8) Chord Progressions - One Chord Songs (part II) - Augmented Progressions

[Post #8] In my previous post I presented an easy piano piece based only on one chord. I showed features and limits of music made without a chord progression or chord changes. To choose a chord and start an improvisation on it should be a good preparatory study. You can even use only the chord scale varying intervals and duration of the notes.

The next step is to see how we can make a song or a part of it (for example the verse or the chorus) using only one chord every time repeated with a little change.

We start from D (the same chord of my one chord song of the previous post) and try to make a progression based always on this chord, but in each chord repetition I chance one note:

D / D9 / D7+ / D

These are the chords positions on the keyboard (left-hand notes are in blue, click the picture to enlarge).

D

D9

(instead of the note D of the previous chord we play the note E)

D7+

(instead of the note E of the previous chord we play the note C#)

D

This is the result with sheet music:

As you can see this simple sequence, based only on D could very easily be a part of a song and in fact, there are several examples of famous songs based on it, the first two I remember are:

• Sixpence None The Richer - Kiss me (verse)
• Supertramp - Lord is it mine (verse)

In the next post, I will show 2 more Augmented Progression.

Music Composition - Index

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