You Need A Chord Progression to Jam Over

To make things concrete, let’s play some basic four chord rock using the chord progression: C Am F G.  This is the 50’s Rock and Roll Progression (Earth Angel, Stand By Me) but it’s still commonly used (Baby by Justin Bieber).  You should be familiar with it, as well as the well-worn permutations:  Am F C G is the Sensitive Female Chord Progression (One of Us, Building a Mystery, but also Peace of Mind and Save Tonight).  C G Am F is the Pop-Punk Progression (Someone Like You chorus, half of the Let It Be verse & the similar Wagon Wheel).  (I talk about the progressions in C major, but many of the examples are in other keys.) The guitarist is going to strum these chords, so for now don’t worry about playing them yourself.  Your job is to play a made-up melody over these chords.

There are two general ways to choose notes to play over chords, both based on scales.   The first way is to choose notes from a scale based on the current key.  The other is to choose notes from a scale based on the current chord.   Let’s start with the first way.

Our progression is diatonic, which just means that it stays in a single major key. Recall from your piano lessons that the key of C major is just all the white keys. Since our four chords are all made up of only white keys we know we’re totally in the key of C major. So, to make your melodies choose notes from the C major pentatonic scale.

Try playing one of the chord progressions, e.g. C Am F G, as whole notes with your left hand.  If that’s hard for you, just play root notes (the note that the chord is named after) in the bass with your left hand.  That will be your accompaniment to the melody you create with your right hand.  For the melody, use the notes in C major pentatonic.  You’ll find that the notes of C major pentatonic sound good with all of the chords in our progression, and indeed they’ll sound pretty good over any chord made out of notes from the C major scale.

If it’s hard for you to use the entire C pentatonic scale at first, just pick two of the notes, and just play those over the chords. Make up some rhythms with the two notes.  As you get comfortable, add in another note from the C pentatonic scale, and then another.  You’re jamming!

Next: Why Does the Pentatonic Sound Good?