Guitar skills: When it comes to chord progressions, you don’t have to break new ground to write great songs. In fact, some basic chord progressions have been used repeatedly in hundreds of pop and ...

The presence of a well-crafted and performed chord progression can often be the glue that gels the song together. If executed well, it should support your melody and lyric, while grabbing listeners on ...

The ii-V-I has been referred to as a chord progression, a turnaround, and a cadence depending on the circumstances it is used. It is most known as the jazz progression as it is the backbone of many ...

To celebrate the 30th anniversary issue of American Songwriter (Jan/Feb 2015), “Measure for Measure” served up a smorgasbord of 30 handpicked, solid gold chord progressions. This e-book supplements ...

Songwriting can be an arduous process sometimes, and there are occasions when we need all the help we can get. When this situation crops up, nobody will judge you for rummaging around in your ...

Listen up: scales aren’t just torture devices invented by guitar teachers... When you use a scale, say, C major, you are playing ‘in the key of C’. The word ‘diatonic’ simply means ‘within a key’, so ...

Almost every song in the pop charts is built around the same four chords. And it's nothing new – they're the same three chords that Pachelbel used in his famous Canon. But why do we keep coming back ...

Bass Week: As bass players we naturally have to know our chords, and ideally a fair bit about harmony and chord progressions in general, as we are the ones banging out the root notes! But there are ...

You know you're doing something right as a musician when a particular chord or chord progression gets named after you. Take for instance the Hendrix Chord (that's a dominant seven chord with a sharp ...