3 Levels Of A Chord Progression... Easy, Medium & Hard!

24 Jul 2024

Dan Holton

I'm excited to say that in today's lesson, we'll be exploring how you can use a few simple tricks to advance the sound of your basic chord progressions. There is a huge amount packed into this one track, so let's dive into expanding your chord skills right now!

Remember that this starts at an intermediate level with simple barre chords, and gradually works up to some more advanced concepts! No matter your level, I'm sure you will be able to take some of these nuggets of gold and apply them to your chord progressions!

Dan Holton

The lesson

This blog post is the supporting material for the YouTube lesson, which you can see below. I want to say a massive thank you to all of our wonderful YouTube subscribers, and to everyone who has taken the time to watch our videos! Here are the audio files for the lesson, so grab those before you get started!

Level 1 Progression

To get us started, the first level of our progression has a pop feel, and is made of 4 simple triad chords. The chords are A | F#m | D | E. This is whats known as a simple I, VI, IV, V progression (1, 6, 4, 5) and we're playing using a 6/8 time feel that's pretty darn swung! Here are those chord shapes:

Don't understand the roman numerals?

If you're looking at the above paragraph and it sounds like nonsense to you, then you've probably never studied musical harmony! That all changes today! Check out the courses below to get a full understanding of it.

Notice how the lead sounds…

As we go through each level of progression, notice how the chords are effecting the lead sound. We are never changing the lead guitar part, but we are changing the chords underneath with each level. Just in case you wanted to learn the lead part, here is the tab:

Level 2 Progression

Now we're levelling up! The first upgrade is taking our basic triad chords, and harmonising them as 7th chords now. Taking our I, VI, IV, V progression in A major, that gives us an Amaj7 | F#m7 | Dmaj7 | E7. Even this simple change makes a massive difference to the sound, but that's not all! We're also adding in two extra "tension" chords. The purpose of these chords is to firstly add a bit more spicy tension to the progression. Secondly, these create more energy in the track by moving between two chords in certain bars, rather than just one!

The first chord we're adding is a G#dim7 chord, otherwise known as a whole diminished. Diminished chords are notoriously good for creating some musical tension, that is then released as we move to the next chord. Without diving too deep into the theory, we're putting this chord in between the Amaj7 and the F#m7 which sounds great as a descending pattern.

My advice with diminished chords is not to overthink them. They serve a clear function… tension that can be released. Try putting them between two chords, a tone or semitone apart, and see if they sound good to you! It might take a while to adapt your ear, but this is a great start.

Dan Holton

The second chord we're adding is the E Augmented chord, which we substitute for the E7. This chord has a very similar property to the diminished chord, and when placed on the V chord of the key, you get an absolutely classic V to I resolution that must be played! We are now left with this chord pattern: | Amaj7 G#°7 | F#m7 | Dmaj7 | E7 E+ | - As for how these shapes look, it's all shown below.

Want to understand diminished?

If you want to dive a little deeper with diminished theory, you can do so with our theory lab course shown below. We also have some fun blues application for it in the blues course below as well!

Level 3 Progression

For our final level, we're going to not only add a few more chord substitutions, but we're also going to change up some of the rhythm slightly to make it more interesting. The first chord we're going to add is the F#m9, which is substituted for the F#m7. This is a very simple sub, as we're simply changing the melody note on top of the chord. You can do this anytime you like and it's super easy!

After that, we're adding a G11, or G/A chord. This particular chords function in the piece is to pull us to the IV chord of Dmaj7. It's essentially working as a substitute for the secondary dominant chord of A7 (yeah I know I know… it's getting complicated, and you can find more detail about the secondary dominant concept in our Freddie King player study), so has the same effect as going from the A7 to Dmaj7, but it sounds cooler in my opinion!

Finally, for the 4 and 5 chord, we're adding in a Dmaj9 chord (see the chord shape below) and a very cool little 2-5-1 movement to come back to the start. A 2-5-1 is a more jazzy way of playing a 5 chord turnaround, as we get a new sense of movement that resolves to the 1 chord. As a general rule of thumb, the 2-5-1 should be based on the key of the chord you are resolving to. So in this case we're resolving to the 1 chord of A. The 2 chord is therefore a B minor and the 5 chord is the E7. However, we have a very cool version of this that I highly recommend you learning, based around slightly altering those shapes. You can see this whole progression via tab here:

In conclusion

Phew! That's a lot of theory and application. My advice would be to take one or two ideas from this lesson, and try to apply it to other chord progressions you know. Can you get it useable in your own playing? Only in experimenting for yourself will you ever get to the point that you can feel confident in using and improvising with the material. Good luck, and have fun!

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