There may be other reasons to think ill of country songs (depressing lyrics, whining vocals, and hideous outfits topping the list), musical simplicity is not one of them. Playing Tennis With the Net Up Simple chord progressions are not to be counted among country music’s faults.īefore you look down your nose at country music for being too musically simple, think again. If you do find a minor chord in a country progression, it’s almost always a VI (6). Many country songs don’t even have a chorus! To top it all off, most of the tunes are limited to the major keys G, A, C, D, E, and F, and because all of the chords in the I-IV-V-I (1-4-5-1 in Nashville) progression are major, there are no minor chords in the basic structure. Country music also avoids other musical innovations such as bridges with key changes in the middle of a song, as well as adding “extra” notes to a basic triadic chord: A G7 is pretty much the norm, but 6th, 9th, and 13th chords are definitely out. That’s just it– they’re different because they stay the same! Country music is notorious for not challenging musical conventions. So How are Country Chord Progressions Different? Some musical genres like to be different and challenge this established pattern, but with a few exceptions country music sticks pretty close to this arrangement. The composer usually repeats the same progression twice, then adds eight bars of a different progression, and then repeats the first progression. When we speak of a particular chord progression we’re referring to the chords used for an eight-bar musical phrase, as the eight-bar phrase is one of the basic units in Western music. (As in rock music, the 7 or VII chord is rarely used in country chord progressions.) The Minor Scale Chords We’ve included both in case you’re used to the Roman numerals. That being said, Roman numerals aren’t used in this way by Nashville musicians, who use the more common Arabic numerals (1, 2, 3, etc.). It’s important to know which of the chords in a key are major, which minor, and which diminished, and this is determined by whether you’re playing in a major or a minor key. The Roman numerals are what we use to describe positions in the scale, I being the first, II the second, and so on. The Grand Ole Opry in Nashville Tennessee was traditionally the place where aspiring country musicians of all stripes had to go to prove themselves.
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