How to make chord progressions a pro would love, Part 15: Rhythm II

February 10, 2014 No Comment

Before we get to using those quarter notes and eighth note rhythms, I want to briefly review harmonic rhythm. I mentioned it a while ago, but we haven’t really put it to use. This is a good time to do that.

Progression in G major

Let’s take a look at a progression in the key of G. The chords for the key of G are…

G Am Bm C D Em F#dim

And here’s a progression using some of them.

That double bar-line with the two dots at the end of the second line? That’s called a repeat sign. It means that you need to go back to the beginning and repeat the 8 bars.

Changing harmonic rhythm

Now let’s change the rhythm. I’ll do the harmonic rhythm first. Then, in the next post, the strumming rhythm.

The progression below takes the original progression and places some of the chords on different beats. The original progression has a chord on beat 1 of every bar. The new progression takes the Em and puts it on beat 4 of bar 1; Am goes to beat 2 of bar 3; and the D chord is placed on beat 4 of bar 7.