Music Lesson: Chord Progressions and Improvisation

Introduction

Okay. So, if you listen to any popular song, you're likely to hear that there are more than one chord featured underneath a melody or an improvised section. This is really important. We need to be comfortable playing over more than one chord, not just one chord at a time.

The Chord Tone Idea

We're going to tackle that now using exactly the same idea that we've just discussed: the chord tone idea.

Example 1: Chord Progression in C Major

Let's take a look at example 1 on the PDF. This is a four-chord, four-bar chord progression in the key of C major featuring the chords:

• C
• A minor
• F
• G

We will just loop that round.

Playing the C Major Scale

To start with, I'm going to play the C major scale over that chord progression so you can hear how the scale works at some points and not at others. Then, I'll play a melody that targets specific chord tones in those chords. This is a great exercise that you can do. We may simplify this in a second as well.

Let's have a go at it now:

"So let me just lay down the chords for you."
2, 3, 4.
Okay, there's our loop going.

I'm going to start by playing the C major scale for you.

"Okay, so 1, 2, 3. Here's chord one."

We can definitely hear that this scale is the correct choice for that particular progression.

Melody Targeting Specific Chord Tones

Now, let's play a little melody targeting the specific notes of the chord. If you remember, we had three notes in each chord:

• For a major chord: a root, a third, and a fifth.
• For the A minor chord: a root, flattened third, and a fifth.

I'm going to play some really simple melodies here.

So, what I've done there is improvised a really, really simple melody using arpeggios.

Understanding Arpeggios

If the term "arpeggio" is new to you, it simply means playing the notes of a chord individually. So far, we've been talking about chord tones. If we join chord tones together, we are playing arpeggios.

This is a fantastic way to approach improvisation because:

• You can't fail but play great notes over the chord.
• You're only playing notes that feature in that chord.

Tip: Arpeggios are a tool that is extremely useful to you. At the early grades, you might not have access to arpeggio shapes in your grade, but it's worth exploring these tools as they're just as useful as scales.

Practicing Arpeggios

Now let's pop that one back on again and have a little bit of a jam.

Important Note:
Towards the end, I wanted to demonstrate that you don't need to come up with new ideas for every single bar. When chords belong to a diatonic progression, they often feature the same notes.

You can play the same notes over different chords, and that note will have a different relationship to that chord when it changes.

Demo: Let's play just a C note over this chord progression, and you'll see how the sound of that C changes with the chords.

"Three, four."

Hopefully, you heard that I played the C note over every chord. Over chords 1 (C major), 2 (A minor), and 3 (F major), that worked great:

• In the C major chord, it's the root note.
• In the A minor chord, it's the flattened third.
• In the F major chord, it's the fifth.

Exploring Chord Relationships

So, it had a different relationship to each chord but worked because it's a chord tone for each.

Now, over the G chord, it didn't necessarily sound bad but had a more tense sound. That's because it's not a chord tone of G; it's the fourth degree of G.

I thought it sounded really cool! On the repeat, I lowered that C note to a B, which is a chord tone of G, specifically the third. This maintained a resolved sound throughout.

Melodic Techniques

It's a good example of not needing to get too technical with improvisation. Using some distortion could create an interesting sound.

Let's apply some restrictions and improvise using octave chords over that chord progression; I think that would work really well.

Demonstration:
So, that's just me using the octave shape to come up with a melody.

Playing on a Single String

Now, I'd like to talk about playing on a single string. If you're new to the theory behind scales, it can be tricky to visualize where the notes are.

Tip:
Try picking any string on the guitar and playing along that string rather than across to better understand the distances between the notes in the scale.

Let's pop that loop back on and play the C major scale up the B string. We'll start on this C down here and end up an octave higher on the 13th fret of the B string.

Conclusion

Let's try that out! We can start to play with kind of slidy melodies. This is another way to come up with melodies along a single string, which sounds really cool when you exaggerate the slides.

I hope that was useful! Let's check out another idea.