My musicality is informed by jazz jam sessions, my primary musical activity these days, participating in several per month in the various local venues that hold them.
In that context what makes a great chord progression is providing an interesting setting for ad-lib. Some of the old standards, such as Days of Wine and Roses or Out of Nowhere, approached in countless ways by myriad players, fit that bill. I also like some of the unconventional and a bit more challenging progressions such as Monk’s Well You Needn’t.
And I agree that Lennon and McCartney had a knack for great chord progressions, among the many of which my favorites are those evoking a major b6 tonality, such as Free as a Bird or In My Life, to name 2.
Of course, all this is highly personal, especially when invoking improvisation.
Sometimes, when doing a solo guitar set, I work up an arrangement of a tune, from which I extract a vamp to extend the performance with some ad-lib using a looper. Recently, I did that with Jobim’s Dindi, using Em9 - AMaj7, evoking the old fusion 2 chord modal tonality vamp thing with a 1 note difference, in this case g - g#.
But interesting improvisation contexts is of course only one criterion from many for a great chord progression, which of course includes songwriting and many other fine examples already evoked in this thread.
In that context what makes a great chord progression is providing an interesting setting for ad-lib. Some of the old standards, such as Days of Wine and Roses or Out of Nowhere, approached in countless ways by myriad players, fit that bill. I also like some of the unconventional and a bit more challenging progressions such as Monk’s Well You Needn’t.
And I agree that Lennon and McCartney had a knack for great chord progressions, among the many of which my favorites are those evoking a major b6 tonality, such as Free as a Bird or In My Life, to name 2.
Of course, all this is highly personal, especially when invoking improvisation.
Sometimes, when doing a solo guitar set, I work up an arrangement of a tune, from which I extract a vamp to extend the performance with some ad-lib using a looper. Recently, I did that with Jobim’s Dindi, using Em9 - AMaj7, evoking the old fusion 2 chord modal tonality vamp thing with a 1 note difference, in this case g - g#.
But interesting improvisation contexts is of course only one criterion from many for a great chord progression, which of course includes songwriting and many other fine examples already evoked in this thread.
