Discover 10 ways chord progressions can benefit your piano skills & overall musicianship!

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The term ‘Chord progression’ doesn't sound very sexy but it is key to many of the piano dreams that we have. Unfortunately, chord progressions aren’t taught in traditional piano lessons, so many people miss out on this foundation to creative piano playing.

I went through the entirety of my traditional piano training, right up into my first year of Bachelor in Commercial Music before I was being taught about harmony and chord progressions.

This knowledge is one of the central pillars in my piano courses & virtual lessons – and here are 10 reasons why that is.

PAY-OFF 1 - Increase your understanding of the songs you play.

If you know what the main chord progressions are the common ones, you'll recognise them when you're playing a song. When you understand the songs you play, you’ll realise that at the heart, they're actually simple!

A song might sound complicated and you might struggle to memorise all the different notes, but once you notice the chord progression beneath, it's a lot easier to remember the sequence of chord names than it is to remember all the individual notes.

Understanding the chord progressions behind the notes is a perfect tool for memorisation.

PAY-OFF 2 - build your songwriting skills.

The more you know about chord progressions, the more ideas you have to draw upon when you’re creating your own songs.

Songwriting can be overwhelming if we think it’s about creating something brand new.

If we go into songwriting knowing that it’s less about creating something completely original and more about putting our own twist on something tried & true, then it’s much easier to start!

And get this– chord progressions can’t be copyrighted! So you can use a chord progression from any song that you know, add your own melody and it’s YOUR NEW SONG!

So exciting!

PAY-OFF 3 - expand your visualisation of the keyboard

The more we learn about harmony and how it looks on the keyboard when we play these chord progressions - the more chords and chord progressions we will automatically see when we look at those keys.

Take this as an example - when you first begin playing the piano, looking at the keyboard is daunting - there are endless options here, how do you possibly distinguish the keys from each other and know what to play?!

Then when you learn about the groups of black keys, groups of 2 and 3 - you begin to see patterns on the keyboard and distinguishing keys from each other relative to their position in the octave.

The same thing happens as you learn more about chords and progressions, you see more patterns on the keyboard and that gives you more possibilities when playing freely.

PAY-OFF 4 - improve your improv

There are two situations where you might be improvising: 1 - improvising completely off the cuff and making up a song as you go, or 2 - improvising from an existing song.

For both of these situations a knowledge of chord progressions will make you better:

1 - If you are improvising off-the-cuff and making up a song as you go, then your knowledge of chord progressions will give you a starting point to make up that song - by just choosing one of the common chord progressions you already have a framework…

2 - If you are improvising from an existing song, your knowledge of chord progressions and having practised them before will mean that you already have some skills of how to riff and go between these chords smoothly - so the movement between chords is already familiar to you.

PAY-OFF 5 - enhance your ear-playing

If we know more about the common chord progressions then we're more likely to hear them in a song that we're trying to work out by ear.

Practising these chord progressions in our regular piano practice means we’re not just rehearsing with our fingers, we’re rehearsing with our ears.

The more you practise common chord progressions in different inversions, the more your ears will get used to how they sound in different guises.

When you hear music out in the wild, you might recognise one of those chord progressions - and then the game is afoot!

Much quicker than trying to recognise individual notes in each chord, or individual chords in the song… recognising chord progressions as a whole is a shortcut to playing by ear!

PAY-OFF 6 - grow confidence & flexibility

The more confident you feel with both playing and hearing the common chord progressions the more creative piano playing will open up to you.

You’ll be more confident to improvise, more confident to play by ear, you’ll be more flexible in the situations you can easily & confidently play the piano.

A new student noted to me recently that he had being in Liverpool (UK) where there were multiple street pianos about the city for the public to play. He remarked that he didn’t know what to play and simply watched other pianists give it a go.

I said to him - “keep working on your chords & chord progression knowledge because one day very soon you will feel confident enough to sit at a piano and JUST PLAY one of those common chord progressions and you will be confident & flexible enough to make it sound GREAT”!

PAY-OFF 7 - elaborate on repertoire

Once you recognise that a song you are playing is using a common chord progression, you can draw additional notes from that chord progression to add to the song.

In this way, you can start to elaborate on the music you play. Add a couple of extra chord tones here and there (or even the scales that fit with those chords) in order to either add to the existing music, OR create your own solo section at the end of the song!

This means you can turn a 3-minute song, into a 10-minute improvisation, ala Keith Jarrett!

PAY-OFF 8 - extend interpretation of lead-sheets/chord charts

Once we recognise a common chord progression from a lead sheet or chord chart that we are playing off–then we can immediately begin to draw from our experience of practising those chord progressions previously.

You’ll already have up your sleeve ways of playing each chord in the progression with certain inversions that you’re familiar with.
You’ll already be familiar with changing between those chords and their inversions, so that adding the melody isn’t such a big deal!

It means that playing the song feels immediately more natural because you are familiar with this particular order of chords and so playing from a lead sheet or chord chart becomes a quicker and more confident process!

PAY-OFF 9 - broaden your musical language

The more you know about chord progressions; the names of the chords; how to talk about them in a way that isn't tied down to a specific key; – the more of an educated musician you are!

You can have these conversations with other musicians and also begin to explore harmony on your own - start to analyse the theory behind popular songs! This website ‘Hook Theory’ is a great place to dig into that!

PAY-OFF 10 - enrich your general music listening experiences

By default of all these other 9 benefits– learning, practising and familiarising yourself with the common chord progressions will increase your music listening experience.

You’ll be able to identify common chord progressions as you hear them in the songs you listen to and believe me, that can become ADDICTIVE!

So not sure where to start learning about chord progressions?

Come and join the Creative Pianist membership to get access to my coaching session.