Spanish Chord Progression for Beginners
Today I want to talk to you about one of the most romantic and expressive guitar style: Spanish Guitar. I consider this guitar style the most beautiful and captivating music on Earth, and today, we are learning one of its most common Spanish chord progression.
Grab your acoustic guitar and get ready to learn something easy yet really effective and fun to play.
This is the perfect Spanish Chord Progression for Beginners that nobody taught you yet.
Spanish chord progression video lesson and tab
In this acoustic guitar lesson, you will be learning four different chords and a Spanish fingerstyle pattern, and a Spanish chord progression.
We will break it down and analyze each aspect of this exercise to improve not only your “fingers” but also your guitar skills and music theory knowledge.
The Chord Progression
The chord progression is straightforward and easy to learn. We are in a key of E minor, and we will follow one of the most common chord progression in Spanish music.
E minor, D major, C major B7
The first step here is to memorize the chord progression with basic chords and a simple strumming pattern. The chord progression can be played with basic chords. If you want to know more about basic chords, check out the skills page here.
Once you familiarize yourself with the chord progression, you will apply the fingerstyle pattern that is so characteristic of Spanish guitar.
Let check it out.
The Spanish Fingerstyle arpeggio
This Spanish arpeggio is one of the most common in Spanish Guitar. Let’s break it down into three different chunks.
As you notice, the plucking pattern is pretty simple, and it can be divided into two different ones.
- The yellow color: Same pattern with the thumb, middle, and index finger. The only difference between the two is the string that the thumb will pluck.
- The red color: Just two notes with the thumb always on the 4th string.
One thing you can do to make this fingerstyle pattern easy to memorize is to group it in that way:
123 123 12 – 123 123 12
Practice the arpeggio on the E minor chord for a while before moving on to the next chord.
Style and Performance
You should always consider when playing a Spanish chord progression like this one is which note you should emphasize. It is vital to accent the notes played with the thumb to create a strong rhythmic contrast between melody and accompaniment.
The rhythmic emphasis will then look like that.
By emphasizing each group’s first beat, you will be able to give more dynamics and style to such a simple chord progression.
Practice slowly, and make sure you also focus on reducing the volume on the top two strings. Good luck with that.
Difficult Parts
One chord will challenge you a little bit more than the rest, and this is the D major chord. The reason why this chord is more challenging than the rest is due to its stretch.
The D major chord in this chord progression will also play an additional note on the 4th string fret four making it pretty stretchy and difficult to get at first.
Here a picture of the bugger!
Try to keep the left-hand thumb down behind the neck (I am not really following this rule, but hey, I am the teacher!) and stretch with the little finger close to the fret.
There might be a buzzing noise at first, but I am sure that with some purposeful practice and consistency, you will successfully play this chord. Not all the Spanish chord progression is easy to play!
If you need to stretch your left-hand fingers, I have an awesome stretchy exercise that you can follow here.
My thoughts
I really think that this Spanish chord progression will help you learn new chords and rhythmic patterns and musicality and fluidity. It is indeed an exercise disguised as a song.
As always, make sure you practice everything steps by step and learn each chord individually. You will also find it helpful to check out this article about finger positions and avoid them when practicing fingerstyle guitar.
Fingerstyle guitar is awesome, and with these exercises things, you will love it even more.