Maybe you know a few chords on guitar and can play some songs.  Now you want to write your own songs though, and you’re not sure how to put chords together that will sound good.  Guitar chord progressions are partly formula, partly art, but there are some rules you can follow that will get a good sounding progression every time.

Chord Progressions by the Numbers

If you’ve been following the free guitar song chords for beginners, with the addition of the A chord you’ve now got enough chords to make a I IV V  progression in the key of A.  Don’t let the roman numerals scare you they’re part of the formula and they’re really easy to understand.  I’m going to write out all the chords that make up the key of A.  

Think of the key as the bulls eye, or home base of a song. It’s where you start from, and it’s where you end, the chords you visit in the middle make up the chord progression.

It’s common to call major chord by their plain letter name, so A maj = A. So here are the chords in the key of A.

Ok, for the moment don’t worry about the sharps, just take my word that there are 3 sharps in the key of A, F#, C#, and G#.  Now we can replace the numbers with Roman numerals.  Do you notice that 2, 3, and 6 are minor chords?  And that 7 is a diminished chord?  So lets make the Roman numerals lower case when they are a minor or diminished chord like this:

So, I IV V in the key of A is A, D, E. If you want to make a song in the key of A, play the A chord first then play the others in any order you like but make sure to end with A. Any order you like will sound good as long as you use these three chords.

Here’s some good beginner songs that use this I IV V progression:

Blitzkrieg Bop by the Ramones:

A                                                             D /  E  /

They’re forming in a straight line

A                                                             D /  E  /

They’re going through a tight one

etc…

Rock and Roll by Led Zeppelin:

This is an easy 12 bar blues progression, notice that there are 12 chords in the song, hence the name. It goes like this:

A  A  A  A  D  D  A  A  E  E  A  A - just keep repeating it.

So when you’re just starting to song write try the I IV V guitar chord progression, it’s easy to play and sounds great.