1 Chord Progression, 5 Levels of Complexity

This video is sponsored by HD Piano. Stick around to find out how you can watch the exclusive part two to this video with HD Piano. How do you make a simple chord progression sound more impressive, more detailed and developed? Well, today I'm going to show you by taking a super common chord progression and running it through five increasingly more sophisticated levels of complexity. So let's start here on level one with the basic form of the chord progression. What's sometimes called the 50s chord progression. It's been used in loads and loads of different songs. It's just in the key of C, C, A minor, F and G. And this is our level one. Just the simple three note triads, major and minor chords. So how can we add more detail to this? Well, level two is going to be all about adding what you could either call chord extensions or colour tones. Extra notes into the basic chords to add an extra dimension. So for example, we could do this. Do you see what I did there? So instead of C major, we had C add nine, where we've got the ninth degree there, the D, or what you could call the second degree, it could be C add two, but C add nine is what's more commonly referred to as. Then we had this chord. So this is A minor seven. We've still got the essential A minor there that we had before. We've added this G here, the seventh degree. Then with the F chord, once again, we went with the add nine, with the add nine there, the G. And with the G chord, instead of going for a normal G major triad, I went for this. Which is a G sus two. Sus two, because rather than having the third, we've got the second degree there instead, suspending the third. So that was level two. Now let's take this to level three. So this level is all going to be about passing chords. Now a passing chord is what the name would suggest. A chord that you add in as you pass between different chords. So rather than going, for example, straight from C to A minor, I could do this. Did you see what I did there? Between the C and the A minor chord, I added that chord. G over B, or G in first inversion. And I chose that chord because I wanted to bridge the gap between the two main chords. So between C and A minor, we've got G over B. And then we need to get to the F chord. So we could add another passing chord in here. I'm going to add this chord. C over G. So once again, choosing a chord that's built off of the degree between the two main chords. We've got A minor and F, and we can bridge the gap with the note that's between them, G. So we have C, G over B minor, C over G, F. And then we need to get from F to G. So that is going to sound like this. Did you see what I did there? Once again, applied the same logic. I want a chord that occupies the space between the one we're currently on, F, and the destination, G. Well, between F and G, there is F sharp, right? Or G flat, depending on what you want to call it. So I did a diminished chord built off of that degree. F sharp diminished. That led us up to G. And then we don't necessarily need to put a passing chord between G and C to complete the loop. We can just go straight back to C and continue from there. So, of course, we can apply this process, these different levels, these different approaches to harmony, to any chord progression. Not just this 1, 6, 4, 5 that I'm doing in this video. So if you'd like to see me apply these same processes, these same approaches to harmony, to a different chord progression, namely the Zephyr Song chord progression, the chord progression used in the Red Hot Chili Pepper song, Zephyr Song, then I've actually made another video, a part 2 to this video, that's available on HD Piano. HD Piano is a fantastic service for learning how to play the piano, and you can watch that exclusive part 2 video by following the link down below in the description. Alright, so now we're going to go to level 4, and level 4 is going to be about secondary dominants. So a secondary dominant is the dominant chord of a different chord in the key. So what does that mean? Well, the normal dominant, what you could think of as the primary dominant, is the 5th chord of the key. So in the key of C, the 5th chord, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, is the chord built on the 5th degree, G, and it sort of acts to guide us back to that C. That's what dominant chords do, they guide us. So a secondary dominant is the chord that's a 5th away of a different chord in the key. For example, let's start our chord progression with C. The next chord in the chord progression is A minor, right? So we can get to that A minor by using the secondary dominant. So we're now going C, and then the E7 guides us to A minor, and now we need to get to F. Well, what's the dominant chord of F? Well, it's C7. So if we do a C7, it takes us to F. And what about to get to the G chord? Well, we could do the dominant chord of G, which is D7. And just to make sure everything is dominant and powerful and pulling us back home, let's add a dominant 7 to the G chord as well, to pull us back to where we started, and we get back to C. Right, and that takes us to level 5, and for this last level of complexity, we're really going to double down on what we were doing in level 4, where now we're going to not only add the 5 of the destination chord, we're going to add the 2 of the destination chord. So before each chord, we're going to go 2-5-1. Let me show you what that looks like in practice. So once again, we're going to start on C, okay? Then our destination is A minor, right? But rather than going straight there, we're going to have the 2 and the 5 of that destination chord, A minor. The 2 of A minor is B. We could either do B minor or B minor flat 5, but we're going to do B minor. And then we're going to have the 5 of A minor, which is E. And you can notice that I've added 7ths to both of these as well, which is sort of just par for the course when we're talking about these sort of chord progressions. Adding the 7th in is always going to add that extra level of pull into the chord progression. So rather than going straight from C to A minor, we're going to go C, B minor, E, A minor. Like that, 2-5-1, and then we're going to apply that same process to the next chord. We now need to get to F, so we can go 2-5-1 to F. And then finally, we need to get to G. So once again, we're going to have the 2, the 5, and the 1 of G. And I'm going to have a dominant 7th on G to make sure that it brings us back round to where we started on the C. So let's put that all together. It's going to sound like this. So of course, with these different levels of complexity, they're not like better versions. It's not necessarily an improvement each time. They're just different options, different flavours, different avenues that you can take the harmony down, depending on what you're trying to achieve. So I'm going to finish off now with an extra bonus level 6. And all I'm going to do for this is take what I did in level 5, but rather than just adding 7ths to each chord, I'm going to add different upper chord extensions like 9ths and also altered extensions as well, like flat 9ths, that sort of thing. You'll see what I mean. So hopefully that's shown you how, whether you're dealing with a very simple but effective chord progression, or you're dealing with a more sophisticated chord progression, the essential movement, the essential purpose of the chord progression isn't different. They're both just serving to accompany the melodies up above. And I know at least myself as a player, when I'm playing a more complex chord progression like this, I'm still thinking in quite basic terms. I'm still thinking we're on 1 and then we're moving to the 6. So do let me know in the comments which level you preferred the most. And also don't forget you can see the part 2 of this video exclusively on HD Piano by following the link down below in the description. Thanks for watching!