Im just beginning work on my grade 6 theory stuff - Im okay with figured bass and general music questions BUT - question 1 - the part where you have to identify chords at the star - Im really stuck - Is there any particular chord progressions that NEVER sound great? I mean you dont have a keyboard in the exam so there must be a rule like iv - vii or iii - vii etc and what about inversions - do you include those too?

Help - Im stuck

This is a copy of a post that I made a while ago (no, I didn't keep it I just found it again!):

There are only about three things that you need to remember to get a lot of good chord progressions (and then the usual hundred exception cases for other things that you can do...).

1) The cycle of fifths: I, IV, vii, iii, vi, ii, V, I. Anything you take from that is good (note the ii, V, I at the end which will often be changed to iib, V, I as the bass moves in step. It's not so hard to remember it's just starting from the tonic down a fifth then up a fourth etc.; alternatively think of it as 1 7 6 5 with 4 3 2 1 interleaved;

2) Going up by one degree of the scale gives a good progression;

3) Falling in thirds is good, e.g. vi, IV or I, vi etc.

4) Another useful progression is the "Pachelbel's Canon" progression (I'm not sure it it has a name but that's what I call it!) I,V, vi, iii, IV, I; Bach used it a lot too. Most of this you can get from the above rules except the vi, iii bit I have no idea where that comes from!

5) There are other standard progressions like Ia, Vc, Ib (the passing 6 4) to harmonise 3, 2, 1 in the melody (and you can use it backwards for 1,2,3). The same works with IVa, Ic, IVb to harmonise 6, 5, 4 (and backwards for 4,5,6).

Well five is about three; but if you remember the first three you can work out most 'good' progressions.

-

Thank you sooooo much that was really helpful

I reckon thatll do it