How Bands Like LED ZEPPELIN And QUEEN Write Complex CHORD PROGRESSIONS
What do the songs Stairway to Heaven (Led Zeppelin), Kokomo (The Beach Boys), Killer Queen (Queen), Interstate Love Song and Plush (Stone Temple Pilots) all have in common?
They all contain chord progressions that sound way more complicated than they actually are, because they were all created with the exact same harmonic ‘cheat code’.
Let’s use the example of Interstate Love Song by Stone Temple Pilots. The verse of this song uses the chords C#m7, G#/C, Eadd13/B, Bbm7b5, Amaj7, and E.
Sounds pretty complicated!
And many guitar players might wonder how they came up with a progression like this. But the answer is actually surprisingly simple.
Read that chord progressions again, and pay very close attention to the root notes of the chords: C#, C, B, Bb, A, E.
Up until the very last chord, every root note is simply moving down one half step at a time.
They likely started with the chromatic bass line, then simply found notes that sound good with those bass notes. It just so happens that the notes they found resulted in very complicated sounding chords.
But the thing to remember is that they didn’t just come up with these crazy chords out of nowhere! They came up with a very simple bass line, then used ear training and likely a bit of "trial and error" to find the best harmonization for that bass line.
(Or, you know, they studied some music theory. Which they did. But I am already rolling my eyes at the thought of receiving countless email replies that go "but my guitar hero does not know music theory", so let's go with "they used their ear"...)
Anyway.
This is the exact same strategy that was likely used to create all of the chord progressions mentioned above.
If you want to learn how to use this strategy effectively for your own writing (and learn some of that forbidden music theory that everybody is really quick to pretend they don't know...), watch the video below:
Want to know more about chords and writing great progressions? Check out my Complete Chord Mastery guitar course to massively expand your chord knowledge!
Video Transcription
Hello, Internet, so nice to see you! How do professional musicians put together chord progression with chords that are not in key and still make them work? Well, a student was asking me exactly this question for the chord progression in the intro of Stairway to Heaven. If you know the chord progression, it goes out of key fairly often, okay? Practically every other chord.
And my student was also asking me... He came with all this idea of, like, this chord is borrowed from here, this chord is borrowed from there, and, of course, it didn't make any sense, like, why they should borrow a chord from this scale and not from another scale. In reality, it is much simpler than that.
All this idea of borrowing a chord from scale works, but in this case and in many other cases, it just complicates the thing, okay? Everything is much, much simpler. So, let's see exactly what Jimmy Page is doing in this chord progression, why is it doing it, and then how you can do the same on your chord progression. So, let's see exactly what I answered to my student.
Transitioning between different modes in a song so it's something that I don't know or I can't really understand to a deep level so I noticed that maybe some songs is played in a one mode the whole song so maybe Dorian and I understand that okay if it's Dorian then I can use my for example a Dorian scale over that song.
But some songs seems to be kind of beginning in one mode and changing like different modes so for example in the song Stairway to Heaven I interpret it as kind of like it's in a minor but then it has some like chords that goes out of the mode sounds like maybe doing one chord I would play them hard minor scale and then when it comes to like the major fourth maybe I think that is like a Dorian scale and I just be curious to know about how like both in the lead and in the rhythm parts like why do they choose to go between certain modes and how can I as a improviser like understand which modes they go between okay.
So in that specific case the song is built in that way because they are thinking of the bass going down chromatically right I don't remember if they go along on natural F but they do okay so the end we have to play e no I think that's the last one yeah okay good fantastic.
Very good. OK, so, but the point is that chromatically descending. So they are in A minor, and then they just try to fit whatever they can fit. You could fit this, you could fit this, you could have fit this, you could have fitted this. The guiding idea is that whenever you can keep an also of the scale, you keep it. But when you can't, you change it. So if I'm playing a G sharp on the bass, I'm not keeping the G, for instance.
And I'm likely not going to play an A on top of that either because they don't really sound good, OK? So I'm trying to fashion a chord with what I can find. So it's kind of like, I want the descending chromatic scale. I'm willing to do anything I have to do to find a chord that fits that note. But whenever I can, I'm taking the notes from the original scale, which is a minor. OK, so that's kind of the guiding principle.
So if I can change only one note, I will get that chord with a note changed, OK? If you take the A natural minor, you will have an E minor as the fifth chord, OK? Now, we know that with harmonic minor, you can change it a little bit. But since I have a G sharp here, I cannot use a natural G in the E minor. So I'm playing an E chord with a G sharp, essentially. And then E minor, which is an E major chord, essentially. Makes sense. Then that's a C chord, nothing strange.
And then when I get here, and then they have an F sharp. In the key of A minor, I have a D minor chord. But since I have an F sharp, I play an D major chord. It's as simple as that, OK? It's like, where do I conflict change the note, OK? That's an accepted way to use music theory. It's not a cop out, OK? So that's the guiding principle. That's why they put all this. They started from the line, right? Which is a very popular line, OK?
Because what song is this? ["Bats for the Opera"] And you're wrong. Echoes by Pink Floyd. So if you have a melody or a bass line that goes out of key, you just adopt that chord, OK? Now, naturally, if you take a scale and change only one note, you're going to most likely find one of the modes that you know already. Because that's how we build the modes, pretty much, OK? Maybe it's not a model of the major scales, and maybe it's a model of the melodic minor or harmonic minor. But all the most common note changes are contained in those three scales and their modes.
That's why you see people changing mode. But they are not thinking as we are changing the mode. That's a later explanation, OK? They are thinking, I have this line that I like. It could be a chromatic line, it could be something else. Or I want to go out of key in this position, and I'm thinking of one note that goes out of key. And I'm trying to fit that note, whether it's the bass line, the melody, a middle line, something.
I'm trying to fit that note with a chord that contains as many notes as possible from the regional key and the change note. Make sense? So if you started conceptualizing Stairway to Heaven as changing mode, you are making your life much harder, OK? Like way harder than it needs to be. OK, I'm not saying you can't. It's a perfectly rational explanation.
It's a perfectly coherent explanation. At the end of the day, it will give you all the information you need.
It's just much harder to calculate in real time for a bass line human, OK? Because you're not that fast at doing this kind of math. OK, instead, you would like to think this way. It's in A minor. But when I'm hitting the G sharp, I'm not playing the G. I'm playing the G sharp. When I'm hitting the F sharp, I'm not playing the F. I'm playing the F sharp. OK, naturally, if I take an A minor scale and I put a G sharp other than the G, I have a harmonic minor. And if I take an A minor scale and I put an F sharp other than the F, I get a Dorian, A Dorian.
But you don't really think of that. You're just thinking, I'm changing that note.
Okay and the job is done okay because with very rare exception after you finish playing nobody comes there and asks you what more you played okay so i don't need to give any answer there i'm just changing the note now this trick has been known for hundreds of years this is before the baroque era okay it's called musica ficta ficta means we change it's a long it has a long sorry why it's called this way.
But essentially we just put an alteration on the note we want to change and we just put a chord whatever it is okay so we we we bend the scale to get there okay for some reason when they teach you music theory today they tell you you should not do that and then they never tell you explicitly but they're like no it's this mode no that's the official name no that's what we're doing it's a say it's a tritone substitution a secondary dominant all this kind of crap okay fine whatever it's a great explanation.
But at the end of the day what we're doing is just changing a note okay the fun thing is that now why you could take a chromatic progression i mean this one starts from the root and essentially goes down nearly to the fifth because i'm down to the last six but you could take the start from the root and go up or you can start from from from the fifth and go up or from from the fifth and going down okay you can do whatever you want okay.
But you can or you can you can just take four notes whatever and then you just harmonize this by thinking what chord comes next okay so for instance very typical thing to do is to have a bass that goes one four sharp four five one i'm playing and one is yes i'm playing c major oh on the fourth i mean why complicate i'm playing the f i mean the root position chord right and i'm keeping those two notes.
I play the f sharp i i know what chord it is you don't know what good but but i don't need to know what could it is i'm just playing the f f chord and i'm raising the f to an f sharp and then i play the g so on c i play c major on f i play f major on g i play g major it cannot be easier than that okay and then on f sharp i don't know what i'm playing i'm just playing an f with a raised sharp sharp sounds good enough to me.
Okay do we want to be more complicated sure we can put on c major then playing a c on f i'm playing a d minor in first inversion then i'm playing a d major and then g now people will go like oh d major it is the secondary dominant of the of the g it is but i didn't think this way i just put a chord and i just changed the note you see what i mean yes okay that's how we arrive at all those chords no nobody sat down and see and thought it would be nice if we take the fifth chord of the temporary key.
I mean, later, in fact, much later in the 20th century, we're like, okay, that sounds like they go in that kingdom and for a moment, and it's like the fifth court. But originally in the 1600, 1500, actually, I'm like, nope, it's just changing or not.
It still works. Okay. Yeah. So just do that.
Yeah, okay. That makes things a lot easier. Very good. And this makes it easier to explain to my students also.
Yes, exactly.