"Musicality" & What Makes a Great Chord Progression?

[Ed DeGenaro]

Only had a very quick read...

One aspect, and what I often seem to do naturally when playing around mindlessly, is to keep one or more common notes.

IIRC, it was also mentioned on Beato that you can follow up with any weird chord as long as it has a common note (or more) to the previous chord. Of course, good taste in the matter (and the melody) remains welcome.

I think I picked that up early from liking Bossa Nova where it seems to occur a lot.

Say, Gmaj7 Abdim7 Am11 D7 (D note in common)

Probably for a similar reason a pedal note in the bass allows "random chords" under it to still sound interesting.

And listening to Toto early on, I seemed to detect how so many tunes had their own cool rhythmic patterns to the harmony that made it all so much cooler.

Even if you'd simplify that progression down to shells 1-(♭)3-(♭)7 and drop that common tone.
Which certainly makes for good voice leading.

Any point is that there's nothing about that progression since 3 chords are diatonic to the key of G and the G♯°7 literally functions as a rootless secondary dominant (E7♭9)…ⅤofⅡ-
Well technically it should be called Ⅶ°7ofⅡ-

 

[Eagle]