24d (edited) • Hangout 🍻
Neat approach to the IV chord.
Moving to the IV chord
There are so many ways to approach a chord. The main building blocks of harmony are the I, IV, and V chords. A lot of music is based on these three simple chords, just used in different ways. For example, in C our three chords would be.
C F G
I IV V
We’ll stick to playing chords from C in the example for now.
I found a cool way to approach the IV chord. It can really catch someone’s ear if you use it during a jam when you’re moving to the IV chord. It’ll definitely turn some heads if you use it once or twice.
For context, one common way to move to an F (IV) chord is to ascend alphabetically from the C chord. Let’s go over that before we just throw this odd, but really neat-sounding way of approaching that chord.
Example: C Dm Em F
You’ll hear that sort of chord movement in a lot of songs.
“Here there and everywhere”- The Beatles.
The song is in G, so our I ii iii and IV chords would be G Am Bm C.
After the intro, you’ll hear the I ii iii IV chord movement.
G Am Bm C
I ii iii IV
Another way to move to the IV chord is to sneak in a fancy “ I “chord in place of the “ iii “ chord.
Example: C Dm C/E F
C and Em are very similar. In jazz, both are seen as tonic chords. I think of the iii chord as a related tonic, since Em is almost a C chord. If you change just one note, Em becomes C, or vice versa.
C E G = C major chord
E G B = E minor chord.
If we raise the B note by a half-step, it becomes a C note. Now, our Em chord is actually an inverted C chord. An inversion just means changing the order of the notes, and there are a few ways to do this.
C E G = Root position, meaning the root is the lowest note in the chord.
E G C = C in 1st inversion, the 3rd of the chord is the lowest note.
G C E = C in 2nd inversion, the 5th is the lowest note.
You can hear this kind of movement in the verse of Bob Dylan’s "Like A Rolling Stone."
C Dm C/E F
So those are some pretty cool and useful ways of approaching the IV chord. There are plenty of other ways of getting to the IV chord. However, this post would turn into a book if we were to go over all the possibilities.
The odd, but really neat way of getting to an F (IV) chord.
If we were to lower our ii chord by a half-step. We’ll get a Db chord. We’d write this as bII. Now I want to clarify: this isn’t a dominant chord or a fancy thing called “Tritone Substitution.” This is to be thought of as a “Phrygian” chord, a Dbmaj7 chord, not a Db7. It’s a different animal than a tritone sub.
We will skip over that stuff for now. We can always revisit it because that chord in particular has a really cool function and can take us to some pretty cool sounds.
Getting back on topic.
If we flatten our Em chord as well, we’d end up with a bIII chord, Eb
C Db Eb F
I bII bIII IV
It’s a surprise for sure, making that arrival to the F chord sound like we took an unexpected detour that still led us to our intended destination. Try it out in other keys and explore combining it with regular ii and iii chords.
I’ll include tabs/chord Diagrams later, while I was recording the audio of me Yapping about this, Sean had actually called me, so I think there’s a moment where it stopped recording and then went back to recording. We ended up chatting for a good bit so writing out what I recorded got away from me, but I’ll add it later.
What are some cool chord movements you guys have recently explored or experimented with, or have heard in a tune?
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Neat approach to the IV chord.
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