common hip Hop and R&B Chord progressions

romeo615 said:
i dont know how to read music...i was hoping some 1 would know..then id look up a vid where those chords are and go from there and see what i can come up with...so mabey if u could read music i'd try and get the sheet music,im sure its on the net...but thanks for the reply..


Bump still looking for that info..
 
MAN there was this thread california made that had the frontin bridge progression. Search for the name Fewture and look for a thread called learning favorite songs or somethin like that.
 
YBG said:
MAN there was this thread california made that had the frontin bridge progression. Search for the name Fewture and look for a thread called learning favorite songs or somethin like that.

thanks...
 
y bash.. eventually someone is going to ask the same question so we might as well bring it back 2 life
 
I've found that the book titled "The Idiots Guide to Music Theory: 2nd Edition" is very effective in painlessly teaching the principles of music theory. I learned so much by reading it.

At first I was resistant to learning how to read music and such -- I figured that playing by ear is more "freer" and natural than going by established rules and principles.

However, quite the opposite is true. Learning music theory opens up more possibilities in your music. You have to know and understand the rules in order to bend them.
 
The book suggested earlier, "Idiot's Guide" is pretty good, but it's dumbed-down from a lot of the questions that I've seen asked. One thing I would suggest is just picking up a basic music theory book (college level) and reading it. If you don't want to get that far in to it, pick up a piano book for beginner-intermediate levels. Go through and play/look at each chord progression. Make a little reference sheet of different songs and styles that you can go back to. Basically, educate yourself and take the steps.

A lot of people ask for certain progressions based on a song or a style. But unless you understand the theory of it, you won't know what chords to play based on the key you're in. Once you learn the "Circle of Fifths", your key signatures and you minor scales, there's not much left to cover, other than the variations found from genre to genre.

I've heard a lot of people talk about not wanting to learn theory because of staying away from rules, or because they think it's not worth the time. The rules already exist, whether we understand them or not. And trying to understand something that thousands of musicians and composers have taken years to research, while ignoring their findings, is only digging yourself a hole in which you'll eventually need help out of. And if you play guitar, you already understand much more about theory than you probably think. At that point, it's just connecting the dots.

Learn your theory... Buy a good piano book.
 
Hip hop evolved as a fusion of other genres. Hip hop is mixing and scratching from vinyl. Think how famous people sample from songs of a genre you never heard of. Hip hop is borderless; hip hop has no chord progressions or form. Hip hop is a feeling. So you can't say these are the chord progressions for hip hop cuz all of them go into hip hop. It's just that some are better than others, but that's almost inherent.

Free beat d/load:

sclk.co/s711wa
 
Hip hop evolved as a fusion of other genres. Hip hop is mixing and scratching from vinyl. Think how famous people sample from songs of a genre you never heard of. Hip hop is borderless; hip hop has no chord progressions or form. Hip hop is a feeling. So you can't say these are the chord progressions for hip hop cuz all of them go into hip hop. It's just that some are better than others, but that's almost inherent.

Free beat d/load:

sclk.co/s711wa

I really disagree. First, Hip Hop is a genre that has evolved from something else, like MANY OTHERS. The mix'n scratch-off-samples hip hop your talking about is pretty much dead as we speak. And being tributary of other peoples music, its far from being borderless. Nowadays, samples are still there (to add some ''topping''), but mostly I don't hear no hip hop that has NO chord progression (even though they're pretty restrained, when of course it doesn't remain on the same chord the entire song).
Same thing about the form dude. Artists who went out of 4/4 - 6/8 time signature are pretty rare/marginal... and as future producers, don't we keep hearing ''spit a 16 bar'' - ''spit 32'' when a rapper takes part of an act? And I rarely hear a chorus that goes out of the 8 bar frame (or 16, same damn thing). Pretty structural, hein? And i'm not only talking about mainstream.

If hip hop = feeling, that's great! But if your chord progression is dissonant, then you might be the only one feeling it.
 
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So, me I'm bored (I'm also translating an old version of Rimsky-Korsakov's "Practical Harmony Guide" from the original Russian into English, that's an indication of how bored I am as I don't read or speak Russian all that well), and whilst there is some good stuff in this thread, its use of Roman numerals in the given chord progressions is slightly off; either that or the posters are just out there (if you know what I mean). Figured, I'd come in and do some cleaning and hopefully improve the content just a little...

IVmaj7-Imaj7-iii7-ii7

This is great

An example in C major (all my examples are either in C major or A minor, just for simplicity)

This becomes

Fmaj7-Cmaj7-Em7-Dm7

[mp3]http://www.bandcoach.org/fp/audio/chordProgs-01.mp3[/mp3]

chordProgs-01.png


i - VII - VI - V7 - VI - iv - V - i

I'd render this as i-[sup]b[/sup]VII-[sup]b[/sup]VI-V[sup]7[/sup]-[sup]b[/sup]VI-iv-V-i

which becomes

Am-G-F-E[sup]7[/sup]-F-Dm-E-Am

Add some 7ths for flavour

Am[sup]7[/sup]-G[sup]7[/sup]-F[sup]maj7[/sup]-E[sup]7[/sup]-F[sup]maj7[/sup]-Dm[sup]7[/sup]-E[sup]7[/sup]-Am[sup]7[/sup]

[mp3]http://www.bandcoach.org/fp/audio/chordProgs-02.mp3[/mp3]

chordProgs-02.png


iii[sup]9[/sup] - VI[sup]7[/sup] - ii[sup]9[/sup] - V[sup]7[/sup] - ii[sup]9[/sup] - V[sup]7[/sup] - I[sup]maj9[/sup] - VII[sup]7[/sup]

We could also rewrite this as

iii[sup]9[/sup] - V[sup]7[/sup]-of-ii - ii[sup]9[/sup] - V[sup]7[/sup] - ii[sup]9[/sup] - V[sup]7[/sup] - I[sup]maj9[/sup] - V[sup]7[/sup]-of-iii

to highlight the secondary dominant chords in the progression.

Either way, very nice and two ways to render the first chord of this one

scale tone 9th (b9)

[mp3]http://www.bandcoach.org/fp/audio/chordProgs-03.mp3[/mp3]

chordProgs-03.png


major 9th above root:

[mp3]http://www.bandcoach.org/fp/audio/chordProgs-03b.mp3[/mp3]

chordProgs-03b.png


identifying the book:


The video that was linked in this post is no longer available as the account that it was created with has been deleted......
 
Ah excellent observation YBG. So why is VI major and whats goin on with VII? This will be kind of hard to explain in one post but I'll try.

In my original example these two chords are functioning as secondary/applied dominant chords. You will notice that they are both dominant 7 chords, and this is crucial to their function. You should also note the chord that they proceed. The VI7 comes before ii and the VII7 before iii.

Let's take C major. In this case ii is d minor. Now the dominant of d minor is A7. So even though A7 isn't diatonic to the key of C, it can still be used right before d minor to give some extra forward motion. Same with VII7 leading to iii. In this case iii is e minor. The dominant of e minor is B7 so it can be employed directly before e.

In this fashion you can also use:

I7 before IV
II7 before V and
III7 before vi, in addition to
VI7 before ii and
VII7 before iii.

Hope this helps!


Nice!
 
I really disagree. First, Hip Hop is a genre that has evolved from something else, like MANY OTHERS. The mix'n scratch-off-samples hip hop your talking about is pretty much dead as we speak. And being tributary of other peoples music, its far from being borderless. Nowadays, samples are still there (to add some ''topping''), but mostly I don't hear no hip hop that has NO chord progression (even though they're pretty restrained, when of course it doesn't remain on the same chord the entire song).
Same thing about the form dude. Artists who went out of 4/4 - 6/8 time signature are pretty rare/marginal... and as future producers, don't we keep hearing ''spit a 16 bar'' - ''spit 32'' when a rapper takes part of an act? And I rarely hear a chorus that goes out of the 8 bar frame (or 16, same damn thing). Pretty structural, hein? And i'm not only talking about mainstream.

If hip hop = feeling, that's great! But if your chord progression is dissonant, then you might be the only one feeling it.

BUM you are pretty spot on here.

Aderito you mean to tell me that sampled hip hop beats, which feature loops (or rearranged chops) of chord progressions do not themselves contain said chord progressions? You must be some kinda magician to pull that off. You're on some next level music theory lol.
 
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