
In art, it’s a rule that black and white contrast well, while orange and yellow contrast poorly. Music has no real rules, except those of perception. Chords in C Major Listening C Major Scale Most of the time, though, the chords just won’t sound very good. If chord progressions are written without understanding function, the results are erratic. If a chord does not fulfill its function, the effect can be surprising. If a chord fulfills its function, the resolution is satisfying.

Why do some chord progressions always sound good, while others sound stale? The way chords interact is a result of each chord’s function. Once you grasp a chord in terms of its function, you will be able to find or create uses for chords of that function, and that will take you a long way in your study of music and how chords work. So chords have a function defined by the roman numeral and the chord quality.

Again the exception is that sometimes you can just turn right around and go back to the IV chord as a pivot, which can go to the I chord. Once you play one of these, you're almost certainly going to go back to the tonic I. But usually you'll go further to the dominant chord. The exception is that sometimes in modern music the IV chord can just turn right around and go back to I. Once you've played these chords, you can sometimes turn right around and come back home to I. These are a little bit far from home, may be on the sidewalk in front of the house.

These chords tend to push away from the I just a little bit, towards the other chords.Īfter those chords, you have the subdominant chords, II- and IV major. In terms of how far we are from home, we're still in the driveway. If we move from the I to the III or to the VI, we haven't done anything very dramatic.

Both of these chords share a lot of the notes of the I chord. Other chords that have this function include the III- chord and the VI- chord. Its function is tonic, usually called THE tonic. The most important role in any key is the I chord. A chord's function is basically the role it plays within the key.
