What’s the most beautiful chord progression you can play on guitar? Well, I don’t have the answer! There are way too many.
A better question could be “Is there a formula that shows you how to create beautiful chord progressions?” The answer is yes, indeed.
You don’t have to be gifted to write beautiful music. Of course, it takes time, knowledge and experience to find the right combination of chords, but these are things that everyone can develop as long as you have to work for it.
In this guitar lesson, I am going to show you three easy tips for writing beautiful chord progressions. Let’s leave out things such as “Look outside the window to get inspired.”
Instead, we are going to keep things very practical.
These are the three tips we will learn today that will help you write beautiful chord progressions on guitar:
- Tip 1: How to play extended chords.
- Tip 2: How to combine chords and melody.
- Tip 3: How to diversify a chord progression.
Some of the concepts I am about to show you can be considered intermediate level. If you are a beginner, go ahead and give it a try but, please, take things step by step and learn one chord at a time.
Enjoy this lesson.
Tab Available on Patreon!
Get the Tab here!1. How to Play Extended Chords
Extended chords are chords played with notes above the root, 3rd, and 5th. If you play a C major chord with just root, 3rd and 5th (C, E, G) and you add notes such as the 7th (B), 9th (D), 11th (F) or 13th (A) you build an extended chord. An example could be a Cadd9 or C13.
Let me show you the difference between basic chords and extended chords. The examples are in C major, but in this lesson, we will be working on a chord progression in C# minor.
- C major: Root, 3rd, 5th – C E G
- Cmaj7: Root, 3rd, 5th, 7th – C E G B
- Cmaj9: Root, 3rd, 7th, 9th, – C E B D
- C9(13): Root, 3rd, 7th, 9th, 13th, – C E Bb D A
There are a lot of different extended chords that can be played on guitar.. The shapes and functionality of the chords will change depending on whether the extension is major, minor, diminished, dominant, suspended or augmented.
The Extended Chords in this Lesson
We are going to learn the following extended chords:
- C#m9: Root, 9th, 7th, 3rd – C# D# B E
- Asus2(#11): Root, 2nd, #11th, 5th – A D# B E
- Emaj7: Root, 7th, 5th, Root – E D# B E
- Badd11: Root, 3rd, Root, 11th – B D# B E
The C#m9 Extended Chord
The m9 chords are very popular chords on guitar.
The m9 chords are built by adding the minor 7th and the major 9th to the chord.
The C#m9 I am showing you in this lesson is played with both fretted and extended notes.
The major 9th (the note D#) is played on the G string fret 9, and the minor 7th on the B string open (the note B).
On top of the extensions, we are also playing the root note C# on the low E string fret 9 and the minor 3rd on the E string open.
The Asus2(#11) Extended Chord
The Asus2(#11) is a interesting extended chord.
The extended notes for this chord are the 2nd which is the note B, played on the B string open and the #11th, the note D# played on the G string fret 9.
You will also play the Root note A on the A string open and the 5th, the note E on the top E string open.
This is indeed one of my favorite chords.
PS: On the video, this chord is spelled wrong. Follow the chord on the guitar tab.
The Emaj7 Extended Chord
The maj7 chords are just beautiful, dreamy sounding chords.
The chord shape we are learning today will have the extended note, the major 7th on the G string fret 9 as well as the Root note on the low E and top E string and the 5th played on the B string open.
The Badd11 Extended Chord
The add11 chords are built by adding the 11th to the Root and 3rd of the chord.
This chord doesn’t necessarily need the 5th.
In this chord progression, we are going to be playing the extended note E on the top E string open.
We will also play the Root note on the low E fret 7 and the major 3rd D#. The root note is also played again on the B string open.
2. How to combine chords and melody
The very next step for writing beautiful chord progressions is combining chords and melody.
In this example, I am going to show you how to add a melody to the extended chords we learned in step 1.
The number one question I get asked the most is how to make up a melody on guitar.
There are three things that you have to consider when combining chords with melody:
- In which key you are playing the chords.
- Which scale can I use to create a melody?
- In which position of the fretboard I can write a melody.
What does it mean to be in a key in music?
A key is a set of notes that sound good together.
For the majority of Western music, these notes come from the major or minor scale. If you are in A minor key, you are playing a set of notes and chords from the A minor scale.
The reasons why it’s so important to understand in which key you are playing is because it allows you to determine the notes of the melody you can combine with the chords.
In this lesson, the key is C# minor. Therefore we will play the melody using the C# minor scale.
Which scale can I use to create a melody?
Chords come from scales. A melody comes from the notes of a scale. How you can make a melody from a chord progression depends on how good you can play the notes of the scale around the chords.
In this lesson, we are going to use the C# minor scale.
In which position of the fretboard I can write a melody.
As you learn the melody, you will notice that the notes I am choosing rotate around the chords.
This is a good starting point for creating beautiful melodies around the chords. However, this exercise isn’t as simple as it looks.
You must know how to hack the five minor scale shapes if you want to create beautiful melodies easily.
Learn the C# minor scale below.
How to Play the Melody Around the Chord Shape
Once you memorize the C# minor scale, you should then learn how to play a melody over a chord progression.
Notice that the melody I play in this lesson is always played around the chords. This is a great exercise but unfortunately doesn’t come naturally at first. You have to learn the chord to scale relationships.
In the diagram below you can see both scale and chord shape in one position.
The white dots represent the notes played for the C#m9 chord. I also included the E and B open string.
Chord to Scale Relationships
We can apply the same concept for the Asus2(#11), Emaj7 and Badd11 chord.
For this chord progression, the relationship between the chords and the scale is pretty easy to visualize since the chords we are playing are similar.
The exercise becomes more difficult when the chords have completely different shapes and change position all the time.
3. How to Diversify a Chord Progression
The last tip for creating beautiful chord progressions is arranging chords in a different order. I call it “Diversify a chord progression”.
Nobody wants to listen to the same four chords over and over no matter how beautiful the chords are.
By creating a B section with different chords, you will catch the listener attention and create a surprising element that is necessary for any chord progression.
In these exercises we are going to play the diversified chord progression as follows: Aadd9 – Badd11 – Aadd9 – Badd11 – E.
The Aadd9 chord shape is one of the most popular chord shapes on guitar as well as the Badd9. Notice how they share the same chord shape and are very easy to play.
The Add9 is an extended chord played with the A string open, the major 3rd on the G string fret 6, the 9th on the B string open and the 5th played on the E string open.
The fingerpicking pattern is also different.
How to Actually Create a Chord Progression from Scratch
Learn how to put together a chord progression by using this straightforward trick. In this example, I am going to show you how to choose the chords from a given key. Once you understand that, you can then add extended chords and melodies.
We learned that chords come from scales. Once we learn the chords that the scale generates, you can then select the chords that you like and arrange the chords into chord progressions.
How Chords are Built from Scales
Learn the chords from the major scale. Memorize the order of the major and minor chords the scale generates. This is an example in C major, but it can be easily transposed in other keys once you memorize the chord structure.
Don’t even bother to play the chords in this example. Just memorize that:
- The I, IV and V degree of the scale generates a major chord.
- The II, III and VI degree of the scale generates a minor chord.
- The VII degree of the scale generates a diminished chord.
All the chords from the C major scale can be used to build chord progressions.
Some of the most common chord progressions are:
- I VI II V – C, Am, Dm, G.
- I IV V I – C, F, G, C.
- I II III, IV, V – C, Dm, Em, F, G.
- I III II IV V – C, Em, Dm, F, G.
The Relative Minor Key
Each major key has a relative minor key built on the 6th scale degree. For the C major, the relative minor key is A minor. They are the same scale starting from different notes.
The A minor scale generates the same chords as the C major scale only starting on the A note.
The only difference is that:
- The I, IV and V scale degree is minor.
- The III, VI and VII scale degree is major.
- The II degree of the scale is diminished.
Select some of the chords from the A scale to build chord progressions.
Common minor chord progressions:
- Am, F, C, G.
- Am, G, F, G.
- Am, Dm, G, Dm, G.
- Am, C, Em, F, G.
How to Transpose Chords to Other Keys
The exercise I show you in this video is in C# minor key. Now that you learned how to make chords from the scales it shouldn’t be difficult to transpose the concept to a different key.
Let’s do it together.
The first step is to learn the C# minor scale.
Did you memorize the chord structure for the minor scale? Great, we are going to use it on the C# minor scale.
We learned that:
- The I, IV and V scale degree is minor.
- The III, VI and VII scale degree is major.
- The II degree of the scale is diminished.
Based off of that, write down the chords of each scale degree. You will have:
- C# minor chord
- D# diminished chord
- E major chord
- F# minor chord
- G# minor chord
- A major chord
- B major chord
The Chord Progression I am Playing in This Exercise
Now that you learned where the chords for the C# minor key come from, it should be easier to analyze the chord progression we just learned.
The chord progression C#m9, Asus2(#11), Emaj7, Badd11 can now be visualized as I – VI – III – VII. For the B section, the chords were Aadd9 and Badd11, which is the VI and VII degree of the scale.
IMPORTANT: Don’t get confused between major and minor. The I VI III VII chord progression in this lesson refers to the C# minor scale and not the E major (relative major).
Let’s Wrap This Up
Writing beautiful chord progressions isn’t a simple task.
The three tips I showed you in this lesson can help you figure out where to start but not where to finish. I think that you will never truly finish exploring with chords.
We learned that extended chords are essential for creating more interesting chord progressions and adding a melody around the chords can drastically make chords beautiful to play and hear.
We also learned that diversify chords is an excellent tool for keeping things interesting (for you and the listener) and that, after all, it shouldn’t be difficult to transpose chords in different keys.
This is just a starting point guys. I hope you get inspired and finally build beautiful chord progressions.
Make sure you get the tab on my Patreon page if you need it and don’t forget to subscribe to my YouTube channel if you want to keep up with all the upcoming lessons.
Good luck 🙂
