Harmonic SOS – Jump-Start Your Chord Progressions From Scratch!

Today, we’re diving into a topic that’s tripped me up more times than I can count: creating chord progressions from scratch. You know, when you want to start a musical idea with a chord progression, but your mind just draws a blank?

Starting anything from scratch can be tough, but here’s the twist: while we often want to escape using the same chord progressions everyone else does, those very progressions can be the perfect starting point. They give us a foundation to build on and from there, we can transform them into something fresh and unique.

Hopefully, these tips will help you break out of your creative slumber. It’s worked for me, and I think it can work for you too so, stick around!

The Power of Simple Chord Progressions

There’s a reason why common chord progressions are well, so common – it’s because they work! It’s progressions like the I-IV-V-I or a vi-IV-V-I that are great for getting the ball rolling and you can even try to play them in a different order, like this:

And just like that, now you have a structure to work with.

If you just stick with these it is likely that you’ll get bored or feel like you are not going places with the harmony because you’re probably looking for something a bit more unique. But don’t get me wrong, if you have a killer idea that works perfectly with one of these progressions, then go for it!

Let me show you how I go about mangling these chords progressions to squeeze something fresh out of them.

Technique #1: Using Them As Guideposts

Okay, so for our first technique, lets use those simple chords progressions as guideposts. And what I mean is that we will use them as a foundation for longer sections of music. In this example, we’ll just use this IV – V – I throughout 8 bars:

The trick is to use these chords as anchor points in a larger progression as a way to keep a good overall sense of harmonic direction. And now, to bring in more flavor and have more harmonic movement, I will be inserting some chords between them. For the sake of simplicity, I will just be picking chords from the C major key:

See how we’ve kept the main chords (I, IV, V) but added some extra steps to make the journey more interesting? And again, I used these common chords to create a roadmap, guiding me through the harmonic context that I’m creating.

Technique #2: Keeping the Interval Distance Between Chords

Another cool trick to try is to keep the same distance between chords but starting on a different “home’” chord. This means transposing the entire progression while staying within the same key. Let’s say we have this I – ii – V – I chord progression going:

And now let’s transpose the whole thing a 4^th down, meaning that we will start on G instead of C and we will apply this transposition to every chord from the previous chord progression and thus keeping the same interval distance from chord to chord:

This can give you a completely different vibe. Choosing a different “home”, of course, should be in keeping with the type of vibe you are exploring so, take that in consideration.

Technique #3: Chord Substitutions

Alright, let’s get into chord substitutions. This is where things start to get really interesting. The idea here is that you can replace a chord with another chord that has a similar function within the key. In other words, you can replace a chord with it’s mediant or submediant (a third above or below, respectively).

Let’s take our good old I – IV – V – I which now can sound like this:

As you heard, I substituted the first two chords and kept the last two and all of the sudden there is a new subtle twist in this familiar chord progression.

Technique #4: Secondary Dominants and Cadences

You can also expand progressions by adding more chords and you can do that using functional harmony through secondary dominants or other cadential devices to lead you to a target chord of your choosing.

I’ve put links in the description that will take you to the appropriate blog posts explaining everything in case you don’t follow what’s going to happen. I’m just going to briefly go through the possibilities as this is not necessarily something that you would do everywhere.

So, let’s pick our last chord progression with the chord substitutions. We will start with Em but before we go to Dm, I want to target it with another chord. In this case I implied a minor plagal cadence using a Gm. Then, I also targeted the G major with the secondary dominant a D9 chord. After that, I used another minor plagal cadence with the Fm going to the target C and finally, I used another secondary dominant in the form of a tritone substitute, the F7 to return to Em.

You could have really go over the top with this one. Just consider this:

If you have secondary dominants (a V chord, basically), it means that before that you could also experimenting with adding a ii and before that, a tritone substitute for the ii; not to mention you can try different cadences to lead you to the target chord… you see where this is going – also see dominant chord substitutions.

This approach has a certain sound to it and it’s up to you to decide if that’s the type of harmonic sound that your music will need.

Technique #5: Explore the Chord Palette

Now that we got some nice chords going from the previous exploration, why not take some of them and experiment with putting them in a different order without thinking about their function. Just think about chord colors that may sound nice when played after the other.

In this case, I like the sound of going from Gm to Dm and then the F7 returning to the Em:

Technique #6: Chord Inversions and Creating New Basslines

Changing the bass note of a chord can completely transform a simple chord progression by smoothing out the voice leading and add a touch of harmonic elegance.

So, instead of just playing the root note of each chord in the bass, try using a note that would serve you better to get to the next chord. Let me pickup this V – ii – IV – I chord progression and tryout some chord inversions:

You can do it when the chord is played but also as a way of adding movement between chords. This way you will be thinking more melodically in terms of how the bassline moves:

And finally, don’t forget about the good old pedal note that can be very helpful in creating nice harmonic colors and ambiences (if that is your goal):

And don’t forget to try out different bass notes as the harmonic colors can shift drastically:

Technique #7: Modal Interchange

Modal interchange is a fancy term for borrowing chords from parallel modes. This is a great way to add some unexpected color to your harmonies.

For example, we are in the key of C major so, you could borrow chords from another key where C exists and insert them in our previous chord progression; in this case I borrowed from C minor:

Or, you can take it even further and replace all the chords, except for your home chord, with the respective chord degrees of the parallel key you’ll be borrowing from. In the following example, we will be replacing chords using the key of Bb major, or from C Dorian:

You could also experiment with picking one other chord not to replace. The idea is to keep a surprise in the chord progression. This time let’s keep the last chord as we borrow from C Phrygian, or Ab major:

or the second one:

Conclusion and Encouragement

So, there you have it! A few simple strategies for breaking through harmonic blocks using common chord progressions as a starting point.

To recap, we talked about using these common chord progressions as guideposts for longer chord structures, transposing the chord progression within the same key, chord substitutions and secondary dominants, exploring our harmonic palette using the new-found chords, using chord inversions, creating new bass-lines, and also added modal interchange to the mix.

The beauty of this approach is that it gives you a starting point, a framework to build upon. From there, you can let your creativity run wild and explore all sorts of harmonic possibilities.

I highly encourage you to try this as an exercise. Don’t be afraid to experiment and you never know, one of those ideas might just make it into your next song!

Thanks for reading and until next time! 🙂