[Songwriting] Which Chords go together?

I am very often asked in my lessons which chords go together and which do not.

Often in “normal life” questions like: Play something! come up. But just playing something is not that easy. Considering that the riff you just practiced doesn’t flow as it should and the pop song you practiced a week ago has already left your head, it makes sense to just “jam” a little.

Degrees

On the one hand, the degrees are a good way to find out which chords go well together.

So there would be I, IIm, IIIm, IV, V, VIm, VIIdim. If that doesn’t mean anything to you, feel free to read up on the “scale degree theory”.

But isn’t there an easier way?

In fact, in the actual heat of the moment, i.e. a live concert or a band rehearsal, we don’t have time to think about which degree is minor or major and where it is exactly.

That’s why we guitarists have a simple trick here: patterns!

The green dots are the major chords. The red ones are the minor chords.
The respective barre chord can be played from these starting notes.

Theoretically, a complete key can now be played with this “trick”.

So you only need to remember the upper pattern so that you know where major and minor chords are located. After that you should know the difference between major and minor so that these chords can be found quickly.

Does this also work in a minor key?

The exact opposite is also possible, of course. However, the first note of the major (root) notes is not marked as “I”, but the first note of the minor (red) notes.

That would look something like this:

Here, too, the red notes are played as a minor barre chord and the green notes as a major barre chord.

Download Cheatsheet

A cheat sheet with all possible information, also if the root note should be on the A string instead of the E string, can be downloaded here.