Listen up: scales aren’t just torture devices invented by guitar teachers... When you use a scale, say, C major, you are playing ‘in the key of C’. The word ‘diatonic’ simply means ‘within a key’, so ...

A great way to get started writing a song is to use a well-known chord progression. Certain progressions have been used thousands of times throughout the history of recorded music, so there’s no ...

Guitar skills: Getting to grips with new chords is a sure-fire way to take your songwriting in new directions and, hopefully, to the next level. So our charts are here to help you find your own voice ...

A lot of the elements that make pop music successful relate to it being catchy and familiar. As a songwriter, there are many ways to engender this feeling in listeners, to do with song structure, ...

If there’s one thing you can do to take your songwriting to the next level, it’s getting to grips with new chords. Use our acoustic guitar chord charts - from basic open chords to the daddy of altered ...

The presence of a well-crafted and performed chord progression can often be the glue that gels the song together. If executed well, it should support your melody and lyric, while grabbing listeners on ...

When it comes to guitar chords, it all begins with basic ones that are called either major (use just the letter of the chord, eg E for E major) or minor (reduced to the letter plus m, eg Em for E ...

Have you ever wondered how jazz musicians can play along to a new song that they have never heard? It is all thanks to chord progressions. And there are only about 10-20 of those that musicians use ...

Do you associate minor chords with sad music and major chords with happy music? If you do, you probably grew up surrounded by music that follows the basic rules of Western music theory. But not ...