3:2 Common Chord Progressions

(note - in this lesson, I may interchange numerals and Roman numerals, depending on the flow of the sentence.)

As previously stated, a chord progression is a series of chords, played in a sequence that produces a song, or part of a song. We've already looked at the I-IV-V progression. This progression appears over and over in popular music. You just can't get away from it.

How can you find the 1, 4 and 5 chords for a given key? Well the 1 is always the key you're playing in. But how do you find the others? Well, find the note with the same name as the 1 chord. Since we're used to taking the key of G for examples, let's use it. So find the G note on the top string - at the 3rd fret.

To find the 4, count up the string 5 frets. This gives us a C. The C chord is the 4th for the key of G.

To find the 5, count up two more frets. You get a D at the 10th fret. The D chord is the 5th for the key of G.

So now we have the three main chords for the key. But most songs will use more than three chords. Our first song "Holy Is The Lord" uses six. How do we find other chords that are part of the key, chords that are likely to appear in a song in that key?

Relative Minor
Very often, songs will contain chords that relate to our I-IV-V chords, called their "relative minor" chords. To find the relative minor to a given major chord, just find the note of the major chord and count down the neck three frets. What's the relative minor for the G major chord? Counting down three frets tells us it's an E Minor (Em). In the same way we can determine that C has a relative minor of Am, and D has a relative minor of Bm.

So now we know that in the key of G, we very well may find the following chords: G, C, D, Em, Am, Bm... any others? Quite often, you will also find the major chord two frets below the 1 chord, in this case, an F Major.

One of the beautiful things about music and songwriting is that it flows in all sorts of directions, or moods, or colors, or whatever you want to call them, and the possibilities are endless. Given the above information, you can explore music and amaze yourself with what comes out of your guitar.