Unusual chord progression?

If you add a IV to that then you have one of the most common progressions around

I V vi IV

Yeh, I thought about working the IV, A maj into it. Wasn't sure how it would sound but I'm going to work with it now. Thanks. :D

technically that's not a progression but a succession - no such term really, which is what causes some confusion as to what's "acceptable".

With a succession, which has no definition, you can do whatever you want.

But with a progression, which has a definition, there are "rules" or expectations at least. All progressions end with a cadence, which is either V-I or vii-I (these are the same thing with a note missing to create vii-I). A deceptive cadence is when V-I is expected (because all progressions end with that and the ear therefore expects it from thousands of repetitions) but you do V-vi instead. There's also the IV-I ending but that's rare.

There is a kind of master progression that all derive from (I'm changing to numerals for speed): 3, 6, 4, 2, 5, 1. So from this you can get:

5,1

4,5,1
2,5,1
4,2,5,1

6,5,1
6,4,5,1
6,2,5,1
6,4,2,5,1

etc.

You can go backwards one chord in the master progression and also skip forward over one. And you can add 1 anywhere. Enjoy!

Randy,

First off, welcome to the forums!

Now to the meat of your post... when I was in school I was taught the "natural harmonic progression" (a term coined by theorist Percy Goetschius in the late 1800s), and the IV was in a different place than what you show: VII-III-VI-II-V-I-(IV). Wikipedia identifies a circle progression similarly, but shows the IV at the far left, leading to the vii.

Either way, it's a true sequence - each chord root drops a fifth, then rises a third to the next one. The way I was taught placed IV off to the right of the I, because the IV could then return to I in a plagal cadence.

In thinking it over, I'm finding the way I was taught makes more sense. If you place the IV between VI and II leads to this (key of C shown):

A-C-E -> F-A-C -> D-F-A

Notice that each chord replaces only one tone from the previous chord, leaving the other two the same. All the other chords in the natural harmonic progression, or in your master circle progression, keep only one tone, and change the others. This leaves this sequence sounding rather bland, with less motion than any other part of the progression.

As a result of this bland series, classical analysis normally wouldn't identify the IV in this context as a chord at all, but as an event. The true progression of the chords would be Am -> Dm; the C would have a longer duration, being held while the E changes to F; the C would then resolve up a whole step to D, completing the chord change. The intermediate step is usually called a harmonic retardation.

But I'm reading all of this into a single sentence of yours. So I'm curious where you picked up the master progression - I'd like to dig deeper into the logic of whoever came up with it.

That's something I learned in my college music degree and it has a name I don't remember (long time ago). A main point I left off was that 2 and 4 are interchangeable, for example, meaning that 4, 5, 1 and 2, 5, 1 are about the same, which is why I grouped them that way above. I think the same was true of 3 and 6.

In other words, 2 and 4 were a category, as were 3 and 6, and 5 and 7. Using the "full" run of chords (minus 7) would get you what I called the master: 3, 6, 4, 2, 5, 1. But you can make porgressions from the categories, picking and choosing as long as you generally went from the 3, 6 category to the 4, 2 category to the 5, 7 category and then 1. You could skip a category or go backwards between them or within them (both sparingly).

This "master progression" as I'm calling it is functional harmony and is arranged from chords of least tension to those of the highest tension (that being 5) and resolving to the one of least tension (1).

All progressions ended with a cadence:
5, 1 (authentic)
7, 1 (which is 5, 1 without the 5th note)
5, 6 (deceptive cadence caused by expectation of 5, 1)
4, 1 (somewhat rare)

Anyway that's what I remember and I don't recall a "circle" idea being part of this, nor a sequence, so I think the explanation you received might be something different. I believe this theory was based on someone's analysis of progressions used by Bach and his contemporaries. I.e., based on practice.

You've certianly heard of 4, 5, 1, I assume, so 4 doesn't generally come at the end in classical music and I don't recall seeing that in any of the music I analyzed in school (been a long time though). It might happen but is certainly rare and the 1 chord is generally the end of the progression. The point of progressions is to make 1 sound like home by using increasing chord tension and a cadence to arrive at it. This is why the deceptive cadence works, as well, since the ear expects 5, 1 and gets 5, 6 instead, surprising the listener.

Anyway, 4 and 2 are removed by one note from each other, being spelled 4, 6, 1 and 4, 6, 2 respectively. I started both with 4 because the 2 chord is most often seen in first inversion, giving it the same bass line as the 4, 5, 1 progression. One way to look at this is that the 2 chord is essentially the 4 chord and vice versa, but for probably counterpoint reasons, the use of the 2nd scale step was used instead of the 1st scale step. Moving from the 4 chord to the 2 chord is a virtually motionless change when doing counterpoint because only one note has to change.

My own theory is that there's only one progression: blah, blah, blah, 5, 1 (or some semblance of 5, 1). :mrgreen:

Ok, no source then.

Any triad can be substituted for any other triad if they share two common tones - you can substitute vii for V (they share the scale's 7 and 2), vi and I (share 1, 3), V and iii (share 5, 7), etc. That's what makes substitutions work, really: the deceptive cadence is just an authentic cadence with the 1 replaced by 6 in the chord of resolution.

You see this sort of substitution all the time at any point in a progression. One that springs to mind right away is Green Day's "Boulevard of Broken Dreams" - the Fm in the verse is replaced by Db in the chorus... the two chords share F and Ab. The first theorist I know of to express this was Hugo Riemann, who sliced them up even further - replacing I with vi he called the "tonic parallel", because there are two shared tones, and the replacement comes from the relative minor of the tonic; replacing I with iii he called the "dominant counter-parallel" because the new tone comes from the dominant chord.

Not all progressions end with a cadence to I or its substitute of vi. Haydn and Mozart often used feminine endings - a subset of the I->V half cadence. Interrupted cadences are common in Bach, sometimes going far afield - his passacaglia and fugue in Cm uses a great example of V->bII. Corelli, Handel, and Bach all have movements that end in IV-V. There's a Brahms Sarabande in Am that ends on a D major chord. While it's unusual to end somewhere other than I or vi, it's not hard to find examples.

Nor is a plagal cadence (IV-I) rare. Besides being used in thousands of hymns - where it's so common it's called the "Amen" cadence - you can find it in songs by the Beatles (Eight Days a Week, Let it Be, Strawberry Fields), the Red Hot Chili Peppers (Californication), the Stones (Jumpin Jack Flash), the Beach Boys (Surfin USA), and lots more.

Fair enough NoteBoat. Let's move on. The last thing the world needs is yet another forum/email fight that should never have been!

My point about 4, 5, 1 is that since you had most likely heard of this (who hasn't), it didn't fit into the progression you had supplied with 4 being at the end, making these ideas seem incompatible.

Alan is right, this is an interesting post. Since it seems we got past any misunderstandings towards the end, I decided to just delete those few posts and unlock. No offense intended, I'd just like to see more discussion if there is any.

Thanks to the peacemakers, the old hands and the new posters that make us think.

Peace and play well.

It's true that the IV-V-I doesn't fit into my pattern (it actually doesn't fit into yours either - there's a 2 in between). You can look at that anomaly in two different ways:

1. We were both taught our methods in music colleges. Theory and harmony at the college level, with very few exceptions, deals with the "common practice" period - the music of the baroque, classical, and romantic eras. The IV-V-I isn't used much in classical music.

2. Since we can always substitute a triad if it shares two common tones with the 'standard' one, we can look at the IV-V-I as actually being a ii-V-I, with the IV substituting for ii. In C, these chords would be F (F-A-C) and Dm (D-F-A).

There will be a fair number of popular music progressions that don't follow what's standard in classical music. One simple way that songwriters mix things up is to play the same chords in reverse - like a V-IV-I progression (Sweet Home Alabama, etc)

If you read my first post, you'll see 4, 5, 1, and 2, 5, 1, and 4, 2, 5, 1.

As I mentioned, 4 and 2 were within the same categtory and swappable, meaning either or both could be used.

I'm sure I can find examples of 4, 5, 1 all over the place but won't argue the point.

There have been lots of attempts to codify a "master progression that all derive from." I no longer trust any of them. As was suggested above, theory follows practice. It cannot sit on a composer's shoulder and tell him what is "acceptable" to write.

Regarding I-V-vi, I hear it as bIII-bVII-i, at least if it's a repeated pattern. (I also hear "Sweet Home Alabama" as I-bVII-IV. Always have.)