1:5 The I - IV - V Chord Progression

This is really a teaser for a lesson we'll get to in Section 3, when we'll study chord progressions. A chord progression is simply a sequence of chords played to produce a song, or part of a song. The most basic of these is the I-IV-V (1-4-5) progression. The numbers are taken from a system called the Nashville Numbering System or the Nashville Notation System.

The numbers are taken from the scale named for the key in which you are playing. For example, the G major scale is as follows:

G-A-B-C-D-E-F#-G

Seeing that this scale is made up of eight notes, what are the first, fourth and fifth notes of the scale? That's right... G, C and D. Whether we talk about rock music, folk music, country music, praise music or punk music, this progression, or a variation, occurs over and over and over again.

As I said, we'll get deeper into this later. But when we start working on songs, we'll first use the key of G, and the G-C-D (I-IV-V) progression. Later, we'll see how to find the I-IV-V for any key, but here are few examples:

Key of A: A - D - E

Key of C: C - F - G

Key of D: D - G - A

Key of E: E - A - B