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Do you use Band-in-a-Box to practice your walking lines ?
I'm really getting advance in them and i want some exercises like strange chord progressions (i dunno if that's gonna help, maybe you can answer that).
So what do you recommend ?
This is going to be one of those fish posts, i.e. teach a man how to fish and.......
I recommend you use some chord theory and make up your own "strange" progressions and try them out in BIAB. That way you learn what progressions work and which ones do not. If you are interested hang on, we are going into the deep end of the theory pool.
Chords do two things, and I think it is best if we visualize what is happening within one or two specific measure of the song. In those measures we need to: 1) harmonize the melody taking place in those measures and 2) move the song along from rest to tension to climax and then resolution and ending. So another verse, phrase, whatever can start. With that in mind here are my thoughts on what chord progression you could load into BIAB:
Lets get #1 out of the way. When the melody line and the bass line share like notes harmony happen. We accomplish this by inserting harmonizing notes into our bass line. All chords in one key will sound good with every other chord in that same key. Why is this? Take the Cmaj7 chord for instance. It does a good job of harmonizing the melody if the melody is using the C major scale. How?
C major scale is - C-D-E-F-G-A-B. The Cmaj7 is made of every other note in the C major scale.
Cmaj7 notes are - C....E....G....B. So the Cmaj7 tonic chord has a very good change of harmonizing any melody written in the C major scale. And as it contains the first and last note of the C major scale in it's makeup it also works well as the tonal center of the chord/scale. The next chord.....
The Dm7 chord is made of the D-F-A-C notes so it two spreads itself out over most of the scale. Point of interest the D major scale has a F# and a C#. In our D-F-A-C the F# and C# have been flatted - and when the 3 and 7 scale notes are flatted they make a minor chord. That little thing was a beg WOW for me and opened many doors. Moving on to movement....
Movement: I'll speak first of what chords like to do. You can make them move anywhere you want and as all chords within the same key will sound good with each other why not experiment with a few different things. However if you follow the movement listed below good things normally happen.
- The I chord can go anywhere in the progression it wants to, however, once into the progression a return to the I chord resolves all tension you have built up and you are back at rest. Did you want to resolve?
- The ii chord is a sub-dominant chord and wants to move to a dominant chord.
- The iii chord being in the middle likes to lead a movement and in doing so normally drags the vi chord with it.
- The IV chord is also a sub-dominant chord and wants to move to a dominant chord.
- The V chord is the dominant chord and wants to move to the tonic I chord.
- The vi chord wants to move to a sub-dominant chord.
- The viidim chord is also a dominant chord and wants to move to the I tonic chord, however, is in no hurry to do so. It therefore makes a good first chord in a turn-a-round. viidim-iii-vi-ii-V7-I
Inserting chords into your BIAB the circle of 5th/4th can be a big help with the progression we are making.
The major chords are on the outside of the circle and the minor chord are in the middle of the circle. It's a circle so move the tonic I chord or 1 scale degree note to the 12:00 O'clock position. Your IV chord is to the left and your V chord is to the right of the tonic chord you moved to 12:00 O'clock.
Let's start our BIAB chord progression with a chord progression like:
Cmaj7/// | //// | //// | Gm7 / C7 / |F ///| now let's fill in some of those C chords with something a little more interesting. Back cycling will fill those long voids. Here is how it works ---in a nut shell:
Think of the circle of 5ths laid out in a line:
C-F-Bb-Eb-Ab-Db-Gb-B-E-A-D-G-C
Now what could lead to that Gm7 chord? Looking at the circle of 5ths -- D leads to G so insert a D. That may be enough and you can stop there, but let's go on -- then ask what leads to D? Well A leads to D so insert an A. What leads to A? E leads to A, so insert an E and what leads to E, well a B will lead to an E so insert a B. Now the neat thing about this --- Think of Gm7 as being a temporary dominant, and think only of the basic chord (the left hand side of the chord not the emblished right hand side) that D to Gm7 just gave you a ii-V and the C7 completes a ii-V-I (basic chord). Now think of the D as being a temporary dominant, that A just gave another ii-V and the Gm7 completes another ii-V-I. All you have to do is decide to leave them as a major chords or emblish - remembering some of our key theory - or enhance the sound -whichever - and come up with something like this.
Cmaj7/// | Bm7 / E7 / | Am7 / D7 / | Gm7 / C7 / | F /// |
or really work with the progression and come up with something like this:
Cmaj9 /// | Bm7b5 / E7b9 / |Am7 / D7b9 / | Gm7b5 / C7#9 C7b9 |Fmaj7 ///|
Now all that came from page 105 of the book Chords & Progressions for Jazz and Popular Guitar. I use back cycling, however, I'm still doing "baby steps" nothing like the above -- use as much as you like.
A Google using the key word backcycling (one word) will point you to several sites that will go into more detail.
Now go make some progressions for BIAB. Wait, we are not finished. All that movement is find and dandy, but, does it also harmonize the melody? All those chords should have at least one melody note in it's makeup for harmony to happen. So the chords do need to move the verse along
and at the same time harmonize the melody being played over them. Which brings up in writing our bass lines we need to include some melody notes in our bass line. If we follow the chords when writing our melody and include some of the chord's notes in the melody --- harmony happens.
Good luck.
