Chord Progression? Need help.

[MilDlrDime]

Okay I'm looking at a chord house trying to learn chords and I'm wondering about chord progression.
I'm really new to theory so I'm not even sure if I'm doing this right but I'll try to give an example.

Let's say I'm playing in A minor and the chords go:

A-C-E -- D-F-A -- E-G-B -- D-F-A

I'm a bit confused, what would I move to for the next 4 progression? Do I always stay in A minor chords? How do I really write it?

 

[scrapheaper]

Either you repeat the same chords over and over in a loop, which is ok but not great.

Or you move to a different progression in Am: say hypothetically Am- C - F -F

Or you move to a different key ( called modulating). I would say that the most obvious keys to modulate to would be C major (relative major), E minor (dominant) or D minor (subdominant), but you can move to almost any key, there are various techniques for smoothing the transition which I cba to go into detail here.

Also, can I add here not to make your chord changes too fast- it's a common beginner mistake. 1 chord per bar is plenty fast enough, some might say too fast, 1 chord every 2 or even 4 bars can better.

 

[bandcoach]

Okay I'm looking at a chord house trying to learn chords and I'm wondering about chord progression.
I'm really new to theory so I'm not even sure if I'm doing this right but I'll try to give an example.

Let's say I'm playing in A minor and the chords go:

A-C-E -- D-F-A -- E-G-B -- D-F-A

I'm a bit confused, what would I move to for the next 4 progression? Do I always stay in A minor chords? How do I really write it?

so your first progression Am- Dm -Em-Dm, which is cool

maybe next you think about substituting F for Dm and G for Em, like so

A-C-E -- C-F-A -- D-G-B -- C-F-A


other things you can do is to take your progression and rotate it left or right by 1 bar, 2 bars, 3 bars: note that RotR1=RotL3, RotR2=RotL2 and RotR3=RotL1

RotR1	RotL1
D-F-A -- E-G-B -- D-F-A -- A-C-E C-F-A -- D-G-B -- C-F-A -- A-C-E	D-F-A -- A-C-E -- D-F-A -- E-G-B C-F-A -- A-C-E -- C-F-A -- D-G-B
RotR2	RotL2
E-G-B -- D-F-A -- A-C-E --D-F-A D-G-B -- C-F-A -- A-C-E -- C-F-A	E-G-B -- D-F-A -- A-C-E --D-F-A D-G-B -- C-F-A -- A-C-E -- C-F-A
RotR3	RotL3
D-F-A -- A-C-E -- D-F-A -- E-G-B C-F-A -- A-C-E -- C-F-A -- D-G-B	D-F-A -- E-G-B -- D-F-A -- A-C-E C-F-A -- D-G-B -- C-F-A -- A-C-E

You could also make use of two standard cadences or progressions in the natural minor

Am-G-F-E

and

Am-F-G-Am

 

[MilDlrDime]

so your first progression Am- Dm -Em-Dm, which is cool

maybe next you think about substituting F for Dm and G for Em, like so

A-C-E -- C-F-A -- D-G-B -- C-F-A

You said change my D minor to F but you wrote C-F-A(when I bolded) wouldn't it be F-Ab-C? Same question with G. Or are you talking about changing scales?

My bad for such noobish questions, really want to understand this.

 

[scrapheaper]

He means F major- it's more closely related to D minor than F minor because it contains an F and an A.

F major can be played:
F-A-C (root position)
A-C-F (1st inversion)
C-F-A (2nd inversion)

Of course, these aren't the only options: you could play it F-C-A (with the A an octave and a third above the F), or A-C-F-A or any other arrangement you can think of.

Root position refers to any voicing with F as the lowest note, 1st inversion any voicing with A as the lowest note and 2nd inversion any voicing with C as the lowest note.

 

[bandcoach]

You said change my D minor to F but you wrote C-F-A(when I bolded) wouldn't it be F-Ab-C? Same question with G. Or are you talking about changing scales?

My bad for such noobish questions, really want to understand this.

no, as has been noted, FAC is the spelling for F major which is the F chord found in A natural minor
And GBD is the spelling for the G chord found A natural minor

each are the relative majors of the chords concerned F is rel major of Dm and G is rel major of Em

However, by changing Dm to Fm and Em to gm you bring in some interesting non-tonal center harmonies that may be the difference between having something that is unique and just also ran