Easy Guitar Chord Progressions | Simple Guitar Riffs

I'm sure you're asking what the roman numerals are all about. Relax. They refer to the notes of the major scale. You learn more about scales later. In our guitar chord riffs example, we're setting the I (or root note chord) as A, with the IV (fourth note of the major scale) falling at D, and the V (fifth note of the major scale) falling at E. For the purposes of this lesson, all you need to know is to play A-D-E.

Here is a lens with 2 easy guitar songs that use this chord pattern.

For more in depth coverage of this topic, pick up the companion DVD to this lesson.
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Practice playing the I-IV-V chord progression over and over again until you can play all three chords sequentially over and over in a repeating loop (ie A-D-E-A-D-E-A-D-E... etc). When you can play guitar chord riffs like this with ease is when you can start thinking about playing with other musicians in a band or just socially jamming.

Get proficient playing the I-IV-V and then record yourself playing for several minutes. Play a few minutes at one tempo, then switch up and play another tempo. Do this at a few tempos then experiment a little for a couple of minutes. Play I-IV-V-IV-I for example. Save your recording, we'll be using it over the next several lessons.

If you paid attention in Lesson One, you learned about minor chords. Another variation you might try to record is the i-IV-v chord progression (the lower case letters indicate minor chords). Did you figure out how to play a minor chord on the 2nd string in the previous lesson?