at some point and then back to one Uh, probably multiple times Within a single theme so being able to to write a chord progression like this is extremely valuable for any composer Now you also notice a few other things on here. I've got these little golden fives Down in the corners and that's representing applied dominance and with each of these chords pretty much except for the seven You can apply its own dominant. So if you are in that pretending to be in that key for a minute For an example, if we were to go from one to six In between those two chords, I can add the applied dominant to six which is actually an e seven chord in this case We're doing c to a minor All right, and that's a really cool sound that's very useful for anybody Um, and I can do that and any of these ones that have little golden five in the corner Now the one thing about seven is it's not a key. It's It's a diminished scale Or it's a diminished Or half diminished chord depending on if it's a triad or a seventh and there's no diminished key There's a major key. There's a minor key. There's no diminished key now There's diminished scales and theoretically you could figure out like what's the fifth in that scale However, it doesn't sound the same as an applied dominant. So we don't normally do applied dominance to To the seventh chord, but if I play through the whole chart just using those applied dominants, it's got a really cool sound So it would be c to e seven in there to a minor To c seven the dominant of f right And then we've got a seven to d minor which just doesn't get any kind of dominant of its own and then we could do Actually, we we probably just skip and go straight to that that d seven right there Faster Play go cadence at the end now. There's also a couple other things. Everyone always asks me about the three chord I know it's a very pretty chord and you hear That kind of sound all the and the three chord in a traditional classical sense is not Functional in the same way that you know one or four or five are considered functional However, it is used all over the place. You use it usually leading to six. It's got kind of a dominant feel And it feels kind of like we land on that sixth chord it also sounds really good moving to four because you've got that half step in the Usually if you're using a three chord you can often substitute the applied dominant to that sixth chord Which is an e7 chord in this? All right, so you can do the same thing here You hear that a lot especially in kind of classic rock. It's got a good classic rock sound Now you can transpose this chart. So we're doing this in c major. Uh, but why don't we do it in f major? So I Extensions there so that's a nine before you can do the same applied dominus It's just me but I always try to make all my noodling and noodling rounds sound pretty You know, if you don't take a moment to pause on this Okay, so Let's go ahead and write a progression. I said I would do it at the beginning and We're going to I mean shoot we can pick what are we saying in f major? But we're gonna go let's say Five six four five six four potential six four. So if you've never heard me talk about that that's effectively It's the same as a one six four chord, right? So start with the c in the bass However, I like to write it as five six four because these Two notes they drop down. So this is the first progression that we've written That is a great way to get through an entire harmonic rotation and then what we could do is We could also use some modal borrowing Like But it's effectively the same number as you just have to change if it's major or minor so a six becomes a Flat six kind of sound right? So let's go All of my secrets that I was telling you there, especially the minor chart However, I figured it was going to be interesting for you to watch this Now if you want to get this chart, you can get it You know, I'll post some links below this video so you can download the charts You can also find it on my diatonic harmony article And I highly recommend if you really want to dive into this chart and understand how to use it to its full power Including modulating to closely related keys and just writing really interesting Uh progressions then check out my music composition one-on-one course It's very thorough and it covers all the fundamentals that you really need as a composer You'll be able to compose consistently and to have music that sounds like it makes sense So with that I will talk to you actually this evening we're doing a symposium, but other than that I will