How To Spice Up Your Chord Progressions

So you have learned how to seamlessly play through your favorite chord progressions and you are hitting every note correctly, but now your old favorites are starting to sound a little stale. What can you do to make those chords shine again?

What many people fail to tell new musicians is that playing a song well takes more than just putting the right chords together. Playing a chord progression accurately does not necessarily mean the progression will sound good.

What's the problem then? Why do some chords sound so "blah" compared to when other people play it? How much does it cost to make your guitar sound as good as the professionals?

Well here's the truth: you can sound just like those other musicians, and there is no magic involved. Instead there are a handful of techniques that you can apply to your playing that with add some interest back into those old progressions.

In this video I will focus only on one technique that I find very useful. We can delve further into other techniques later, but I believe its better to know one technique well rather then learn a bunch of techniques mediocrely.

Does this all sound too good to be true? Well it's not. The last part of this video includes examples of what I am talking about. If you like what you hear, then watch through the whole video to find out how you can improve your playing today.

This new way of playing is quite subtle, but it really makes a huge difference. And now you know how to easily incorporate it into your own playing. Go ahead and challenge yourself to try adding this technique into at least one chord progression a day.

Tommaso Zillio is a professional prog rock/metal guitarist and composer based in Edmonton, AB, Canada.

Tommaso is currently working on an instrumental CD, and an instructional series on fretboard visualization and exotic scales. He is your go-to guy for any and all music theory-related questions.

Tommaso Zillio