Chord Prediction

In my years of playing i found that the key questions was the

prediction of the next chord. Music is dynamic and

is moving up or down in the course of a song. When reading

music it's there on the sheet, and music

readers use the sheet music as their security blanket. There's

no need for prediction of chords you just follow along on the

sheet. But if you don't have the sheet music or you can't read

music, and you are thrusted into a situation where you are

going have to play what are you gonna do? What if I told you

you can become very confident in those situations, and come out

like a pro.

When predicting chords You can be about 90% certain

of what the next chord in your progression will

be if you follow the chart. below and the example to the

right. Below is a simple table of chord

progressions, In the this table we use Roman numerals to

represent the chords of the scale of a

certain key your playing in. On the left is the chord let

say currently being played. On the right is the

next chord the first chord we started with mormally goes to in

a natural progression. It is normally the

chord that follows, not always 100% of the time though. It

depends on the composers, the feel of the

mood of the song, or what fits in the particular situations.

But you can be confident, let's say about

90% of the time, this is how chords progress, or resolve.

There are natural progressions that just

sound good to the ear. Study the Circle of 5ths

become very familiar with it for you will see yourself making

the same chord moves over and over while you are playing.

Below we use the chords in the key of "C" for our example.

So let's take a look at the chart, below:

I- ANY

II - V7

III VI

IV - I or V7

V7 - I

VI - II

EX.

C - ANY

Dm - G7

Em - Am

F - C or G7

G7 - C

Am - Dm

Let's start at the I chord, you can go to any other chord from it. It's called the TonicNext is the II chord, and it normally moves or goes to the V7 chordNext is the III chord, and it normally goes to the VI chordNext is the IV chord and it normally moves to the I or the V7 chordNext is the V7chord, and it normally moves to the I chordNext is the VI chord and it normally moves to or resolves back to the II chord.This is a very useful tool in composing, or analyzing a song in your preparation for an event you'll be playing in. Especially for songs you are not familiar with, this can be a great tool. Just find the key of the song the Tonic chord and then go from there. It's not as difficult as you might think.

Here is a little challenge for you. Get you a piece of music form a music book, hymnal, fakebook or even a christmas song book and test whether the chart is accurate. It won't work 100% of the time, but I found for most of the songs it worked out as predicted.

Wilbert

Custom Search