"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:
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)