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One of the most common mistakes producers make when writing chord progressions is focusing exclusively on the notes (i.e. the harmony). Now, it obviously goes without saying that the notes are a vital ingredient in chord progressions, however, another vital ingredient that is often ignored is rhythm.

As a result of this widespread oversight, it’s normal to hear chord progressions that are entirely lacking in vital energy. This lack is more obvious in certain genres than others, but the problem most certainly occurs in all genres.

British electronic duo Maribou State has a great example of what a lively chord progression sounds like. You can hear it in their song “Midas”. It’s a super chill track and the chords are not at all dominant, yet they’re full of vital energy. So regardless of whether you want to write something uptempo or something chill, the 3-step method in this tutorial will guide you through making a chord progression that’s full of life. But first… Tea!

As mentioned in the intro above, harmony (i.e. the notes) is obviously a vital ingredient in a chord progression, so we’ll start there.

Set up four bars of 4|4 with a 1/4 note grid, and your tempo at 115 BPM. We’re in the key of A minor for our example, which is all the white notes from A to A. We won’t be using the diminished chord in this example (as it’s too dissonant), so the chord menu to choose from is: Am, Cmaj, Dm, Em, Fmaj, Gmaj.

Start your progression on the root triad (Am), then choose three other chords. Play each chord for a whole bar. Maribou State plays their chord progression on a keyboard, so there is a left-hand and a right-hand part. We’ll do the same in our example. Your right-hand will play the chords, and your left-hand will play a simple bass line below. For now, just play the root note of each chord as your bass line, and if you want a thicker texture to this left-hand part, play octaves (like we did).

Our progression: Am → Em → Fmaj → Cmaj

Now you’ve got the “skeleton” of your chord progression. This is a great starting point, but it’s shocking how many producers consider this to be a finished chord progression. But not Maribou State, and not you either! That’s why you’re here :)

Right, so before we move on to adding the rhythmic ingredient, we’re first going to make the notes creative and interesting in their own right. Maribou State does something really cool here. In this one progression alone, they use three different types of chords: triad, add chord, and a 7th chord. We’ve already got triads, so that box is ticked, but let’s throw in those other two types as well.

Add chords are one of the most underused chord types, but they’re so easy to use, and sound amazing! Most procedures in popular music genres avoid more complex chords (sticking to triads instead), because they think they’ll make their music sound too complicated, too thick, or too jazzy. If you’re using five-note chords (like 9ths), that’s a real risk, but add chords beautifully solve this problem.

So what is an add chord? It’s a triad with the 2 or the 4 added. If you add the 2, it’s called an add9 chord, and if you add the 4 it’s called an add11 chord. The 9 is an octave of the 2, and the 11 is the octave of the 4, but you can add them into the triad wherever you want. And yes, you can add the 2 in between the 1 and 3, and you can add the 4 in between the 3 and 5. If that sounds too thick, though, you can actually leave out the 5 to thin the texture back to three notes. These are the easiest add chords to use, because they’re only three notes.

By the way, if you’re wondering what the difference is between add chords and sus chords. Great question! Add chords contain the 3, sus chords don’t contain the 3. In other words, sus chords don’t have a major or minor quality, but add chords do.

Now, somewhere in your progression, move the 5 of a chord to the 2 or 4. In our Em chord, we moved the 5 (B) down to the 4 (A). That chord is now Em(add11).

Em changed to Em(add11), by moving the 5 down to the 4 (highlighted)

Next, you’re going to turn one of your right-hand triads into a 7th chord, which you can do by simply moving its root (1) up seven notes. And to make this even easier, just move the root up an octave, and then down one note. We turned our Fmaj triad into a 7th chord, by moving the F (1) up to E (7). Playing only the 3rd, 5th and 7th notes in the right-hand is a cool technique that Maribou State uses, as the left-hand is playing the root note, so the right-hand doesn’t need to play it.

So this is our chord progression now: Am → Em(add11) → Fmaj7 → Cmaj

Fmaj changed to Fmaj7, by moving the 1 up to the 7 (highlighted)

Your chord progression will already be sounding pretty good now, thanks to that add chord and 7th chord. But, you’ll notice the left-hand part still sounds boring. And the better our chord progression sounds before we add the rhythmic ingredient, the better it will sound afterwards. You don’t want to use rhythm as a way of trying to make a boring progression sound better, you want to use rhythm as a way of making a good progressions sound great!

To make their left-hand part more interesting, Maribou State uses inversions. This allows them to create a simple bass line, instead of playing each chord’s root note.

So play your progression, and wherever the left-hand sounds like it could be smoothed out with a better contour, try inverting that chord. You can invert any of your chords, other than the 7th - if you move that left-hand note, you’ll lose the chord’s root note, so leave the 7th as it is. When inverting the other chords, your left-hand can play any of the notes that your right-hand is playing above it. We inverted our Em(add11) chord by moving the root note (E) down to the ♭3 (G).

Em(add11) inverted by moving octave in left-hand from E down to G (highlighted)

Now that the left-hand sounds smoother (like an actual bass line), you can also invert a couple chords in your right-hand. Wherever you can, move the common notes* so they’re in the same place within the chords (i.e. bottom, middle, top) when they change. This will make the progression even smoother. We inverted our right-hand Em(add11) by moving the A down an octave, so it’s now in the same place as the A in the preceding Am chord (i.e. A is at the bottom in both chords).

*A common note is the same note in adjacent chords.

Em(add11) in right-hand inverted by moving A down an octave (highlighted)

We also cut a 1/4 note off the Fmaj7 chord in our right-hand and inverted that, to get the common notes (C and E) in the same place as they are in the next chord.

Fmaj7 in right-hand cut (highlighted) and inverted by moving A up an octave

Lastly, at the end, we cut a 1/4 note off Cmaj and inverted that, to get the common notes in the same place as they are in our first chord, so when the progression loops, it’s nice and smooth. Always remember this hidden chord change, as your last chord needs to sound good looping back into your first chord.

Cmaj in right-hand cut (highlighted) and inverted by moving G down an octave

And finally, now that all the notes are sounding as good as they can, it’s time to bring your chord progression to life by adding a lively rhythm!

So, set your grid to 1/16 notes. The first thing to change is the harmonic rhythm, which is just the fancy term for describing where your chords change. You want at least one chord change to bring an unexpected surprise into your progression. Maribou State do this by playing their chords a 1/16 note early. This syncopation (i.e. accenting an off-beat) is awesome, so we’ll use it too. But, we’re not going to play every chord early, as it’ll actually be a bigger surprise if some chords are played on the beat. So, we only played our third chord (Fmaj7) a 1/16 note early.

Fmaj7 (highlighted) played a 1/16 note early

Now it’s time to get serious about rhythm, so get out your MIDI scissors, as you’re gonna cut up all your chords! Go through each chord and cut off one or two bits. Short (1/16 note) chords will add lots of energy, but use some 1/8 note chords as well, for variety. Lastly, be sure to use some rests too, as they also add vitality.

Final chord progression with rhythm

I know you want to be a confident producer who finishes songs, and loves the results. In order to become a confident producer, though, you need decades of knowledge and experience. To gain that knowledge, you need a good teacher. To gain that experience, you need decades of practice. That’s overwhelming!

I understand that searching for a good teacher is frustrating. Most courses are taught by YouTubers who are not qualified in music, and are not qualified teachers either. The few who are qualified in both, have no industry experience. I feel your pain. Truly. Most of my music teachers were bad. That’s why I studied music and education in order to become a lecturer, and why I created Hack Music Theory.

Also, over my 30+ years of composing, I developed a unique method called Song-Whispering, which I’ve used to make music with multiplatinum Grammy winners. In my one-of-a-kind online apprenticeship, you’ll learn my method and turbocharge your music with my decades of knowledge and experience.

Enroll Now and stop wasting years of your life learning from bad teachers and trying to get better through trial-and-error. Transform into the confident producer you would be in 10+ years now, and start loving your music!

Ray Harmony
Multi award-winning college lecturer, teaching since 1995


 

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