Piano Clues

Speaking of chord progressions, there is a very cool web site called chordmaps.com where you can learn all about them.

For example, here is a chord progression map for the key of C.

In the key of C, the C chord is the home chord, the most important chord. This is where chord progressions begin and end.

Here is how to read the chord progression map: from the C chord you can go to any of the other chords, and then you have to follow the map back to the C chord.

So you could start at C and jump all the way up to the A chord (top-left). From A you go down to Dm, then to G to Em to Am to F to G and finally back to C.

But that is only one possibility. We could also have gone from A to the shorter route of Dm to Em to F to C.

The possibilities aren’t endless, though. If that were true, we wouldn’t need the map. The map exists because not all chord progressions sound good.

The site also has maps for all other keys and a generic map that works with Roman numerals.

Play around with it! It’s a wonderful tool for learning the rules of harmony.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 19th, 2008 at 12:47 pm and is filed under Chords, Links. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.