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If you're interesting in songwriting or composition on the piano - or you're just interested in developing new chord progressions for you piano improvisations or learning more about music theory, this tutorial will help you.

In it I take you through the process of develop a chord progression from scratch. Working in the key of C major, I explain how to use the toolbox of diatonic chords to work out and back from the tonic chord, using chord progression structures that are very common in writing songs. One of the most basic principles is the idea of a chord progression as a journey: the progression of pretty much any song is trip from the tonic chord (C in the key of C major) out to some distant point (often G, the dominant chord in the key of C major) and back again. If you're writing a song you can exploit the tension of particular chords trying to drag you back to the tonic to create a musical effect.