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Guitar Chords – How To Play Easy Rock Chord Progressions And Have More Fun Playing Your Guitar

By Mike Hayes | February 24, 2009

Guitar playing is a great way to relax and unwind particularly if
your learn to remember songs via chord progressions. Many of
our favorite songs share similar chord templates that make them
easy to remember.

Whenever we are confronted by vast numbers of objects, tunes,
people or anything else – our first step towards understanding
how they fit into the overall scheme of things should be to
divide and subdivide them into usable, understandable categories.

The traditional approach to guitar playing is to learn each song
as a complete new project, in other words if you wanted to learn
five new songs to play on the guitar, you would have to learn
five songs entirely from scratch.

The professional guitarist would look (or listen) to discover
which category each song belonged to, this would make the whole
process of learning and remembering new material much faster and
easier.

By analyzing the musical form and content that gives the music
its particular character, we should arrive at an overall view of
the subject – music. A new perspective that might just lead to
total control.

Some basic rock progressions are:

1. Blues Chord Progressions

2. 1 – 4 – 5 progressions

3. 1 – 3 – 4 – 5 progressions

4. 1 – 4 progression

5. Flamenco progressions

Let’s take a look …

Blues Chord Progressions – can be sub-divided into 8, 12,16 and
24 bar versions.

8 Bar Blues – Keys To The HighWay – B.B King and Eric Clapton

A /// | E /// | D /// | D /// | A /// | E /// | A /// | E /// :| |

12 Bar Blues – Hound Dog – Elvis

A /// | A /// | A /// | A /// | D /// | D /// | A /// | A /// |
E /// | D /// | A /// | A /// :| |

16 Bar Blues – Be Bop A Lula (verse) – Paul McCartney

A /// | A /// | A /// | A /// |A /// | A /// | A /// | A /// |
D /// | D /// | A /// | A /// |E /// | D /// | A /// | A /// :| |

24 Bar Blues – Mustang Sally – The  Commitments

A /// | A /// | A /// | A /// |A /// | A /// | A /// | A /// |
D /// | D /// | D /// | D /// |A /// | A /// | A /// | A /// |
E /// | E /// | D /// | D /// |A /// | A /// | A /// | A /// :| |

Here’s four popular variations of the 1 – 4 – 5 progression:

(a) A / D / | E / / /||

(b) A / / / |D / E / ||

(c) A / / / | D / / / | E / / / |E / / / ||

(d) A / D / | E / D /||

Listen as you play each progression, they should sound familiar,
for example,  A / D / | E / D /| is the chord progression for
“Wild Thing”.

The 1 – 4 progression is a favorite of groups like The Beatles
Rolling Stones, Bruce Springsteen etc.

Bruce Springsteen’s – Glory Days features this 1 – 4 chord
progression:

A /// | D ///| A /// | D /// :| |

Live and Let Die (Wings) is based on the 1 – 3 – 4 – 5
progression while Dire Straight’s “Sultan’s Of Swing” and
Foreigner’s – “Feels Like The First Time” are both based on the
Flamenco progression.

Sultans of Swing – Flamenco Progression

Am /// | G / F / | E /// | E /// ||

Feels Like The First Time – Flamenco Progression
Am /// | G /// | F /// | E /// ||

I invite you to use these tips and tools when you play the
guitar.

From Mike Hayes – The Guitar Coaching Guy & the Express Guitar System

http://www.GuitarCoaching.com
http://AdvancingGuitaristProgram.com


 

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