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In each of the lessons, you can click on this top logo to go to the index of lessons

Lesson 9: Chord Progressions

Chords are the "combinations of notes" that give a song its sound. There are three elements of a song - the melody, the chords and the rhythm. Many different songs can have the same chords (just think about the "blues"), and any one song can be played with a variety of chord patterns (or progressions).

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In Lesson 9, we will learn three common Chord Progressions and use them to practice playing in different keys.

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You can click this link at any time if you want to view the Circle of Fifths tool.

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Play this clip to hear an introduction to our lesson on Chord Progressions.

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Click the "Worksheets" link to view and print the worksheet pages for Chord Progressions. I will be describing how to fill in the first page, in the key of "C". Later on, your assignment will be to complete the Chord Pattern worksheets in ALL the different keys. You will need your Major Scale Chart to fill in the worksheet. Here is what Pattern 1 looks like on the worksheet:

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Let's get ready to play our first chord progression, I-IV-V-I, in our teaching key of C. Go ahead and fill the chords for progression 1 in on the worksheet.

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So let's play through our first pattern, in the key of C major. I'll call out the chords as we play. All you need to do is to play each chord and hold for four beats.

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Now let's look at the second progression - fill in the letter names on the worksheet as I give them to you - or try filling them in yourself before you listen to this clip and see if you get them right!

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So now let's try playing this second progression - all you have to do is to play the chords and hold for four beats - and I'll call out the chords as we play together.

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Let's spend another moment on progression #2 - there are lots of "C" keys and chords on the keyboard, but in general, we'd like to stay in the same range for all our chords...

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Let's spend one more moment on Progression #2 - I'm going to play it one way, and I want you to listen and see if you can think of a song that uses at least part of this progression.

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And here's that same song, once again - you can look at the bottom of the page to see if you guessed it.

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And we're on to our last progression - let's fill in the chords on the worksheet, and then play through one time.

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So that's the world of Chord Progressions! There are many different Progressions; we just looked at three fairly "typical" ones. Your assignment will be to work through all the different keys on your worksheet - fill in the chords for each Progression (reminder: your major scale chart will be very helpful!) as you have time.

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When you return to the course index page (click the logo at the top of this page, you will see that there is a link to a set of Practice exercises for Lesson 9 (and some other lessons). I encourage you to follow that link and go through these additional practice exercises to help you learn to play the major scales on the keyboard.

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Hooray, You Made It Through Lesson 9 !!!

I hope you're encouraged by now that we're starting to play real music! As always, if you have any questions on this lesson, click the "Ask Rhonda" button to send me an email, and I'll get back to you as soon as I can!

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And if you didn't recognize our "Mystery Tune" up above - maybe this will help:

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