The Easy Chord Progression Chart

1. Chords move most frequently:

• Down a 5^th,

• Up a step, and

• Down a 3^rd,

in that order of commonness.

2. I (the tonic triad)may interrupt any otherwise good chord progression, and

3. I may progress to any other chord.

Given the above guidelines, a list of 'Down a 5^th' chord progressions would read as follows. The slurs indicate which chord progressions are usable. (Read from l. to r.):

I -slur- IV -slur- viiº - iii -slur- vi -slur- ii -slur - V -slur- I

The only place where a bracket does not appear is from vii to iii. The leading tone triad, by virtue of its tritone interval and strong need to lead upward to tonic is the exception to the 'Down a 5^th' rule of thumb. So memorize the rule and its one exception.

'Up a step' looks like so:

I - ii - iii - IV -slur- V - vi - viiº - I

thus the 'Up a step' rule has two exceptions: the only progressions where both chords are secondary triads.

'Down a 3^rd' looks like so:

I - vi -slur- IV - ii -slur- viiº - V - iii - I

thus, the 'Down a 3^rd' progression works from I until the very strong diminished triad is reached, at which point the 'Down a 3^rd' progressions stop working. Note that there are three exceptions to the 'Down a 3^rd' rule.

If I can go anywhere, that means that it can not only go Down a 5^th, Up a step and Down a 3^rd, but it can also go up a 3^rd, 5^th, and down a 2^nd. Thus the following progressions are created:

I -slur- iii, I -slur- V, I - viiº

And if IV - I is the familiar plagal ("Amen") cadence, then this particular progression must also be acceptable.

The above is nothing more than elaboration on the standard progression rules: Down a 5^th, Up a Step, and Down a 3^rd. Now you have a means for learning 5 simple exceptions instead of all 19 common progressions.

https://www.angelfire.com/jazz/papermusic/progs.html