Chord Progression Used In The Blues…
Chord Progression Used In The Blues
Good morning. This is Duane. Over the months that we’ve been together, we’ve talked about lots of different chord progressions; standard chord progressions and substitute chord progressions. I don’t think I’ve ever talked about the IV of the IV chord progression. It’s used in jazz and blues a lot. If you play that kind of genre, then you need to know how to do it. I don’t play that anymore at all, but even in my playing, I sometimes throw that in just for interest.
Let’s say you’re playing in F. You know the one chord is F and the IV chord is B flat and the V chord is C. If you’re playing the blues, you’re playing F, usually F 7th and B flat 7th and C 7th. Let’s just play a little bit.
That’s the IV. Back to the I chord. The V chord’s coming up, IV chord, I chord, IV chord. That’s the progression that we’re referring to. It’s the IV of the IV, going to the IV, going to the I chord.
Let’s break that down, now. That’s the I chord, right? F chord is I if you’re playing in the key of F. The IV chord is B flat. [Any 00:01:40] in a version of B flat is the IV chord, right? What’s the IV of the IV? That would be a perfect fourth above B flat. In other words, the fourth note of the B flat scale. One, two, three, four. The chord would be E flat. The IV of the IV would be E flat. The IV would be B flat, and the I is F. We’re going from E flat to B flat to F. Listen.
You could even make a riff out of that, couldn’t you? Lots of blues have made riffs out of that, the IV to the IV. That’s really all there is to it. I guess I don’t have anything more to say about that except let’s play it in a couple other keys.
If we’re playing in the key of C, C’s the I chord, F is the IV chord, and the IV of the IV would be the fourth note in the F scale. It would be B flat, wouldn’t it? We’d go from B flat to F and back to C. You could make riff out of that, too, couldn’t you. In other words, you could play the IV of the IV when you’re on the C chord, IV of the IV when you’re on F, and so on and build on that.
Let’s do one more key. Let’s take B flat. The I chord is B flat, the IV chord is E flat, and the IV of the IV is a A flat, isn’t it? The IV of the IV would go from A flat to B flat … I mean A flat to E flat to B flat. It’s typical in the blues to always put a 7th in most all the chords and I do that when I play, include a 7th. When I play the C chord in the blues, I play a C 7th, in F, too, and in G, of course, I put in a 7th. It’s okay to put a 7th in all of the chords when you’re playing on the blues.
That’s it for today, a little tip about the IV of the IV chord progression. If you like this sort of thing, come on over to PlayPiano.com and sign up for our free piano tips. Hope to see you there. Bye-bye for now.