Simple Chord Progressions

I hoped that you had read and practiced the previous lesson on basic guitar strumming patterns. With that knowledge, we can apply it to some of the common chord progressions found in this beginner guitar lesson. At the end of this lessons, you will find yourself strumming to very familiar and yet simple chord progressions in popular music.

Roman Numeral System

Before that, I want to introduce you to a system of naming and notating chord progressions without having to indicate the key of the piece of music. This method of naming chords is very convenient for transposing and chord changing once you get used to it. Let’s see how it works.

Roman numerals are labeled with the corresponding degree of the scale. Typically, these roman numerals are notated based of the major scale. To further illustrate this, let us use the C major scale as an example.

The table shows that different notes of the C major scale. The first note of the scale, C is denoted by I, fifth note G is denoted by V and etc. You would have noticed by now that some of the roman numerals used are in capital while some are in the lowercase.

Upper case numerals are used to indicate that the chords are major. For example, in the key of C, the root chord C is always played in its major form. The F and G chord are always played in the major form as well.

Lower case numerals are used to indicate that the chords are minor. For example, in the key of C, the D chord and E chord are played as minor chords.

As for the seventh degree chord, it is always a diminished chord and are usually found in genres such as jazz. We will discuss more about this at a later stage.

These are the basic some "music rules" that governs most of the songs. However, these muscial rules are broken frequently and we will not touch on them in this beginner guitar lesson.

Ok, let’s say I want to play a chord progression (I iii IV V) in the key of C, the chords I would be playing would be (Cmaj Emin Fmaj Gmaj). Now, if I want to play this exact same chord progression (I iii IV V) in the key of F, I would need to play the following chords: F Amin Bbmaj Cmaj.

Now, let’s say the original key of the song is in C major with the following progression. If this key is too low for me and I want to transpose it higher to F major, there are a few ways to do this.

• Place a capo at the 5th fret (Since F is 5 semitones higher than C) and play the song with simple open chords.

• Using movable barre chords and shift all of them 5 semitones higher.

• Manually write down all the chords in the new transposition and figure out where to play them.    

Simple Chord Progressions

With that, let’s move on with some basic and simple chord progressions.  

The beautiful thing about using roman numerals is that it enables you to understand keys and different progressions easier. One very good practical use is the ease of transposition with chord progressions. Many a times, the key of a particular key for a song might be too high for you to sing. You can easily change the key of the songs using movable chords or a capo without having to figure out and writing down the chords all over again.

Have fun messing around with these progressions. Try them out in different keys such as G and F and do not confine yourself to playing in C major all the time.