Music chord progression

[JumpingJackFlash]

Any idea what order the numbers go in.

It's hard to say exactly what your teacher was on about. I would imagine he/she was drawing attention to the various "functions" (or classifications) of chords; pre-dominant chords lead to dominant chords which lead to tonic chords (for example).

Probably some variation on this:

Code: Select all

III     VI     IV     V     I
               II     VII  

NB: This is the all-upper-case system; no distinction is made between minor and major chords.
Some theorists put III and VI together.

In order to literally have a chord "progression", you move from left to right (though the tonic, I, can come in-between anything and it still works). If you skip one, it's called an "elision", and if you go backwards (from right to left), it's called a "retrogression". Most elisions and retrogressions are considerably less common in classical music than progressions... But there are many exceptions (which is why I'm not a huge fan of this method).

When you're just starting out though, it can be a useful means of coming up with a quick chord sequence that's likely to work well.

[manducator]

http://www.musictheory.net/lessons/57

[pensaku]

My thoughts about this...

Phone number is just another form of language. It is made out of numbers does not mean it's math.

Instead of using CDEFGABC you can put numbers in it and it's easier to understand than CDEFGABC because no fricking body remembers that nonsensical non common language but 1234567 is easier sometimes it's 123456789 10 11 12 how easy will it be if it was written in SCORE and numbers were written in piano.

Your teacher probably wanted to teach you that.

[JumpingJackFlash]

Instead of using CDEFGABC you can put numbers in it and it's easier to understand than CDEFGABC because no fricking body remembers that nonsensical non common language

Yeah, cause learning the alphabet is really hard.

but 1234567 is easier sometimes it's 123456789 10 11 12 how easy will it be if it was written in SCORE and numbers were written in piano.

Go on then. Pick any piece by say Mozart, re-write it using nothing but numbers (but conveying the same information), and we'll see how much easier it is to read.

Your teacher probably wanted to teach you that.

Unlikely. Unless it's a quick and easy "popular music" course or something, elementary harmony is usually taught using Roman Numerals, which is a tried and tested system that dates back several centuries.

[Tricky-Loops]

I guess the music teacher was from Nashville...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nashville_number_system

[DSmolken]

Yup, sounds like Nashville number system. Very convenient for writing down chord progressions without a specific key, so you can easily play the song in whatever key works best for the singer (once you find out what that is).

[jancivil]

Roman numeral system does that. I like being able to specify by caps v. lower case major or minor quality, and the figuring of the bass hips us to voice leading. Maybe less useful in the pop produced up in that town...

Someone a little while ago got up on a soapbox here to extol the virtues of numbers for everything, intervals (eg., "10" in preference to "minor seven"), but it only reduces the information availed the traditional way, it isn't actually innovative.

[D.H. Miltz]

I don't know if there's any point to keeping the thread open, since it turns out the OP was a spammer (came back to put links in sig), but just so the remaining posts make some sense here's what the now-deleted first post said:

Music chord progression "phone number"? My music theory teacher in high school taught us a chord progression or harmonic progression or something with intervals. Anyway, it was chords (we were talking piano at the time) that you could play after each other and it would sound good. He called it a "phone number" because it had 7 digits. Any idea what order the numbers go in.