Art & Music - Module 7: Chord Progressions (Fall 2024)

For Teachers
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"Creating Art & Music" is an introductory course designed to introduce creative activities in the context of art and music. Thus far the course has been taught at the middle school, high school, community college, and university level (with appropriate adaptations for each level). Each week this fall, students in the course are posting their projects in this strand of the Snap! forum. Here's a link to the course materials:

Art, Animations & Music

This week's module is titled "Musical Chords". In this module, we will begin exploring musical scales and how they can be used to build both chords and chord progressions. Chords play a crucial role in music by providing harmonic support and structure, shaping the emotional tone, and creating rhythmic momentum. Chord progressions guide the flow of music through tension and release, while different types of chords evoke various emotional responses.

Unlike melodies, chord progressions are not subject to copyright, meaning that the same progressions can be found repeated throughout music history.

For your assignment this week, we would like you to review the documents found on the course website and then explore the chord progressions in the Snap*!* program linked below. Once you have a chord progression you like, add drum tracks to create a full rhythm section. In subsequent modules, we will explore crafting melodies and harmonies to accompany these tracks.

Building Chord Progressions (Snap! Program)

These are some of the most common chord progressions found in contemporary popular music. (All examples provided here are in the key of C, so you don't have to worry about sharps or flats. However, if you would like to try a different key, simply switch to a different starting chord and keep the same intervals between the chords in the progression.)

The video below offers an explanation of why each chord progression in the program above works well and provides several examples of each progression being used across different musical genres.

Chord Progression Video (20 min) (Credit to Axis of Awesome and David Bennett Piano)

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Here is my chord progression with a little bit of a beat!! Music

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Hi! Below is my project this week on chord progression with drum beats:
https://snap.berkeley.edu/snap/snap.html#present:Username=rachael_yuan&ProjectName=Musical%20Chords%20Project_Rachael%20Yuan

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I really loved how you played with the chord durations to create unique rhythms—it gave the piece a dynamic and engaging flow! To take it a step further, you could try organizing the measures into distinct blocks.

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Here is my chords project: Snap! Build Your Own Blocks

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Here is my chords assignment: Snap! Build Your Own Blocks

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Here is my chord progression with drums: Chord Progression - Spencer Lewis

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Here is my chords project for this week: Chords

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I really enjoyed listening to your chord piece and think the drum patterns went really well with the piano throughout the entire progression. I am excited to see how this track evolves with a melody in the future.

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Here is my project for this week: Chord Progressions

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This is my project for this week
Link

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Here is the link to my project for this week: Chord Progression

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Here is my chord progression project.

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The piano chords paired with the drums created such a cool and unique sounding tune. I loved the mix of eighth and quarter drum patterns as it made the music so engaging. I am excited to hear what melody you'll add to the track.

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Here is my chord progression project link: Snap! Build Your Own Blocks

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I really like the vibraphone here and didn't even know it was an option! I was wondering is there a reason for setting the volume to a certain percentage? I also think the chords is missing a note but I'm not sure why

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Here is my chord progression with a drum beat: Snap! Build Your Own Blocks

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did you post this on the wrong topic? this is for the previous semester.