Originally Posted By: Peters Garage
It sounds nice, but I simply can't figure out why or find an answer that makes me understand, why these chords works well together.

There are many organizational principles that can make a chord progression "make sense".

One of the most basic is I-IV-V, where you can move freely between those three chords.

The next is Circle of Fifths, where chord motion moves in a V-I motion.

Using a non-root in the bass an moving stepwise is also a powerful principle.

Moving from one chord to the next, where one chord shares many of the same notes, also often creates smooth harmonic motion.

Finally, you can simply use the principle of tension/release to move from one chord to the next. There are all sorts of ways to create tension. One of the most effective is to alter notes so the function of the chord is obscured - for example, altering the 3rd so the tonality isn't immediately clear, or destabilizing the chord with a non-root bass note.

Using tension/release, the sky's the limit. You can take a "regular" progression, and then alter it to subvert expectations, even removing chords to create further ambiguity.


As for your example:

G2 - D/F# - E7sus4 - E7sus4

Here, you're using the stepwise bass movement G-F#-E to explain the harmonic motion.

You destabilize a chord when you use a non-root note in the bass, which creates tension/release in D/F# - E7sus4.

E7sus4 - Em7/B - A7sus4

The 3rd of the chord is the identifier of major/minor tonality. By using a suspension, you've obscured that identity.

The G6 has the same notes as Em7, which could be heard as a shift from a E7 to an Em7, so I've written it that way.

The non-root bass on the Em7/B makes it unstable, so as long as the chord you're moving to is more stable, it'll have some amount of resolution.

And that's the case of the A7sus4. The chord motion can be heard as a circle of fifths ii7-V7, while bass moves down stepwise to resolve the tension.

But the A7sus4 isn't a full resolution, so you jump back and try a different resolution:

Em7/B - E7sus4 - E7

This time, the bass makes a circle of fifths motion, and the chord shifts from the Em7 back to the E7sus, which you hear a coming back to the tonality you had temporarily left.

The E7sus4 then resolves to an E7 as expected.


As far as your question goes, you can pick any chord and any scale - as long as give the listener some sort of harmonic logic as to why you did that - even if it's reason is to make the music more "interesting" by choosing a "wrong" chord. wink

-- David Cuny

My virtual singer development blog
Vocal control, you say. Never heard of it. Is that some kind of ProTools thing?

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