Popular Chord Progressions for Afrobeat Songs
Popular Chord Progressions for
Afrobeat Songs
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Ordinarily,
you would imagine that when it comes to a complex topic such as this, one would
expect to see millions of chord progressions but the good news is that, there
are only few chord progressions used by most Afro beat producers. In addition,
these chords combination will enable you to play hundreds of songs by popular
Naija artiste like Davido, Wizkid, 2baba, Olamide, Fireboy, Burna boy, Teni,
Joeboy, Rema, Zlatan etc.
To
make things easier to understand, let’s start with the basics of scales which
form the building blocks of all chords in music.
Scales in Music
The common scales are the minor and major.
Major scale, for instance, consist of 7 chords, each one built off a note (or
degree) in the scale.
Let’s
take a look at the C major scale, for
example which consists of these 7 notes:
C D E F G A B.
Each
of these notes can be built into a chord. Here’s how:
Let’s
take the first note of the scale, which is C.
To
build a C chord, we combine the C with the 3rd and 5th notes above
(which are E and G).
Combining
these notes give us a basic C major
chord.
The
pattern above can also be used for the next key in scale which is D minor (made up of D, F, and A).
Below
are all the chords in the C major scale and the notes they’re built from:
C major
(CEG), D minor (DFA), E minor (EGB), F major (FAC)
G major
(GBD), A minor (ACE), B diminished (BDF)
Note:
-
These notes are usually represented by a Roman numeral like this: I ii iii IV V
vi vii* .
-
Capital letters represent major chords while lowercase is used for minor
chords.
-
This sequence is exactly the same for every major key, regardless of the fact
that the notes vary from scale to scale.
The Popular Chord Progressions
(1) The “I IV V” Progression:
This
is the most used chord progression in Nigeria and can also be represented as
1-4-5 or Do- Fa-Soh or C F G in the key of
C. Its unique sound makes it stand out from the other progressions (also
known as the Makosa and highlife progression).
(2) The ‘I IV V IV’ Progression:
It
is also represented as C-F-G-F or Do-Fah-Soh-Fah
in solfas (i.e. in the key of C). This shows a perfect example of how the F
chord resolve to the C chord.
(3) The ‘I ii V IV’ Progression:
This
chord progression has been used by notable music producers like Don jazzy, Kriz
beat, Mastercraft, Gospel on d beat etc. in their productions. In the key of C;
1-2-5-4 is used to represent it.
(4) The I IV vi V Progression:
Here
is another popular chord combination cherished by music lovers in the country
and can also be represented as 1-4-6-5. It has been used thousands of times in
songs spanning all kinds of genres, including everything from rock and pop to Afro
beat and Hiphop.
In
conclusion, learning these chord progressions is a great way to get familiar
with popular song structure and essentially understand many popular songs and
how they’re written by song writers.
