Book review: Chord Progressions for Songwriters by Richard J. Scott

By Darrin Koltow

If you're looking for a good resource to learn about chord progressions, Richard Scott of Moneychords.com wrote a book you might be interested in. It's called Chord Progressions for Songwriters. This book contains 21 chord progressions that are fully explained and taught. For each chapter, many examples of songs using each progression are given.

Chord Progressions explains 21 chord progressions; the full set of progressions covers many different musical styles. The book categorizes progressions by musical style (e.g. blues, rock, etc) and also by other criteria, such as the type or number of chords in the progression, and the type of movement in a progression.

Some of the chord changes include those for rock, classic rock, blues and minor blues, jazz and folk. There's also a chapter for flamenco progressions, and chapters for intros and endings.

Appendix

The appendix contains topics on theory that beginning and intermediate level musicians will appreciate. The "Chord Glossary" has a subsection that provides a view of the major scale and the chords that are most commonly built on each degree of it. Richard shows both the basic triads and also the seventh chords built on the scale.

Also in the appendix is a table that shows you what states of mind each basic chord type often evokes. Plus, there's an excellent section on chord substitution. This part offers a succinct explanation of the basic principle behind chord substitution, which I wish I had found in the materials I first learned about progressions with.

Seen as a whole, the appendix breaks down a lot of the mystery often connected with chord substitution and chord movement. I think an appropriate addition to the appendix would be a primer on harmonizing melodies: how to select chords that go with a melody, in other words. You'll no doubt get a strong feeling for how to do this as you strum along with the songs mentioned in the book, but a specific introduction would be an added bonus.

Also, there are no melodies given for the examples in the book, which is understandable, due to costs associated with music licensing. So, you'll need to have some grasp of what notes to sing with the chords to a particular song to get full value from the example songs.

The introduction

Author Richard Scott shows a few interesting things about chord progressions right in the intro. He gives you a bit of theory, including an overview of how the chords in a key work in a progression. How is tension created and then released? The intro will give you an idea of this.

Richard also gives general ideas for writing chord progressions that are interesting to listen to. One such idea is to use chord substitution. Also included is a helpful table that shows what the next chord to follow a particular chord is likely to be. This information alone, especially in the concise form it takes in this book, is truly valuable to the songwriter, especially the beginning writer.

Richard packs a lot of practical info on how to assemble chords into a pleasing progression. This book contains much more than just a list of chord progressions and the songs they're found in -- which would be useful all by itself. Richard goes far beyond this simple list by explaining *how* chords go together and why a movement from one type of chord to another type sounds good. And you don't need a degree in music or the physics of sound or the psychology of sound to apply this material. Richard's focus is on writing songs. The material he presents and the form he presents it in provide valuable instruction for doing that.

Classical musicians, too

The book seems geared for songwriters in many genres, but at first glance it might not seem that classical composers could benefit from it. But for a number of reasons I think such composers would be able to apply the material in this book. First, the lines between pop, classical and other genres seem to become more blurred every year. Think of Metallica playing with an orchestra and Wynton Marsalis, who is accomplished in the classical and jazz genres.

Also, the genres that this book gives progressions for, and classical music, make use of many of the same rules of music theory. And if you broaden your definition of "classical" to include works from the late 19th into the 20th century, these theory rules become much more flexible, and much more accepting of the kinds of changes you'll find in this Chord Progressions book.

In fact, besides songwriters, other musicians could definitely benefit form the lessons in the text. Musicians would be much more aware of the possibilities that exist for soloing and comping if they were to work through each of the many progressions in Chord Progressions.

Ear training

This book would be an excellent aid to musicians who like to transcribe songs by ear. A way this could work is as follows:

Without looking at the chapter title, open up the book to a random page. Make sure you don't look at the chord progression the chapter is illustrating. Then, pick a song from this chapter. Get a recording of the song, and transcribe it by ear. Check the chords you've notated with the chords listed in the book.

You can also do the reverse of this to train your ear. An excellent application of the book for ear training would be to play each of the book's progressions into a tape recorder; then, play the tape back and guess which progression you're hearing.

Reasons for reading

Author Richard Scott's exhaustive knowledge of chord progressions comes through after reading just a little of his work. Read an article he's written on his Moneychords.com site to verify this. Plus, Richard practices what he preaches about chord progressions: he's a songwriter. And since he has a degree in education, you get the sense that he's able to effectively communicate his knowledge of chord progressions to you.

If you don't understand how chords work, and think that songwriting and harmony are complicated topics, this book is a good candidate for pulling you out of the dark and demystifying these subjects for you. Richard gives practical knowledge of harmony you can apply to songwriting and related interests.

Expanding your musical horizons

You can also use this book to broaden your musical vocabulary and increase your appreciation for styles of music you don't usually listen to. In fact, you might be surprised on finding some of your favorite tunes listed in the book as being in a category of music you didn't believe you cared for.

Helps you write songs

This book does help you write songs. Just by strumming some of the progressions in Chord Progressions, you might find yourself humming a melody. Add some rhythm and words, and you have a song.

Part of the trouble with writing a song for beginning songwriters is probably not realizing how chords go together: you simply don't know what the possibilities are for chord progressions. This book takes care of that by teaching you what the most popular and catchy possible progressions are. Beyond that, the book also gives you insights into how the progressions work, using bits of theory and wisdom from an experienced songwriter.

How its organized

Chord Progressions features and teaches one progression per chapter. Within each chapter are many examples of the progression, and exercises to better get the progression under your skin.

Richard also relates how long a progression has been in use, or when it was first used. For example, the C-F-C-Dm progression has been in use since the mid 1800s.

The progressions are all given in C major, which makes it easier to see the structure of the progression, though Roman numerals also could have been used. When you need to transpose to another key, a section in the Appendix has a transposition table to help.

Chord Progressions is organized so each chapter is a lesson that stands all by itself. In other words, you don't have to read chapters one through four to understand five, for example. This is a relief to know, because at nearly 500 pages, having to read though all chapters in sequence would be a time consuming task, to say the least. Yet, this volume of information is partly what makes the book so valuable.

Wish list

Another wished for feature that would make this good book an outstanding book would be the addition of an index that had all of the songs used in the text. In this way you could be inspired to write a song that uses the chord progression found in the Beatles' Eleanor Rigby, for example; and then look up Eleanor Rigby in the index to see what its progression is.

If you're interested in writing songs or you simply want to improve and expand your musical vocabulary and overall level of musicianship, the wealth of info in Chord Progressions for Songwriters can help you achieve those goals.

Guitar Chords (GC) builds your chops and helps you identify the most important chords by ear. GC shows you how to substitute and combine chords; play Jazz, Rock and Blues progressions; transpose songs; put chords to a melody; apply fingerpicking, alternating bass, arpeggios, and much more.

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