🧠 soul progressions suddenly make sense once you see this

Hey music maker!

I grew up in Philly. Soul music was everywhere.

We love Gamble and Huff, who created the Sound of Philadelphia, including records from Teddy Pendergrass and the O'Jays.

I felt a connection to that music early on but couldn't produce it for years.

In college, I started playing piano and got lucky to receive some instruction from a jazz pianist. He taught me jazz chord theory. Useful, but I didn't know how to connect it to the music I wanted to make.

It wasn't until years later that I found the three things that made Soul harmony make sense: extensions, bass movement, and rhythm.

That's what this issue covers.

Extensions, bass movement, rhythm.

All three are doing something in every Soul record you love. Here's how each one works.

Extensions

If you're only playing triads, you're missing the colors that show up constantly in Soul music.

Soul harmony uses extensions pretty heavily.

The idea is simple enough: notes that keep going past the octave.

In C major, once you get back to C at the 8th note, the next notes in line are called the 9, 11, and 13. The 9 is D. The 11 is F. The 13 is A. The numbering feels a bit odd at first, which is fair enough.

My honest advice is to just accept the spelling as fact and learn it through songs. Hearing a C9 in context does more than memorizing the intervals ever will.

Here's the shortcut: Don't build these note by note. Use the triad-over-root method.

Left hand, one note. Right hand, a triad from somewhere else in the scale. A D triad over a G bass is a Gmaj9. A C triad over an F bass is an Fmaj9.

Instead of building these extensions note by note, you grab a triad and the bass note does the naming for you.

One more thing worth knowing. The chords that give R&B its bluesy color- the major II, the flat VI, the VI, are borrowed from outside the key.

Berklee professor Jack Perricone identifies these as chords that color the blues and R&B sound. It opens up a whole different emotional range without leaving the key.

Root Motion

Root motion is how the bass moves between chords, and in Soul music it isn't random.

Perricone identifies three patterns across blues, rock, and R&B harmony. Learn these, and you'll start hearing them everywhere.

Here's where the number system comes in.

Every chord gets a number, 1 through 7. Once you know the number, you can move any pattern to any key without relearning it.

Pattern one: movement down in fourths. The bass moves down a fourth each time. Strongest forward pull in music. Gospel turnarounds and R&B backbones feel inevitable because of this.

Pattern two: descending whole steps. Classic Neo-Soul vamp. Smooth, steady, hypnotic. D'Angelo, Erykah Badu, Sade.

Once you hear it, you can't stop noticing it.

Pattern three: minor thirds. The bass moves sideways, up or down a minor third. Unexpected, but it’s a very effective move.

Experiment with these by starting in a key that you’re comfortable with, then move the patterns anywhere using numbers.

Rhythm

The instinct is to pick chords first and add rhythm after. A great way to get those Soul vibes is to start with Soul-inspired rhythmic grooves.

Maurice White of Earth, Wind and Fire described thinking in rhythm as his natural starting point. The groove came first, and everything else built around it.

Jack Perricone addresses this specifically in Great Songwriting Techniques. R&B grooves permeate the song from the bottom up, all the way to the melody. Soul musicians feel the pocket first, and the harmony sits inside the groove.

The rhythm becomes the foundation.

When it comes to groove, three things are worth paying attention to.

Listen to your favorite Soul records and try to figure out where the chords are landing in relation to the drums.

💿 Human Nature by Michael Jackson

Key: G Major
Basic progression used in the intro: G, A, Fmaj7, Em7

The Fmaj7 and Em7 are already doing extension work in the original.

Here's what happens when we upgrade all four chords using the triad-over-root shortcut:

The original uses rhythmic anticipations throughout.

Take note of them and then play the same progression as straight eighth notes or whole and half notes. The feeling changes a lot.

💿 I Forgot to Be Your Lover by William Bell

Key: A Major
Verse bass motion: E moves up a minor third to G. C moves down a minor third to A.

This uses root motion pattern three.

Play it with 8th or 16th note anticipations from the original, and you'll hear exactly what the rhythm can do to these chords.

Quick update before you go.

The Harmony Vault just got upgraded. Every progression is now written in Nashville numbers for speed of use and transposition, ready to pull from.

So the moment you find something you like, it's already in your key

270+ progressions. Search by a specific chord and filter by tonal environment.

P.S. The Harmony Vault is 270+ progressions searchable by chord, organized so you can pull 20 usable ideas in one sitting.

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