Candy Chords

I wasn’t sure how trick-or-treating was going to pan out this year. My wife and I weren’t too keen on our son knocking on doors and peering into strangers’ homes during a pandemic.

Fortunately, our street came up with some excellent workarounds – everything from baskets on stoops to candy chutes.

And it turns out that as long as a kid’s plastic pumpkin bucket ends up full of treats by the end of the night, all is well.

What does this have to do with chords?

Well, a lot of people ask me about music theory and how to come up with better, more advanced chord progressions.

And I get it – we all want to get “that” sound that we hear on our favorite records.

But fixating on all that jazz is like focusing on knocking on doors on Halloween.

You see, the “candy” is in the voicings you use.

If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a thousand times…

You can make a simple chord progression sound amazing with great voicings. And you can make an amazing chord progression sound terrible with crappy voicings.

Once you’ve got some good voicings under your fingers, then go explore some functional and non-functional harmony to enhance your chord progressions.

In the meantime, see how musical you can make a four-chord pop tune progression sound using good quality voicings from my chord-pack: Sick Chords Volume 1, which you can get here:

https://go.jeffschneidermusic.com/sick-chords-volume-1

And just so we’re clear, a four-chord pop tune progression is made up of the I, IV, V, and vi chords. In the key of C major, that’s C Major, F Major, G Major, and A minor.

Feel free to experiment with the order of the chords (hint: it doesn’t really matter), and go ahead and add some sevenths and other extensions for extra color.

Send me what you come up with. I’d love to hear.

Jeff