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Using Your Ear to Navigate Chord Progressions

So this lesson is all about using your ear to help you find your way through difficult chord progressions.

As singers, we don't have anything we can see to help us find our pitch or navigate a melody. We have to rely on sensations and a bit of training. Therefore, we need to make sure that we're training our ears to find the right notes in any chord, enabling us to navigate chord changes that might not feel quite as natural.

Understanding Natural Chord Changes

• Things like four and five chords tend to be very natural to what our ear expects.
• But what happens when the chord progressions are a bit more advanced?

Today, we have a chord progression that will be accompanied by a backing track. You can download this track and use it to help you find your way through this particular phrase.

Outlining the Changes

You may have noticed that this lesson is titled "Outlining the Changes." The term "changes" is just a flashy musical term for chord changes; that's literally all it means. Sometimes, we just call them "changes."

Listening Exercise

Let's get to work!

1. Start with the Backing Track:

   • I want you to listen carefully to the bass line.
   • Listen for the bass notes as we use our ears to find the root of each chord.

2. Play the Backing Track:

   • The bass might feel a little low, but you'll hear it if you're listening closely.

3. Analyzing the Chords:

   • The bass starts to get a bit busy here, but actually, it's the same chords.
   • Note how it goes down and then moves from a minor third down a semitone (or half step), and again down a whole tone.
   • After this, it goes up a major third.

Group Activity

Now, let's try to sing it together:

• Alicia, you sing it for me. That's it!

Now we'll come down a minor third, semitone, semitone again, and down a whole tone.

Great job! This is the baseline for our chord progression.