Year 10 - Music
Creative chord progressions
Free composition: Creative starting points
Study Hub
Study Guides
This pupil-friendly study guide includes a unit summary, clear notes, common mistakes, and quick questions with answers.
Unit Summary
No unit description is available for this selection yet.
Lesson Summary
You will learn to create a chord progression as the starting point for a free composition.
Key Notes
- Composers often create chord progressions to underpin their music.
- You can start with a chord progression before you create a melody, or start with a melody then add chords.
- Adding chords to a melody is called harmonisation.
- You can create dissonance by using chords that are not triads and using occasional melody notes from outside the chord.
- Broken chords and chord inversions can add interest to a chord progression.
Vocabulary To Learn
- Chord progression: A chord progression (or chord sequence) is a repeating pattern of chords.
- Harmonisation: Harmonisation is adding notes or chords to a melody to provide harmony in the music.
- Triad: A triad is a chord made up of three notes from the scale: the root, third and fifth.
- Dissonance: Dissonance is when notes clash. The harmony sounds uncomfortable and feels like it needs to resolve.
- Inversion: A chord inversion is when the notes of a chord are repositioned so the root note is no longer the lowest note in the chord.
Common Mistakes To Avoid
- Harmony and chords are the same thing.
3 Quick Questions (With Answers)
1. Explain the lesson in two key points.
Composers often create chord progressions to underpin their music. You can start with a chord progression before you create a melody, or start with a melody then add chords.
2. What does this key word mean in this lesson? 'Chord progression'
A chord progression (or chord sequence) is a repeating pattern of chords.
3. Correct this common mistake.
Mistake: Harmony and chords are the same thing. Correction: Although the harmony is created by the different notes of the chord progression, harmony also includes all parts in the music including the melodic line.
More Lessons In This Unit
Browse all guides in the Year 10 Music guide library.