Hey Friend,

I'm having a day...

The well of inspiration is bone dry this morning, and I can't for the life of me get two consecutive thoughts put together into something half-way coherent.

My shortcoming doesn't have to affect your daily practice schedule, though. My grandfather always used to say, "Can't never could," so here goes...

You can always practice the exercise from yesterday. Or make up your own progression that sounds good.

The I, IV, V and VIm chords can be mixed up in enough configurations that you could base an entire music career on using just those four chords. In fact, you could easily write an entire album of songs using only three or four chords in a key.

If you've ever thought about writing your own songs, a good tool to help you be creative is to limit yourself to using only three or four chords for the harmonic side of it. This helps you discover all the various possibilities within a subset of chords.

So you've got ammunition. You don't need me to arrange the chords for you. Take the triads form the key and start stringing together three or four of them to see what you get.

You'll learn a lot more about music and playing by figuring out how to combine individual chords into progressions.

Try It

Make it easy - just pick two chords. Strum the first one, then the second. Repeat that.

Do your ears hear anything interesting? 

Reverse them. Strum each twice before changing to the next.

Anything? 

Add a third chord to the mix. Place it first. Move it to the end. Then in the middle. 

The point is, you can learn a lot more by trying things rather than by having me write it all out for you. 

Okay, so maybe I was able to write something semi-coherent - with that, I'm off to the daily grind. Tell me what chord progressions you come up with...

Peace~

Dave